"Ignoble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... will reflective readers say of a governing class, such as ours, addressing its workers with an indictment of 'over-production!' Over-production: runs it not so? 'Ye miscellaneous ignoble, manufacturing individuals, ye have produced too much. We accuse you of making above two hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made of fustian, of cassimere, of Scotch plaid, of jane, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... in the household seemed to have an opposite effect on the twin girls. Gussie was delighted with his fine appearance and gallant speeches, but Dexie seemed to see the ignoble nature behind and ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... Not long since some cavalry horses, deemed "unfit for further service," were sold at Tattersal's. Of one of these a Miller happened to be the purchaser. Subservient now to the ignoble purposes of burthen, the horse one day was led,'with a sack of flour on his back, to the next market- town; there while the Miller entered a house for a few moments, and the animal quietly waited at the door, a squadron of dragoons drew up in an adjacent street, forming by sound of trumpet; ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... ignorant scepticism that disbelieves in the existence, in Scott's day, or in ours, of persons who know and can recite variants of our traditional ballads. The strange song of The Bitter Withy, unknown to Professor Child, was recovered from recitation but lately, in several English counties. The ignoble lay of Johnny Johnston has also been recovered: it is widely diffused. I myself obtained a genuine version of Where Goudie rins, through the kindness of Lady Mary Glyn; and a friend of Lady Rosalind Northcote procured the low English version of Young ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble and of noble descent, but those of other races are mixed; the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and of noble breed, and the other is ignoble and of ignoble breed; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him. I will endeavour to explain to you in what way the mortal differs from the immortal creature. The soul in her ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
... by audiences that have not the mental capacity to appreciate his work. The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... country by the subsequent shepherds of better known dynasties, lent so much fear to their religious hate of Shepherd times and that name.' Smyth, somewhat modifying this view, and considering certain remarks of Manetho respecting an alleged invasion of Egypt by shepherd-kings, 'men of an ignoble race (from the Egyptian point of view) who had the confidence to invade our country, and easily subdued it to their power without a battle,' comes to the conclusion that some Shemite prince, 'a contemporary of, but rather older than, the ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... seemed to him like ingratitude; but Dr. Bell remained undisturbed, and secretly made up his mind to continue his efforts with more energy than ever for his friend. 'A noble soul, yet altogether unfit for this ignoble world,' he said to Mr. Gilchrist, issuing his circulars for another philanthropic campaign. When Clare learnt that new appeals to assist him had been put forward, he determined to interfere in the matter. Accordingly, he wrote long letters—very pathetic, though ill-spelt—to ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... entire country had confidence.[63] Very reluctantly Ormond agreed to this request and left Ireland in December, having appointed the Earl of Clanrickard as his successor. The latter was a Catholic who had played a very ignoble part throughout the war. Had he displayed years before but half the energy he displayed in its later stages things might never have come to ...
— History of the Catholic Church from the Renaissance • Rev. James MacCaffrey
... who would sacrifice the liberty of all to the concentrated energy of one. The armies of France have been scattered to the winds; the Emperor, who knew not even how a Caesar should die, is a prisoner; his creatures are enjoying their booty in ignoble ease, not daring even to fight for the country which they have betrayed. The gay crowd has taken to itself wings; an emasculated bourgeoisie, grown rich upon fashionable follies, and a mob of working men, unused to arms, and distrustful even of their own leaders, are cowering beneath the ramparts ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... of progress. It implies both the will and the skill to reduce to order, and surround with idealisms and graces, the more material conditions of human existence; and wherever that will and that skill exist, life cannot be wholly ignoble. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... by all means necessary to point this out—that the truly eloquent must be free from base and ignoble (or ill-bred) thoughts. For it is not possible that men who live their lives with mean and servile aims and ideas should produce what is admirable and worthy of immortality. Great accents we expect to fall from the lips of those whose ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... heartbreaking. And, Evan—" Her hand went out to his in a pleading gesture that merged into a half-caress. "—I am afraid for him now. That is why I don't know what to do. It is not for myself that I back and fill and hesitate. If he were ignoble, if he were narrow, if he were weak or had one tiniest shred of meanness, if he had ever been beaten to his knees before, why, my dear, my dear, I should have been gone with ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... sweet, this amen said: "We have done what we could, but ... but ..." And in the funereal silence which followed the clergy leaving the nave, there remained only the ignoble reality of the empty husk, lifted in the arms of men, thrust into a carriage, like the refuse of the shambles carted off each morning to be made into ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans
... Luther and his immortal assistants, exactly agrees with the Word of God, which we regard as the only infallible norm of faith and life: 1. therefore be it Resolved, That we regard the actions of the South Carolina Synod toward us as impolite, ignoble, dishonest, and uncharitable. 2. Resolved, That we look upon the assertions in Dr. Bachman's sermon as utterly unfounded and without the slightest approach to the truth, but as base calumniations, well calculated to insult (beschimpfen) our Synod." At the same time Pastors Braun and Miller were ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente
... gifts degrades his talent. He may set it to unprofitable uses, but he rarely makes merchandise of it. A Rembrandt, Thackeray, or Lowell cannot do inferior work for personal ends without suffering that devouring remorse which accompanies the conscience of the artist, and turns all ignoble popular successes ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... unjust suspicions and scornful treatment of men whose confidence he had won by his genius and force of character, were the cause of sorrow and suffering to those whom he attacked, as well as of remorse to himself, whereby his whole life was embittered, and his better nature warped to ignoble ends. ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham
