"Inglorious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... myself have visited the fleet With Anicetus: sullen droop the sails Or flap in mutiny against the mast. Burdened with barnacles the untarred keels Drowse on the tide with parching decks unswabbed, And anchors rusting on inglorious ooze. All indolent the vast armada tilts, A leafless resurrection of dead trees. The sailors in a dream do go about Or at the fo'c's'le ominously meet. Should any foe upon the sea-line loom They'll light with ease ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... scanty and precarious. He may indeed be, and he ought to be animated by the consciousness of doing good, that best of all consolations, that noblest of all motives. But that too must be often clouded by doubt and uncertainty. Obscure and inglorious as his daily occupation may appear to learned pride or worldly ambition, yet to be truly successful and happy he must be animated by the spirit of the same great principles which inspired the most illustrious benefactors of mankind. If he bring to his task ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... important sense, the job was Lister's. To trust the young fellow was a bold experiment, but Cartwright did so. If Lister were not the man he thought, Cartwright imagined his control of the line would presently come to an inglorious end. To some extent this accounted for his bringing Barbara to see the salvage expedition start. He knew the power ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... Pitt did not yet direct the councils of Britain; and a spirit of enterprise and heroism did not yet animate her generals. The campaign to the north was inglorious; and to the west, nothing was even attempted, which ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... his Present State of Polite Learning, published in 1759, says, (ch. x):—'When the great Somers was at the helm, patronage was fashionable among our nobility ... Since the days of a certain prime minister of inglorious memory [Sir Robert Walpole] the learned have been kept pretty much at a distance. ... The author, when unpatronised by the Great, has naturally recourse to the bookseller. There cannot be perhaps imagined a combination more prejudicial to taste ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... August 31st, and after trekking some miles arrived at a large coal-mine, which seemed to be in very good order. This country had been the scene of a goodish bit of fighting. Not far off the ill-fated Jameson raid had come to its inglorious conclusion; a little further on the Gordons had suffered severely during the advance on Johannesburg; and here the Pochefstroom column ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... is just as like as not to turn out a poet or a professor. I want to say in passing that I have no real prejudice against poets, but I believe that, if you're going to be a Milton, there's nothing like being a mute, inglorious one, as some fellow who was a little sore on the poetry business once put it. Of course, a packer who understands something about the versatility of cottonseed oil need never turn down orders for lard because the run of hogs is light, ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... report has not been yet made public. There were at one time grave objections to allowing Raja BROOKE to extend his territory, as there was no guarantee that some one of his successors might not prefer a life of inglorious ease in England to the task of governing natives in the tropics, and sell his kingdom to the highest bidder—say France or Germany; but if the British Protectorate over Sarawak is formally proclaimed, there would appear to be no ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... with the principles of a republican government; but the family became extinct long since, and I have heard, though it is not a subject that one may speak of lightly, that the sons were unworthy their noble descent and came to inglorious ends. ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... Hampden that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... odious and degrading of all kinds of government, under a government uniting all the evils of despotism to all the evils of anarchy. Anything was preferable to the yoke of a succession of incapable and inglorious tyrants, raised to power, like the Deys of Barbary, by military revolutions recurring at short intervals. Lambert seemed likely to be the first of these rulers; but within a year Lambert might give place to Desborough, and Desborough to Harrison. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... even industry and endowment were powerless against the inertia of custom and the dead-weight of environment. The universal ignorance of the working class broke down the aspiring force of genius. Mute inglorious Miltons were buried ...