... peace, and peace must be recognized as of value only when it is the hand-maiden of justice. The doctrine of national or individual neutrality between right and wrong is an ignoble doctrine, unworthy the support of any brave or honorable man. It is wicked to be neutral between right and wrong, and this statement can be successfully refuted only by men who are prepared to hold up Pontius Pilate, the arch-typical neutral ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... himself with ready trident stands, And opes the deep, and spreads the moving sands; Then heaves them off the shoals. Where'er he guides His finny coursers and in triumph rides, The waves unruffle and the sea subsides. As, when in tumults rise th' ignoble crowd, Mad are their motions, and their tongues are loud; And stones and brands in rattling volleys fly, And all the rustic arms that fury can supply: If then some grave and pious man appear, They hush ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... Giovanni Antonio was Bartolommeo Torri, the scion of a not ignoble family in Arezzo, who, making his way to Rome, and placing himself under Don Giulio Clovio, a most excellent miniaturist, devoted himself in so thorough a manner to design and to the study of the nude, but most of all to anatomy, that he became ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... ignoble a way of acting!" cried Amelia, as though she wanted to show that she was one of the other sort. "Love and devotion to a holy or chivalrous cause should be free from ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... glance of awe and fearful apology. But, however correct Godfrey might be in his judgment of the worldly, that judgment was less inspired by the harmonies of the universe than by the discords that had jarred his being and the poisonous shocks he had received in the encounter of the noble with the ignoble. There was yet in him a profound need of redemption into the love of the truth for the truth's sake. He had the fault of thinking too well of himself—which who has not who thinks of himself at all, apart from his relation to ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... would deny that the pantheistic theory, which identifies God with the universe and ourselves with God, has its fascination and {45} glamour—a fascination which is not ignoble on the face of it. The modern founder of Pantheism, Benedict Spinoza, was a man of pure and saintly character, a gentle recluse from the world, lovable and blameless. Nevertheless, we have no hesitation in avowing our belief that the glamour of Pantheism is utterly ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... with greater vividness of detail: and probably they were so in the Spanish original. The rapturous applause, which, on its first appearance, universally welcomed a piece like this, which, without the admixture of any ignoble incentive, founded its attraction altogether on the represented conflict between the purest feelings of love, honour, and filial duty, is a strong proof that the romantic spirit was not yet extinct among spectators who were still open to such natural impressions. This ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... Scotland, he attempted to convert the Covenanted Church to Congregationalism. Though he possessed some amiable qualities, yet this ignoble work was attempted in the spirit of a Turk—with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other. A resolution in favor of Congregationalism was introduced in the General Assembly of 1652. This was voted down. The military suppression of the Assembly at its next meeting ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... to lay down their office before they were reconciled. On this being said, Pompeius stood still, without saying a word, but Crassus making the first advance to take his hand and address him, said, "I think I am doing nothing ignoble or mean, fellow citizens, in being first to give way to Pompeius, whom you considered worthy of the name of Magnus before he had a beard, and decreed to him two triumphs before he was a senator." Upon ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... wings. The contempt he had for the father had hitherto shown itself in tolerant pity for the daughter, so proud of her father's position and what it brought her. In the revelation that his own directors had availed themselves of that father's methods, and the ignoble character of his present mission, he felt a stirring of self-reproach. What would become of her? Of course, frivolous as she was, she would not feel the keenness of this misfortune like another, nor yet rise superior to it. She would succumb for the present, to revive ...
— From Sand Hill to Pine • Bret Harte
... by birth, but very ignoble in his propensities, called Sgombro, and belonging to the Gritti family, fell deeply in love with him, and Croce, either for fun or from taste, shewed himself very compliant. Unfortunately the reserve commanded by common decency was not a guest at their amorous ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... across those little smarting, trivial personalities there struck the clear, assured dignity and worth of her old friend . . . was there ever such a friend as that rough old German who had died so long before she was born? No one could say the human race was ignoble or had never deserved to live, who knew his voice. In a moment ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... fire—that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory. ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... tortured unceasingly. The sun had passed the zenith—this sun of a culminating summer throughout which he had thrived regal and lustful. It seemed ignoble of him that he now should stoop to torment only us, and one of us a small woman. There was all ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people, as you are, for the live in cooler climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, where great interests are involved, they move with the steady momentum of a giant avalanche, and what I fear is that they will overwhelm the South with ignoble defeat." ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... and to himself. No whitewasher, however brilliant and ingenious, can ever wipe out the fatal action of the British Government in embarking on so ill-conceived a policy as that of supporting the existence of a bloodsucking government, composed of a miscreant ruling class headed by an ignoble king, all living on the misery and blood of a semi-civilized population. It is a nauseous piece of history, with which, under sagacious administration, we should never ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... wooden pillars, four on either side, leading to a glass door opening on to the garden. A man's room rather than a woman's, and, judging by appearances, a bachelor's at that.—Eighteenth-century furniture, not ignoble in line, but heavy, wide-seated, designed for the comfort of bulky paunched figures arrayed in long napped waistcoats and full-skirted coats. Tabaret curtains and upholsterings, originally maroon, now ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... the madding crowd's ignoble strife,[1] Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool sequester'd vale of life They kept the noiseless tenor of ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... man of unquestionable genius. His character had ever been beyond the reproach of self-seeking or ignoble ambition. He had multiplied himself into a thousand forms to serve the cause of the United Netherland States, and the services so rendered had been brilliant and frequent. A great change in his conduct and policy was now approaching, and ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... at thirteen, and in an English castle, the King of Scotland. His prison, however, proved a noble school instead of an ignoble confinement to his fine and elevated spirit. The name of Stewart has never been so splendidly illustrated as by this patriotic and chivalrous Prince. No doubt it is infinitely to the credit of the English kings, both Henrys, IV and V, that he received ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... denying the thought thereby, than in a little exaggeration. Zachariah, although he was a Briton, had no liking for that hypocrisy which takes a pride in reducing the extraordinary to the commonplace, and in forcing an ignoble form upon that which is highest. The conversation went no further. ...
— The Revolution in Tanner's Lane • Mark Rutherford
... thee warm and fed thee oft. Canst thou forget to take revenge of those wild people who have defaced my monument in a despiteful manner, disdaining our antiquities and honorable customs? See, now, the Sachem's grave lies like the common people, defaced by an ignoble race. Thy mother doth complain and implores thy aid against this thievish people who have newly intruded on our land. If this be suffered, I shall not rest quiet in my everlasting habitation.' This said, the spirit vanished, and I, all in a sweat, not able scarce to speak, began to get some strength ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... instrument. His own belief was that he could "spot" humbug wherever he saw it, and that nothing could escape him; and, I suppose, so much humbug is there in this world that his belief was justified. But there are few more awful people than those ignoble spectators whose jeer arrests the moisture in the eye, and strangles the outcry on their ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... also as a social art. But, my dear fellow, are you not exaggerating the destruction necessary to produce the perfect bloom? You talk of the crowd at Lord's or the Oval as if all these thousands were diverted from honest practice of the game to the ignoble occupation of looking on; whereas two out of three of them, were this spectacle not provided, would far more likely be attending a horse-race, or betting in clubs and public-houses. The bricklayer, the stockbroker, the archdeacon, by going to see Lockwood bowl, depopulate no ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... reflected in their pool; and perhaps Monsieur de Voltaire has fed them, and now for a crumb of biscuit they will fight, push, hustle, rob, squabble, gobble, relapsing into their tranquillity when the ignoble struggle is over. Sans souci, indeed! It is mighty well writing "Sans souci" over the gate; but where is the gate through which Care has not slipped? She perches on the shoulders of the sentry in the ...
— Some Roundabout Papers • W. M. Thackeray
... is more than probable that the selfish and ignoble torments of the sleepless and vacillating judge were greater than those of the prisoner who dozed at the stake between his curses. Yet it was part of Elijah's fatal weakness that his kinder and more human instincts were dominated even at that moment by his ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... proud Seville; let her country boast Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days, But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every taste thy ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... by his little finger as their representative, we only laughed; and asked him, if he had been so destructive to the officers, how many men had fallen by the puissance of his arm. It seemed that these latter were too numerous and too ignoble to be counted; for that question was always answered with a bah! and a rapidly passing over the extended palm of his left hand with his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... social animal. He "gregates," he flocks. Of nothing am I fonder than the sparkle of a friend's eye, and the gabble of half an hour, or three hours. But I ought not to build on any future gabbles, for, to-morrow, lo! my friend may have discovered my ignoble reality, whereas he has heretofore been shaking ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... troubled with no long description of Josephine Murray as she was when she became the Countess Lovel. It is hoped that her wrongs may be thought worthy of sympathy,—and may be felt in some sort to atone for the ignoble motives of ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... she suggested; "where there are robbers there must be victims. But one may despise the victims all the same. One may find their content, or rather their inaction, ignoble." ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the Metropolis, many of them without engagements, and reduced to giving dancing lessons to the daughters of profiteers, Crypto-Semites and other unpropitious persons. The organisation of a Russian Ballet train would therefore serve the double purpose of freeing these gifted performers from an ignoble use of their talents and at the same time initiating the provinces in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 26, 1920 • Various
... is grass, and all its glory fades Like the fair flower dishevelled in the wind; Riches have wings, and grandeur is a dream; The man we celebrate must find a tomb, And we that worship him, ignoble graves. Nothing is proof against the general curse Of vanity, that seizes all below. The only amaranthine flower on earth Is virtue; the only lasting treasure, truth. But what is truth? 'twas Pilate's question put To truth itself, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... office in their gift a mere pawn in the game of place-seekers, the time and energy of their President wasted in bickerings with congressmen over petty appointments, and the machinery of their Government dominated by the machinery of the party for ignoble ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... in the way, and the task was suspended for a time. A handful remained true to the original ideas; the rest fell away. Personal comfort, love of ease, the claims of domestic life, the greed of gain, all the ignoble motives which, like gravitation and friction, check such movements after the first impulse is exhausted, came into play. Like every great cause, this one was launched amidst high hopes and honest zeal: but by degrees the hopes faded and became nothing better than 'godly imaginations.' ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... admiration of their own age, rather than to dwell upon those traits and acts that are justly condemned by the finer moral sense of the twentieth century. Emphasis is laid upon the noble in character and deed rather than the ignoble, on the ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... iron; our internal improvements and meliorations; our national prestige; and finally, our greatness and glory as a nation,—ought to suffice for any reasonable conception of the marvellous, as they outstrip the more ignoble creations of fancy, and absolutely invade the former domain of fiction and romance. Hence the seeming puerility of fiction when contrasted with these more wondrous phenomena of fact. The substitution of fiction for fact is, therefore, unnecessary and absurd, ...