— The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice • Stephen Leacock
... slur. crying shame, burning shame; scandalum magnatum [Lat.], badge of infamy, blot in one's escutcheon; bend sinister, bar sinister; champain^, point champain^; byword of reproach; Ichabod. argumentum ad verecundiam [Lat.]; sense of shame &c 879. V. be inglorious &c adj.; incur disgrace &c n.; have a bad name, earn a bad name; put a halter round one's neck, wear a halter round one's neck; disgrace oneself, expose oneself. play second fiddle; lose caste; pale one's ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the predominant occupations of the ruling part of mankind; formerly they passed their time either in exciting action or inanimate repose. A feudal baron had nothing between war and the chase—keenly animating things both—and what was called "inglorious ease". Modern life is scanty in excitements, but incessant in quiet action. Its perpetual commerce is creating a "stock-taking" habit—the habit of asking each man, thing, and institution, "Well, what have you done since I ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... persons (whom Lycurgus in Plutarch calls morbos reipublicae, the boils of the commonwealth), many poor people in all our towns. Civitates ignobiles, as [540]Polydore calls them, base-built cities, inglorious, poor, small, rare in sight, ruinous, and thin of inhabitants. Our land is fertile we may not deny, full of all good things, and why doth it not then abound with cities, as well as Italy, France, Germany, the Low Countries? because their policy hath been otherwise, and we are not so thrifty, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... distress, and dazzling silk doublets of the mayor and aldermen of this proud and thrice-happy borough—nor how they knelt to the soft salute of his Majesty's hand. Our whole book were a space too brief, and a region too inglorious, for the wide pomp and paraphernalia of the time; and how the bailiff rode, and the mace-bearer guarded the caroche, it were presumption, an offensive compound of ignorance and pride, to attempt the portraiture. Suffice it to say, they wore mulberry-coloured ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... heart of Liguria, were seldom able to effect more than to compel the enemy to disperse, and take refuge in their villages and castles, of which the latter were mountain fastnesses, in which they were generally able to defy their pursuers. But into the details of these long-protracted and inglorious hostilities ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... to play such a part as the voice of God may assign you. You go forth, amid the shouts and huzzahs of cheering friends, and the anxious prayers of the faithful of God. The part that you play, the character of your return journey, triumphant or inglorious, will depend largely upon how well you have learned the lesson of this text. Remember that the kingdom of God is within you. Do not go forth into the world to demand favors of the world, but go forth to give unto the world. Be strong in ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... keep thy neck beneath the yoke, or wilt thou do battle like a warrior for liberty and independence? By our act thou art lost — yet not even that thought can hold us back — then why not stand or fall as a soldier, sword in hand, than be trapped like a rat in a hole in inglorious inaction? For methinks whatever else betided thou wouldst not raise thy hand against thy countrymen, even if thy feudal lord should ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the life of a politician to be one of high priced food and inglorious ease, have found, now that they have the fruit, that it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... second African mission, one of his nearest relations expostulated with him on the imprudence of again exposing himself to dangers which he had so very narrowly escaped, and perhaps even to new and still greater ones; he calmly replied, that a few inglorious winters of country practice at Peebles was a risk as great, and would tend as effectually to shorten life, as the journey which he was ...
— The Journal Of A Mission To The Interior Of Africa, In The Year 1805 • Mungo Park
... sincere a worshipper of nature to be content with inglorious repose, even after having accomplished in action more than was ever dreamed of by any other naturalist; and while the "edition for the people" of his Birds of America was in course of publication, he was busy amid the forests and prairies, the reedy swamps ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... question was that which most frequently occupied her mind, constantly recurring. She could think of but one answer to it; this saddening enough. He might never have reached the Rio Grande, but perished on the way. Perhaps his life had come to an inglorious though not ignominious end—by disease, accident, or other fatality—and his body might now be lying in some lonely spot of the prairies, where his marching ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... receive another from the hand of Deiphobus, but Deiphobus was gone. Then Hector understood his doom and said, "Alas! it is plain this is my hour to die! I thought Deiphobus at hand, but Pallas deceived me, and he is still in Troy. But I will not fall inglorious," So saying he drew his falchion from his side and rushed at once to combat. Achilles, secured behind his shield, waited the approach of Hector. When he came within reach of his spear, Achilles choosing with his eye a vulnerable part where the armor leaves the neck ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... Than what divided Greece for