— The Right of American Slavery • True Worthy Hoit
... was Wordsworth's misfortune never fully to understand, the immense power of association upon words, so that the greatest thoughts and noblest emotions fail of their effect if expressed in words ordinarily connected with trivial, vulgar, or ignoble actions, and therefore necessarily arousing in the reader a state of mind unfit for the reception of greatness. Or again he will speak of the value of surprise in literature; "the pleasures of the mind imply something sudden and unexpected." Or he will enlarge, as in the Life of Addison, upon ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... teaching of three boys, if they are to return from school only to find the older members of their family intent on amusing themselves at any cost of time and trouble, or sacrificing self-respect in ignoble efforts to struggle into a social grade above their own. The child will never place his aims high, and pursue them steadily, unless the parent has taught him what energy, and elevation of purpose, mean not less ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... man of real greatness who loved money for money's sake. No life indeed, no temper ever stood more aloof from the common life and temper of mankind. The passions which stirred the men around him, whether noble or ignoble, were to Marlborough simply elements in an intellectual problem which had to be solved by patience. "Patience will overcome all things," he writes again and again. "As I think most things are governed by destiny, having done all things ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... such an unctuous, eager little man, so redolent of the elements that went into his careful grooming. She even tried in vain to read his novels; but they proved too much for her. She explained to him that his local colour was so brilliant that it dazzled her; but the ignoble truth was that she found it boring, although her letters going out of town were splashed thickly ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... necessary for a political leader to be an able speaker; but it is an ignoble thing for any man to admire the glory of his own eloquence. And, in this matter, Demosthenes had a more than ordinary gravity and magnificence of mind, for he considered his talent in speaking nothing ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... conspirator died in a less ignoble fashion. He had contrived to collect about twelve thousand men; but only a fourth part of these were regularly armed; the rest carried hunting spears, pikes, sharpened stakes, any weapon that came to hand. At first he avoided ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... Seine, where now stands the statue of Henry IV, between the King's garden on one side and the convent of the Augustinian monks on the other, the two pyres were raised—two out of the four had shrunk back into their ignoble confessions. It was the hour of vespers when these two aged and noble men were led out to be burned; they were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness was designed that the victims might have time, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... satirise from the purely literary point of view writers who are a whole head and shoulders above himself. And these two, followed by their imitator, Guilpin, assail each other in a fashion which argues either a very absurd sincerity of literary jealousy, or a very ignoble simulation of it, for the purpose of getting up interest on the part of the public. Nevertheless, both Marston and Hall are very interesting figures in English literature, and their satirical performances cannot be passed over in ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... the attacks were made upon unprotected houses in the absence of the head of the family; and the only fortified place captured was the garrison-house at Winter Harbor, which surrendered on terms of capitulation. The instruments of this ignoble warfare and the revolting atrocities that accompanied it were all, or nearly all, converted Indians of the missions. Charlevoix has no word of disapproval for it, and seems to regard its partial success as a gratifying one so far ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... is wandering; what can lead you to suspect such treachery? And, since you arouse my suspicions, since you hold a light over those ignoble labyrinths of the human heart which I refused to contemplate, I will speak to you with the same freedom. Was I not in this man's power? Is not this house his? Are not the people by whom I am surrounded devoted to his orders? Gaston, if you love me, ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... sooner formed the quintet than they all somehow seemed to feel insulted; and I really believe it was owing to the promptitude with which they consented to join. They had joined, of course, from a not ignoble feeling of shame, for fear people might say afterwards that they had not dared to join; still they felt Pyotr Verhovensky ought to have appreciated their heroism and have rewarded it by telling them some really important bits of news at least. But Verhovensky was not at all inclined to ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Major Benjy ought instantly to have challenged his ignoble friend to another duel for this insolent suggestion, but he did nothing of the kind, and his silence, which had some awful quality of consent about it, chilled her mind, even as the sea-mist, now thick and ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... him. The black man, in return, suspects and fears his old oppressor, and sometimes, goaded to desperation, turns upon him. A perpetual discontent has always brooded over Jamaica; and it is recorded that no less than thirty bloody rebellions have left their crimson stains on her ignoble annals. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... last night with a strange animal, and his defeat was ignoble. The animal, a pretty thing, much like a kitten, was hovering near when Ja-khaz, with rare courage and agility, threw himself ...
— The Last American - A Fragment from The Journal of KHAN-LI, Prince of - Dimph-Yoo-Chur and Admiral in the Persian Navy • J. A. Mitchell
... steel ring—one of them is three times as large as the rest, and has the wards toothed; that cannot be the key of her drawer—then she must have some strong box or safe. It is curious that the keys of strong boxes should be generally like that—but, after all, how ignoble!" ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... changing their wives and the women their husbands. Ordinarily they have but one wife, sometimes two or three, but this is generally among the chiefs. They have also among them different conditions of persons, such as noble and ignoble. The men are generally lazy, and do nothing until they become old and unesteemed, when they make spoons, wooden bowls, bags, nets and other similar articles; beyond this the men do nothing except fish, hunt ...
— Narrative of New Netherland • J. F. Jameson, Editor
... repeat the crime of destroying the childhood of the new generation,—the only time in life in which the guardian of education can really be a kindly providence. So strongly do I feel that the unnecessary sufferings of children are unnatural as well as ignoble that I experience physical disgust in touching the hand of a human being that I know has struck a child; and I cannot close my eyes after I have heard a child in the street ...