Homer's birth. To what perfection will our tongue arrive, How will invention and translation thrive, When authors nobly born will bear their part, And not disdain the inglorious praise of art! Great generals thus, descending from command, With their own toil provoke the soldier's hand. How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear His fame augmented by an English peer;[14] 60 How he embellishes his Helen's loves, Outdoes his softness, and his sense ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol II - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... live so much the longer." This answer touched Cassius's pride and military sense of honor. Rather than concur in a counsel which was thus, on the part of one of its advocates at least, dictated by what he considered an inglorious love of life, he preferred to retract his opinion. It was agreed by the council that the army should maintain its ground and give the enemy battle. The officers then repaired to their ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... still bear on The conquering Tartar ensigns through the world, And beat the Persians back on every field, I seek one man, one man, and one alone— Rustum, my father; who I hoped should greet, Should one day greet, upon some well-fought field, His not unworthy, not inglorious son. So I long hoped, but him I never find. Come then, hear now, and grant me what I ask. Let the two armies rest to-day; but I Will challenge forth the bravest Persian lords To meet me man to man; if I prevail, Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall— Old man, the dead need no one, claim ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thus address'd. Friends, counsellors and leaders of the Greeks! 20 In dire perplexity Saturnian Jove Involves me, cruel; he assured me erst, And solemnly, that I should not return Till I had wasted wall-encircled Troy; But now (ah fraudulent and foul reverse!) 25 Commands me back inglorious to the shores Of distant Argos, with diminish'd troops. So stands the purpose of almighty Jove, Who many a citadel hath laid in dust, And shall hereafter, matchless in his power. 30 Haste therefore. My advice is, that we all Fly ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... part is coming, it makes me laugh. Poor Mr. Arbuton will feel all day that he is under my mercilessly critical eye, and that he mustn't do this and he mustn't say that, for fear of me; and he can't run away, for he's promised to wait patiently for my decision. It's a most inglorious position for him, but I don't think of anything to do about it. I could say no at ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... means. The birth of a child, in so far as its mother has not received the sanction of a man, is subject to the fire and brimstone of public scorn. And this scorn is the most pitiful result in all the patriarchal record. A woman's natural right is her right to be a mother, and it is the most inglorious page in the history of woman that too often she has allowed herself to be deprived of that right. Women have this lesson first to learn. We, and not men, must fix the standard in sex, for we have to play the chief part in the ...
— The Position of Woman in Primitive Society - A Study of the Matriarchy • C. Gasquoine Hartley
... have been intense, he could not by possibility for a single moment say, 'soul take thine ease,' inglorious, destructive ease. His hands had to labour for his bread, and to provide for a most exemplary wife and four children, one of them blind. There was no hour of his life when he could have said to his soul, Let all thy noble powers be absorbed in eating, drinking, being merry—mere animal ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... way. This officer had served in almost all the campaigns of Napoleon and had greatly distinguished himself. What a cruel death for a warrior who had been in fifty battles! That death should have shunned him in the field of battle, to make him fall in a manner at once inglorious and ridiculous! yet such is destiny. Pyrrhus fell by a tile flung from a house by an old woman, and I am acquainted with a gallant captain in the British Navy who lost his leg by amputation, having broken it (oh horror!) by a fall from the top of ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... to the fact that the old monarchial government of Korea ended its inglorious career but a few short months ago. While the records of the nation run back more than three thousand years—probably to a period when Job was so superbly reproaching his comforters in the Land of Uz—the late dynasty runs back only 500 years. We Americans, I may say ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... cypress shades a Sorcerer dwels Of Bacchus, and of Circe born, great Comus, Deep skill'd in all his mothers witcheries, And here to every thirsty wanderer, By sly enticement gives his banefull cup, With many murmurs mixt, whose pleasing poison The visage quite transforms of him that drinks, And the inglorious likenes of a beast Fixes instead, unmoulding reasons mintage Character'd in the Face; this have I learn't 530 Tending my flocks hard by i'th hilly crofts, That brow this bottom glade, whence night by night He and his monstrous rout are heard to howl Like stabl'd wolves, or tigers at their prey, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... in a moment of wanton revenge had blown up the venerable hulk of the Victory, which had gone down at her moorings with her flag still flying as it had done a hundred years before at the fight of Trafalgar. After this inglorious achievement they had been laid up in dock to wait for their next opportunity of destruction, should ...
— The Angel of the Revolution - A Tale of the Coming Terror • George Griffith
... OUT FOR DEATH!—death sudden and fierce as the leap of the desert panther on its prey! ... death that shall come to thee through the traitorous speech of the evil woman whose beauty has sapped thy strength and rendered thy glory inglorious!... death that for thee, alas! shall be mournful and utter oblivion! Naught shall it avail to thee that thy musical weaving of words hath been graven seven times over, on tablets of stone and agate and ivory, of gold and white ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... effectually in the scramble, he was unable to obtain a single sixpence; and having in his rage given some of his fellow-scramblers a cuff or two, he was set upon by the boys and country-fellows, and compelled to make an inglorious retreat with his table, which had been flung down in the scuffle, and had one of its legs broken. As he retired, the rabble hooted, and Jack, holding up in derision the pea with which he had out-manoeuvred him, exclaimed, "I always carry this in ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... season: nor is it necessary to dwell on the dark side of our past affairs. Every American officer and soldier must now console himself for any unpleasant circumstances which may have occurred, by a recollection of the uncommon scenes in which he has been called to act no inglorious part, and the astonishing events of which he has been a witness—events which have seldom, if ever before, taken place on the stage of human action, nor can they probably ever happen again. For who has before seen a disciplined ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... His soul of fire Was kindled by the breath of the rude time He lived in. Now a gentler race succeeds, Shuddering at blood; the effeminate cavalier, Turning his eyes from the reproachful past, And from the hopeless future, gives to ease, And love, and music, his inglorious life." ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... with other than preconceived, erroneous views, it might have perceived traits which justified the wisdom implied in his changed condition. Thus far, if he has not risen to the dizzy heights to which the hopes of ardent enthusiasts invited him, he has at least, not only belied the gloomy fate of inglorious extinction, but he is going forward with steady strides to realize an honorable destiny in common with the many other ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... in the place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,—followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, where everything was done decently ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... of Aschaffenbourg when he says, that in Count Baldwin's family for many ages he who pleased his father most took his father's name, and was hereditary prince of all Flanders; while the other brothers led an inglorious life ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... to suppress these revolts; but it may be doubted whether they were successful. The military spirit had declined; the monarchs had ceased to lead out their armies regularly year by year, preferring to pass their time in inglorious ease at their rich and luxurious capitals. Asshur-dayan III., during nine years of his eighteen, remained at home, under-taking no warlike enterprise. Asshur-lush, his successor, displayed even less of military vigor. During the eight years of his reign he took ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... of mortal men—was in good hope that I might issue from this conflict a conqueror; and is there living a man blind enough not to perceive that what I looked for was hard-earned credit, which I should certainly have won by finding my views confirmed by Cardan living, and not for inglorious peace brought about by his death? And indeed I might have been suffered to have share in the bounty and kindliness of this illustrious man, whom I have always heard described as a shrewd antagonist and one full of confidence in his own high position, for ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... father, August, 1422, the unfortunate Henry the Sixth, when not a year old, was proclaimed King of England and heir of France, and when eight years of age he was crowned both in London and Paris. No improvements in naval affairs were introduced during his inglorious and disastrous reign. The chief battle at sea was fought by a fleet under the command of the famous king-maker, the Earl of Warwick. In the Straits of Dover he encountered a fleet of Genoese and Lubeck ships laden with Spanish merchandise, ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... him Bill, the hired man, But she, her name was Mary Jane, The Squire's daughter; and to reign The belle from Ber-she-be to Dan Her little game. How lovers rash Got mittens at the spelling school! How many a mute, inglorious fool Wrote rhymes and ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... Persia did not long support the persecuting spirit of the Jews. The Emperor Heraclius, who had spent some inglorious years on the throne, was alarmed into activity by the progress of the enemy, who had threatened even the walls of Constantinople itself. The discipline of ancient Rome, which was not yet quite extinct among the legionary soldiers, maintained its wonted superiority ...