— The Education of the Child • Ellen Key
... been stripped of the virtue that should clothe humanity, they have been decked with artificial graces that enable them to exercise a short-lived tyranny.... Their sole ambition is to be fair, to raise emotion instead of inspiring respect; and this ignoble desire, like the servility in absolute monarchies, destroys all strength of character. Liberty is the mother of virtue, and if women be, by their very constitution, slaves, and not allowed to breathe the sharp invigorating air ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... had added various details of ornament which moderated the pompous splendor of this royal hue. Her hair was dressed like a girl's in bands ending in curls, which emphasized the rather long oval of her face; but an oval face is as majestic as a round one is ignoble. The mirrors, cut with facets to lengthen or flatten the face at will, amply proved the rule as applied to ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... second place. Compare his "Expulsion from Paradise" (in the Sixtine Chapel) with the one here by Masaccio. Michelangelo's figures are more correct, but far less tangible and less powerful; and while he represents nothing but a man warding off a blow dealt from a sword, and a woman cringing with ignoble fear, Masaccio's Adam and Eve stride away from Eden heart-broken with shame and grief, hearing, perhaps, but not seeing, the angel hovering high overhead who directs their ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... architecture is the exponent of the national characteristics of a people,—the higher and nobler sort exemplifying the religious life and moral virtue in a nation, the debased variety, on the other hand, expressing the ignoble qualities of national vice and shame. The text of "The Stones" is Venice, and the design of the volumes, in the author's words, is to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice "had arisen out of, and indicated, a state of pure domestic ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... leave to seek out the woman who had betrayed Henri, and by us was detailed on secret service. He gave up home, family, friends. He lived in exile, in poverty, at all times in danger of a swift and ignoble death. In the War Office we know him as one who has given to his country services she cannot hope to reward. For she cannot return to him the years he has lost. She cannot return to him his brother. But she can and will clear the name of Henri Ravignac, and ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... that of a loss of power, it is true, but it was that of a still more ignoble passion, covetousness. As Roswell proceeded, his mind represented one source of wealth after another released from his clutch, until it was with a tremulous voice, and a countenance from which all traces of animation had fled, that he ventured ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... is given him from the deafening demands of his ego. The love of God flowers on such soil. The creature finally turns to his Creator, if for no other reason than to ask in anguish: 'Why, Lord, why?' By ignoble whips of pain, man is driven at last into the Infinite Presence, whose ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... that have come to us from America demonstrate the lofty character of the joy which was manifested after the election. Men shook hands with each other in the streets; they congratulated each other on having at last escaped from the yoke of an ignoble policy; they felt as though relieved from a weight; they breathed more freely; the true, the noble destinies of the United States reappeared on the horizon, they saluted a future that should be better than the present, a future worthy of their sires, those early pilgrims ...
— The Uprising of a Great People • Count Agenor de Gasparin
... grey-haired local Nimrod told me. He had wrought much mischief in his time. That is to say, he was not killed, but accidentally drowned—drowned in one of those artificial reservoirs which are periodically filled and drawn off for irrigating the gardens lower down; an ignoble death, for a wolf! A goat lay drowned beside him. The event, he reckoned, must have taken place half a century ago. Since then, the wolf has ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... a strange conflict in his mind all this time between these ignoble fears and the efforts he was making to seem considerate and gentle by Kate's assurance that a cruel word, or even a harsh tone, would be sure to kill her. 'You'll have to be very careful, papa dearest,' she said. 'Her nerves ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... run! Oh, stay her! fly; Bring her back hither! [Exit PYLADES. I shudder! She is still His mother, and he must have pity on her. Yet only now she saw her children stand Upon the brink of an ignoble death; And was her sorrow and her daring then As great as they are now for him? At last The day so long desired has come; at last, Tyrant, thou diest; and once more I hear The palace all resound with wails and cries, As on ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... immeasurable, not being weakened and neutralized as it is today by the brutalizing influence of tobacco. They took snuff, but did not smoke. The cabaret was dethroned, the ignoble cabaret, where, during the reign of Louis XIV, the youth of the city rioted amid wine-casks in the company of light women. The night was less thronged with chariots. Fewer lords found a resting place in the gutter. The elegant shop, where conversation ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... Wherein not men, but mountains seem'd to wade; As when Achaia all under water stood, That for two hundred years it n'er prov'd good. Deucalions great Deluge with many moe, But these are trifles to the flood of Noe, Then wholly perish'd Earths ignoble race, And to this day impairs her beauteous face, That after times shall never feel like woe, Her confirm'd sons behold my colour'd bow. Much might I say of wracks, but that He spare, And now give place unto ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... every change of masters, of knowledge that the sun rises and sets upon their toil, as it did on that of their fathers, as it will do on that of their children, and will never see it lessened, nor see the fruits thereof given to themselves or to their sons. It is a humility which is never ignoble, but is infinitely, because ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... marriage! Pitiable daughter of a prince, whose comeliness her spiritless father hath made over to base and contemptible embraces! Unhappy child of thy mother, with thy happiness marred by consorting with this bed! thy purity is handled by the impurity of a peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired by the estate of thy husband! But thou, if any pith be in thee, if valour reign in thy soul at all, if thou deem thyself fit husband for a king's daughter, wrest the sceptre from her father, retrieve thy ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... their own are the very ones who hate mortally to admit to themselves that any intelligence in the world is superior to their own. A noble nature is indeed never so delighted as when it finds something that may be lawfully reverenced; but all the ignoble keep up their self-complacence by shutting their eyes ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... her spoils nobly, lending money to every nation and tribe that would fight for constitutional liberty. Should the principal city of so sovereign a nation be a collection of dingy dwellings made with burned clay? No; let these perishable and ignoble, materials give way, and London be granite, or at least wear a granite front—with which up went the ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... place to tenderness; she who was the most undemonstrative of women, caressed him as though he had been a child again on her knees. She praised him, she spoke of his perfidy as though it were heroism; she pointed out to him that he had made a noble sacrifice of an ignoble love. ...