— Palestine or the Holy Land - From the Earliest Period to the Present Time • Michael Russell
... advance the hostile designs of France. An insurrection from distress would be a double invitation to invasion; and, I am sure, much more to be dreaded, even personally, by the ministers, than the ill-humours of Opposition for even an inglorious peace. To do the Opposition justice, it is not composed of incendiaries. Parliamentary speeches raise no tumults: but tumults would be a dreadful thorough bass to speeches. The ministers do not know the strength they have left (supposing they apply it in time), if they are afraid ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... reformers are not those who would have women act just like men in all externals, but those who are conscious that all men, even the greatest, were born of women. They are the conscious mothers of the race of men and gods. A woman's natural right is her right to the child, and it is a most inglorious page in the history of woman that she has allowed herself to be deprived of that right. The birth of the child, in so far as it is not sanctioned by a man, is subject to the fire and brimstone of public ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Nineteenth dynasty soon came to an inglorious end. Civil war distracted the country, and for a time it obeyed the rule of a foreign chief. Then came the rise of the Twentieth dynasty, and a third Ramses restored the prestige and prosperity of his kingdom. But once more the foreign invader was upon its soil. The nations of the north had again ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... to the successor of Artabanus III. First short reign of Gotarzes. He is expelled and Vardanes made king. Reign of Vardanes. His ivar with Izates. His Death. Second reign of Gotarzes. His Contest with his Nephew, Meherdates. His Death. Short and inglorious reign of Vonones II. ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... of your schemes. What angers and distresses me is, that you think me unworthy to partake of your cares and labours; that you regard my company as an obstacle and encumbrance; that assistance and counsel must all proceed from you; and that no scene is fit for me, but what you regard as slothful and inglorious. ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... retired to London, determined there to maintain to the last extremity the small remains of English liberty. He here found everything in confusion by the death of the King, who expired after an unhappy and inglorious reign of thirty-five years (1016). He left two sons by his first marriage, Edmund, who succeeded him, and Edwy, whom Canute afterward murdered. His two sons by the second marriage, Alfred and Edward, were, immediately ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... hills of his own choosing, and strengthened by all the appliances of military art. With no experience but the consciousness of your own manhood, you have driven him from his strongholds, pursued his inglorious flight, and compelled him to meet you in battle. When forced to fight, he sought the shelter of rocks and hills. You drove him from his position, leaving scores of his bloody dead unburied. His artillery ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... of him depressed me horribly. Here was I condemned to some rotten buffoonery in inglorious safety, while the salt of the earth like Blaikie was paying the ghastliest price. From him my thoughts flew to old Peter Pienaar, and I sat down on a roadside wall and read his last letter. It nearly made me howl. Peter, you must know, had shaved his beard and joined the Royal Flying ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... have been cowardice in Ralph that he never mentioned Bertha's name to his family or to his aristocratic acquaintances; for, to be candid, he himself felt ashamed of the power she exerted over him, and by turns pitied and ridiculed himself for pursuing so inglorious a conquest. Nevertheless it wounded his egotism that she never showed any surprise at seeing him, that she received him with with a certain frank unceremoniousness, which, however, was very becoming to her; that she invariably went on with her work heedless of his presence, ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... was a landscape. This afternoon it was an inglorious smudge. It is now on its way back to the landscape condition, and will have revived all its glories by to-morrow. It was noon when I rang ...
— The Romance Of Giovanni Calvotti - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... time to recover from their bewilderment the rah-rahs turned in full, inglorious flight, without attempting to strike a single blow in their own defense. Who was going to be fool enough, anyway, to run blindly into a storm ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... native endowment, he stood before the work of the immortal Raphael, and said, "I too am a painter!" Boone's purpose was fixed. In a region, such as Finley described, far in advance of the wearying monotony of a life of inglorious toil, he would have space to roam unwitnessed, undisturbed by those of his own race, whose only thought was to cut down trees, at least for a period of some years. We wish not to be understood to laud these views, as wise or just. In the order ...