— A Mad Love • Bertha M. Clay
... to the life and habits of the common people of their day. 'If you elevate such utterances to the level of the Kantian moral philosophy, and reproach primitive Christianity with teaching for the sake of reward, you not only misunderstand the words, but tear them up by the roots.' . . . 'The sordid ignoble suggestions so liable to arise in the lower classes are altogether absent from the sayings of Jesus and His apostles, as shown by the parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, and the analogous reliance of St. ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... in sooth, much shamefaced, we did go home, Judge of the Supreme Court, officers of the Army, and all, vaguely feeling we had been caught doing some ignoble thing. For my part, although I hope mawkishness no more marks me than another, and although I made neither then nor at any time a resolution to discontinue sports of the field, I have never since then shot in a pigeon ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... the tea I've had, it wouldn't matter," said Flossie as if resenting an ignoble implication. Rickman laughed a little uncomfortably and blushed. Perhaps she had hardly given him the right to concern himself with these intimate matters. Yet from the very first his feeling for Flossie had shown itself in minute cares for her physical well-being. They sat for a ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... from his self-respect. Had he but had the justification of some high political aim, he might have endured it with a better resignation; the momentous end to be served might have sanctioned the ignoble means adopted. But here was a task in itself almost as unworthy of him as the methods by which he now set about accomplishing it. He was to black his face and dye his beard and hair, stain his skin and garb himself in filthy rags, for ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... had, her industry was far more remarkable. The pen of a ready writer is not grasped by all fingers, and gifts are gifts, not earnings. But to cultivate the faculties God has given us to His glory, to lose petty cares, ignoble pleasures, and small grievances, in the joy of studying His great works, to be good to His creatures, to be truthful beyond fear or flattery, to be pure of heart and tongue far beyond the common, to keep up an honest, zealous war with wickedness, and never to lose heart ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... only a mean desire to retaliate, a petty and ignoble spite, that prompted me thus to poison Brutus's confidence, and I regretted the words as soon as I had ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... stealin' each, other's cattle, an', final, goes to war. Each side retains bands of murderers an' proceeds buoyantly to lay for one another. Which Silver Phil enlists with the 'Three-D' an' sneaks an' prowls an' bushwhacks an' shoots himse'f into more or less bloody an' ignoble prom'nence. At last the main war-chiefs of the Territory declar's themse'fs in on the riot an' chases both sides into the hills; an' among other excellent deeds they ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... Farmer Val," he cried. "He's right, and I'm getting sick of it myself. He says it is such an ignoble position for a mounted corps to suffer themselves to be shut up here, and not to make ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... you, I had arrived at pretty much the same ideas myself, as a matter of abstract reasoning. I saw that the one way of freedom for the woman is to cast off, root and branch, the evil growth of man's supremacy. I saw that the honorableness of marriage, the disgrace of free union, were just so many ignoble masculine devices to keep up man's lordship; vile results of his determination to taboo to himself beforehand and monopolize for life some particular woman. I know all that; I acknowledge all that. I see ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... phrase—had been rouged and bewigged, and put into high-heeled boots, till she had lost the old majestic freedom of gait and energy of action. Let us go back to our ancient school, to Milton and Shakespeare and Spenser and Chaucer, and break the ignoble fetters imported from the pseudo-classicists of France. These and similar phrases, repeated and varied in a thousand forms, have become part of the stock-in-trade of literary historians, and are put forward so ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... even with fools whole nights will sit, In hopes to be supreme in wit. 10 If these can read, to these I write, To set their worth in truest light. A lion-cub, of sordid mind, Avoided all the lion kind; Fond of applause, he sought the feasts Of vulgar and ignoble beasts; With asses all his time he spent, Their club's perpetual president. He caught their manners, looks, and airs; An ass in every thing, but ears! 20 If e'er his highness meant a joke, They grinned applause ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... crew mounted the taffrail forthwith to satisfy their curiosity in regard to the character of the prowling intruder, which was distinctly seen struggling in the wake. It proved to be a shark. But the fellow disdained to be captured by such ignoble instruments as a cod line and a halibut hook. He remained comparatively passive for a time, and allowed himself to be hauled, by the united efforts of the crew, some three or four fathoms towards the brig, ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... human courage cannot extend. Mr. Pickwick gazed through his spectacles for an instant on the advancing mass, and then fairly turned his back and—we will not say fled; firstly, because it is an ignoble term, and, secondly, because Mr. Pickwick's figure was by no means adapted for that mode of retreat—he trotted away, at as quick a rate as his legs would convey him; so quickly, indeed, that he did not perceive the awkwardness of his situation, to the ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... our care elude the gloomy grave, Which claims no less the fearful than the brave, For lust of fame I should not vainly dare In fighting fields, nor urge the soul to war, But since, alas! ignoble age must come, Disease, and death's inexorable doom; The life which others pay let us bestow, And give to fame what we to nature owe; Brave though we fall, and honoured if we live, Or let us glory gain, ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... seriously, little Hugh, and now that this war-cloud hung over the world, he simply refused to look at it; he turned away his face. That was all, a temperament which loved harmony and shrank from ugliness; these things were young Hugh's limitations, and no ignoble quality. ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... beating play of hoofs runs along the ground, and Beltran, with his morning's game, races by on his fiery mustang, and, scarcely checking his speed as he passes, stoops from the saddle and lifts the little girl before him. Vivia would look back in triumph upon Ray in his ignoble conveyance, but the affair has already been too much for him, he has flung himself on the instant from old Disney's basket, as if he were careless whether he fell under the horse's feet or not, but knowing perfectly well that Beltran will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... birth has just sounded. You are now fifteen; you have nothing more to fear from me. You are now beyond my power and my temptations as are also your odious father and hated prince. As to myself, I am compelled to keep this ignoble form of a mouse until I can tempt some young girl beautiful and well born as yourself to fall into my snares. Adieu, Rosalie! you can now ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... from the Kopts; and Turks, the conquerors of the Arabs. On the arrival of the French, the Kopts amounted at most to two hundred thousand: poor, despised, brutalised, they had devoted themselves, like all the proscribed classes, to the most ignoble occupations. The Arabs formed almost the entire mass of the population. Their condition was infinitely varied: some were of high birth, carrying back their pedigree to Muhammed himself; and some were landed proprietors, possessing ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... same untidy, little volumes, and learned the sordid, and probably fabulous, tale set forth in them in meanest vehicle of jingling verse. Vulgarly told to catch the vulgar ear, pandering to the popular superstitions of a somewhat ignoble age, it proved repugnant enough—as Julius had anticipated—both to Richard's reason and to his taste. The critical faculty rejected it as an explanation absurdly inadequate. The cause was wholly disproportionate to the effect, as though a mouse should ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... it. Feeling her desire for the old unshared intimacy too great to be borne without tears, she rose, walked to the farther end of the room, held the curtains apart, and stood there mastered for a moment. The grief itself was not ignoble; the sting of it lay in the fact that she had been led to this act of treachery against herself. Trapped, cheated, robbed, first by Ralph and then by Katharine, she seemed all dissolved in humiliation, ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... suited to her rank and race; that she feels with the dignity of a Roman matron; that in the last extremity she will save herself from the last disgrace; and that, if she must fall, she will fall by no ignoble hand. It is now sixteen years since I saw the Queen of France, then the dauphiness, at Versailles, and surely never lighted on this orb a more delightful vision. I saw her glittering like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... the high-handed heedlessness of all his acts. If the people were to be trampled on, it was a species of consolation that their oppressor was feared by others as well as themselves. But that the oppression of the doomed French nation was to be continued by a more ignoble hand was altogether intolerable. Frenchmen had begun to ask one another, who was this Mazarin who had come to rule over them? He could not—like Richelieu—boast of his high birth, of descent from a long line of noble ancestors—Frenchmen. Poets and romancers, ye whose imaginations delight ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... to forget unpleasant thoughts, to love again, to refrain from an ignoble strife—alas! that it could not be thus for ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... I dreamed had come to reign True peace within our land again; Not peace that rots the soul with ease, Or those ignoble 'rivalries Of peace' more murderous than war, But just the simple peasant peace The weary world is waiting for. With simple food and simple wear Go lots of love and little care, And joy is saved from over-sweet By struggle not ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson, an Elegy; And Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... growth of those qualities on which thrift and forehandedness in the management of his affairs in future life, and, in consequence, his success and prosperity, depend; but, on the contrary, to cherish the growth of all the mean and ignoble propensities of human nature by accustoming him, so far as relates to this subject, to gain his ends by the arts of a sycophant, or by ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked features, to represent an Apollo or a Hercules; nay, rather they would have deemed it downright profanation. How little is it in the power of the most finished actor to change the character of his features! How prejudicial must this be to the expression of passion, as ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... foreboding and discomfort. It had been the one jarring note in the sweet melody of her love-story, this apprehension of Derek's regarding his mother. The Derek she loved was a strong man, with a strong man's contempt for other people's criticism; and there had been something ignoble and fussy in his attitude regarding Lady Underhill. She had tried to feel that the flaw in her idol did not exist. And here was Freddie Rooke, a man who admired Derek with all his hero-worshipping nature, pointing it out independently. ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... oncoming King Edward would be a fratricide, and after death would be irrevocably damned. To burn, and eternally to burn, and, worst of all, to know that the torment was eternal! ay, it would be hard; but, at the cost of Richard's ignoble life and of Edward's inconsiderable soul, to win so many men to manhood was not ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... to dwell so much on my passion for distinction, and my devotion to my pencil as a means of winning it. My heart is full of you—but it is full of ambition, too, paradox though it be. I cannot live ignoble. I should not have felt worthy to press my love upon you—worthy to possess you—except with the prospect of celebrity in my art. You make the world dark to me, Fanny! You close down the sky, when you shut out this hope! ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... how greatly we were surprised by the sudden departure of Lord St Clair. "Ignoble Grand-sire!" exclaimed Sophia. "Unworthy Grandfather!" said I, and instantly fainted in each other's arms. How long we remained in this situation I know not; but when we recovered we found ourselves alone, without ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of these—e.g. the doctrine of the Sermon on the Mount—we admit to be good; but they are not peculiar to Christianity—our own teaching is very similar. In other of your ethics, we see only an ignoble and selfish storing of treasure; it appears to us that a good action, done for the sake of reward or gain, must entirely lose ...
— Religion in Japan • George A. Cobbold, B.A.
... sentence contains the motive for all the action in the sequel. The same situation is threatened in "Yvain", but there Gawain rescues the hero from the lethargy, ignoble in the eyes of a feudal audience, into which he was falling. Cf. also "Marques de Rome" ("Lit. Verein in Stuttgart", Tubingen, 1889), p. 36, where the Empress of Rome thus incites her husband to the chase: "Toz jors cropez vos a Postel; vos n'estes ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... that he had underrated the prefect's intellect, for his eyes flashed and glowed like fire, notwithstanding their smallness, and lending a force to his ignoble face which Caracalla had never noticed before. Had Caesar no premonition that in the last few hours this man had grown to be such another as himself?—for in his unyielding mind the firm resolve had been strengthened to hesitate at nothing—not ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Leavenworth and engaged to drive these freighting teams to Denver. Many of them were sons of rich fathers, well educated, and had never engaged in manual labor, much less in such menial work as this, and when these proud and high-spirited fellows felt what an ignoble life they had been reduced to, the reader may well believe they did not feel good-natured over it. And now, when these young gentlemen came to understand that they were to be associated with a man that was reported to be the representative of the hated ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... heart-strings, numbs the sense, And hems in life with narrowing fence. Well, in this broad bed lie and sleep,— The punctual stars will vigil keep,— Embalmed by purifying cold; The winds shall sing their dead-march old, The snow is no ignoble shroud, The moon thy ...
— Selections From American Poetry • Various
... cocoon. Of what prowess must not the mother be capable to determine the exact spot at which it lies and to lay her egg on its side or at least close by? For these reasons, I boldly number the Chrysis, the Mutilla and their rivals among the hunters and reserve the ignoble title of parasites for the Tachina, the Melecta, the Crocisa, the Meloe-beetle, in short, for all those who feed ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... truths before the world in a more impressive form. He knew the moral greatness of a martyr's death. He reposed in the calm consciousness of having rendered great services, of having made important revelations. He never had an ignoble love of life; death had no terrors to him at any time. So he was perfectly resigned to his fate. Most willingly he accepted the penalty of plain speaking, and presented no serious remonstrances and no indignant denials. Had he pleaded eloquently for his life, he would not have ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume I • John Lord
... attached to the wall, facing an array of salt-castors and catsup-bottles and one of those colored glass windows with a portrait of Washington which give to all lunch-wagons their air of sober refinement, Carl ate solemnly, meditatively.... It did not seem to him an ignoble setting for his grief; but he was depressed when he came out to a drab first light of day that made the street seem hopeless and unrested after the night. The shops were becoming visible, gray and chilly, like a just-awakened janitor ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... steel that should rid me of it would be more welcome than any other earthly thing. When it is too late, I have begun to realise the full depth of my villainy, and to see what a contemptibly cowardly creature I have been in permitting myself to seek such an ignoble method of revenge as piracy. But, as I said, it is now too ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... long span of Indian history, and the antagonism between two different types of civilisation cannot be easily or swiftly lived down. It would be folly to underrate forces of resistance which are by no means altogether ignoble, and in this volume I have studied their origin and their vitality because they underlie the strange "Non-co-operation" movement which has consciously or unconsciously arrayed every form of racial and ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... secures his client immunity from further demands. It is a well-accepted axiom that under like circumstances the same cause produces the same effect. And so the causes which lead to black-mailing in this city are precisely similar to the influences operating in Paris or London to produce the same ignoble crime. A married lady may become too familiar with some gentleman who has not the pleasure of being known to her husband; she may have been tenderly sentimental and gushingly confidential with him, and may even have confided her arduous imaginings to paper, when a rupture occurs—and be ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... being—can it be an immortal one? who will condescend to govern by such sinister methods! "Certainly," says Lord Bacon, "man is of kin to the beasts by his body: and if he be not of kin to God by his spirit, he is a base and ignoble creature!" Men, indeed, appear to me to act in a very unphilosophical manner, when they try to secure the good conduct of women by attempting to keep them always in a state of childhood. Rousseau was more consistent when ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... by a man of genius has in the same degree that brilliancy, that glory which is at once patent even to the most ignoble beholder. Thus, certain pictures by Raphael, such as the famous Transfiguration, the Madonna di Foligno, and the frescoes of the Stanze in the Vatican, do not at first captivate our admiration, as do the Violin-player in the Sciarra Palace, the portraits of the Doria family, and the Vision ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... and married to a virtuous lady. He afterwards renounced the world, and was ordained lector; but was overcome by his violent passion for eloquence to teach rhetoric. St. Gregory Nazianzen wrote to him in the strongest terms, exhorting him to renounce that paltry or ignoble glory, as he elegantly calls it.[1] This letter produced its desired effect. St. Gregory returned to the sacred ministry in the lower functions of the altar: after some time he was called by his brother Basil to assist him in his ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... his error too late. The following year, conceiving it then to be his special mission to borrow our dead hero's policy, he attacked Sackett's Harbour, but his "cautious calculation" was, of course, rewarded by ignoble defeat, and ultimately, after the Plattsburg fiasco, by a court-martial. In his civil administration of Canada Sir George Prevost may have been a success; as a soldier he was a ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... has been the dawn, with its searching illumination, its thrill of faith, the rapture of self-sacrifice in which anchorite and martyr foretasted the joys of heaven. Now Christianity is hard because it has become too easy; because of the "ignoble confidence," which will enjoy this world and yet count upon the next: the "shallow cowardice," which ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... already spoken once in passing, and who could exhaust the praises of this sublime work? Since The Eumenides of Aeschylus, nothing so grand and terrible has ever been written. The witches are not, it is true, divine Eumenides, and are not intended to be: they are ignoble and vulgar instruments of hell. A German poet, therefore, very ill understood their meaning, when he transformed them into mongrel beings, a mixture of fates, furies, and enchantresses, and clothed them with tragic dignity. Let no man venture to lay hand on Shakspeare's ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... preach, 'In greatness is no trust.' Here 's an acre sown indeed With the richest, royall'st seed That the earth did e'er suck in Since the first man died for sin: Here the bones of birth have cried— 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruin'd sides of kings; Here 's a world of pomp and state, Buried in ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... experienced, but because of certain shortcomings or deficiencies of character and purpose, of which he is conscious—"some meanness," or "unfounded pride" which may lower him in the opinion of others. Pride, surely, but not ignoble pride. ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... or even the semblance of it, is to be had," he answered.—"Do you wish to know how long I shall be away? Just precisely as long as amusement in any form offers itself, and as my power of being amused remains to me. This strikes you as slightly ignoble? I am afraid that's a point, my dear mother, upon which I am supremely indifferent. You and I have posed rather extensively on the exalted side of things so far, have strained at gnats and finished up by swallowing a remarkably ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... ceorl were the great distinctive appellations of noble and ignoble descent: none were or are admitted, it will be seen, to any important office in the coronation ceremonies but the former class. They were said to be "ethel-born," and every member of the royal family was an "etheling," or son of ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... low Spake in his snowy beard. "Bold can he speak, and fairly ride: I warrant him a warrior tried." A foeman to be feared, A leader to be trusted, seemed This dark, cold chief, and few had dreamed Of such strange severance. And any not ignoble eye In sorrow more than mockery Aside will gladly glance. 'Tis pity of it! Right or wrong, The Cause needs champions true as strong, And blameless as they're bold. "A sinful heart makes feeble hand," Cried MARMION, his "failing brand" Cursing with lips grown cold. Let vulgar venom ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., December 6, 1890 • Various |