— The First White Man of the West • Timothy Flint
... which have distinguished his political career. The motion for the inquiry was lost, though the powerful remarks of the mover drew from Mr. Pitt the following memorable confession: "All unlimited confidence is unconstitutional; and I hope the inglorious moment will never arrive, when this house will abandon the privilege of examining, condemning, and correcting the abuses in the executive government. It is the dearest privilege you possess, and should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... that," she said. "It sounds very fine. As you say, the reward is so inglorious. But that ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... had not kept boarders for seven years without getting some useful knowledge of the world, or without imparting useful knowledge; and there were men who, having paid their bills on demand, turned from her wiser if not better men. Because they had pursued the old but inglorious profession of hunting tame things, Mrs. Tyndall Tynan had exacted compensation in one way or another—by extras, by occasional and deliberate omission of table luxuries, and by making them pay for their own mending, which she herself only did when her boarders behaved themselves well. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... that brave Body of Men, but threw them into the Circumstances of either dying unreveng'd, or saving their Lives by Flight. The History of that Battle has so many Eye Witnesses still alive for me to dwell upon it; I shall only make bold to relate what my Fate was upon that unfortunate Day, and how inglorious France withdrew the sham Succours they sent King James. My Post was to Head a Company of Fingalian Granadiers, who were plac'd in an Orchard which hung over a Defilee, through which we expected the ...
— Memoirs of Major Alexander Ramkins (1718) • Daniel Defoe
... would probably have continued to do so had Fate been so unjust as to consign him to an Inferno. He was one of those in whom goodness is a natural instinct, and whose existence, even in a more or less inglorious obscurity, leavens the entire lump of humanity. Mr. Mullen, who regarded him with the active suspicion with which he viewed all living examples of Christian charity, spoke of him condescendingly as a "man of impracticable ideas"—a phrase which introduced his index ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... rather weary and dreary; but, no! Though strictly inglorious, his days were quiescent, And his red-tape was tied in a true-lover's bow Each night when ...
— London Lyrics • Frederick Locker
... Beaugue's History, p. 50.) It is not necessary to quote similar assertions reiterated by writers of the present day. James Melville died, it is true, during his imprisonment, in 1548 or 1549, but certainly not a violent death. Norman Lesley died of his wounds, but in no inglorious manner, in 1554; and nineteen years later, in August 1573, Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, after his gallant defence of the Castle of Edinburgh, suffered an ignominious death. Any other instance of a violent death remains to ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... government, either from fear of accident, or from some other motive, has interdicted its ascension; and the vessel which, three months ago, was ready—crew, captain, and machinery—to attempt its advertised flight round the walls of Paris, is still reposing, in inglorious idleness, upon its stocks in the Chantier Marbeuf (Champs Elysees), to the woful disappointment of its enthusiastic inventor, who, however, consoles himself with the hope of coming over to London for the purpose of testing his invention, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 431 - Volume 17, New Series, April 3, 1852 • Various
... too exacting labour? I know not. But at times (it is his one melancholy!) he expresses a strange apprehension of poverty, of penury and mean surroundings in old age; reminding me of that childish disposition to hoard, which I noticed in him of old. And then—inglorious Watteau, as he is!—at times that steadiness, in which he is so great a contrast to Antony, as it were accumulates, changes, into a ray of genius, a grace, an inexplicable touch of truth, in which all ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... Triumphs, Crowns, That dazzle in thy Eye, and swell thy Heart; That nerve thy Arm, and wing thy Feet to War With this impetuous Violence and Speed? Crest-fallen then, our native Empire lost, In captive Chains we drag a wretched Life, Or fly inglorious from the conquering Foe To barren Mountains from this fertile Land, There to repent our Folly when too late, In Anguish mourn, and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers
... that earliest drew, On me obscure, that chivalrous regard, Ev'n his, who, knowing fame's first steep how hard, With generous lips no faltering clarion blew, Bidding men hearken to a lyre by few Heeded, nor grudge the bay to one more bard? Bitter the task, year by inglorious year, Of suitor at the world's reluctant ear. One cannot sing for ever, like a bird, For sole delight of singing! Him his mate Suffices, listening with a heart elate; Nor more his joy, if ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... modern writing was that it tried to compress too many good things into a page, and aimed too much at omitting the homelier interspaces. We must not try to make our lives into a perpetual feast; at least we must try to do so, but it must be by conquest rather than by inglorious flight; we must face the fact that the stuff of life is both homely and indeed amiss, and realise, if we can, that our happiness is bound up with energetically trying to escape from conditions which we cannot avoid. ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... business was with the border rustlers and parasites. Sheriffs of four counties seldom disturbed the place, because a man who had got as far south as Showdown was pretty hard to apprehend. From there to the border lay a trackless desert. Showdown was a rendezvous for that inglorious legion, "The Men Who Can't Come Back," renegades who when below the line worked machine guns for whichever side of the argument promised the more loot. Horse- and cattle-thieves, killers, escaped convicts, came and went—ominous birds of passage, the scavengers ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... attacked the mighty knights of the Temple, the most powerful of the religious orders of knighthood which had fought the Saracens in Jerusalem. The Templars, having found their warfare hopeless, had abandoned the Holy Land and had dwelt for a generation inglorious in the West. Philip suddenly seized the leading members of the order, accused it of hideous crimes, and confiscated all its vast wealth and hundreds of strong castles throughout France. He secured from his French Pope approval of the extermination of the entire ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... for a bishop to score off a clergyman is an inglorious victory; it is like the triumph of a magistrate over a prisoner or of a don over an undergraduate. Bishop Wilberforce, whose powers of repartee were among his most conspicuous gifts, was always ready to use them where retaliation was possible—not in the safe enclosure of the episcopal ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... feel it an entirely glorious speciality to be distinguished, as Rembrandt was, from other great painters, chiefly by the liveliness of his darkness, and the dullness of his light. Glorious, or inglorious, the speciality itself is easily and accurately definable. It is the aim of the best painters to paint the noblest things they can see by sunlight. It was the aim of Rembrandt to paint the foulest things he ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... till they reached the James River, where they were protected by the all-powerful gunboats. In the battles of Savage's Station, Glendale and Malvern Hills, they were victorious, and fought as no troops had ever fought before. As a retreat, it was successful; but it was the sad and inglorious end ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic
... saddles, so we could ride, and then we sadly started for camp. How could I face the major, and report to him that I had met the rebel captain, talked with him, drank with him, enjoyed his hospitality, and then let him escape? I felt that my military career had come to an inglorious ending. "We rode slow, because the Iron Brigade was insecurely mounted on a slippery bare-backed mule. As we neared the corporal and one man, that I had left to guard the cross-roads, I noticed that there was a stranger with them, and on riding closer what was my surprise to find ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... these phrases of music, these conceptions which exist in relation to our dream, are nothing either. We shall perish, but we have for our hostages these divine captives who shall follow and share our fate. And death in their company is something less bitter, less inglorious, perhaps even less certain. ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... this time I will act upon your advice." Sir Edmund obtained leave to countermand the orders which had been issued; Balaclava was maintained as our base of operations, and the army was saved from what might have proved an inglorious defeat, if not a terrible disaster. This, as we have said, was perhaps the most important of all the services rendered by the admiral, and he well deserved the peerage which it earned ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... and his outstretched arm trembling. The factor cowered before the accusing presence, like a boy caught in a theft, and sank back upon his blankets, shame and pain struggling on the scarred battlefield of his face. For him, life had come to a bitter and inglorious end, and, during all that followed, he ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... town, Oriental and squalid, I missed the expected elation of that striven-for moment. What there was, undoubtedly, was a relaxation of tension which translated itself into a sense of weariness after an inglorious fight. ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... they vainly hoped, fortune, whilst others were actuated by genuine motives, there were many who mingled in the mazes of the intricate politics of that day from vanity, and the love of being at the head of faction: such was Forster; and his career was unsatisfactory and inglorious ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson
... period marked the extinction of "E" Company, as representing the 17th. Draft after draft had robbed it of its original appearance, and when on 1st September, 1916, the 19th became the 78th Training Reserve Battalion, it lost all semblance of its former self, and may be said to have had an inglorious end to a short but ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... rank pride, and haughtiness of soul; I think the Romans call it stoicism. Had not your royal father thought so highly Of Roman virtue, and of Cato's cause, He had not fall'n by a slave's hand inglorious. ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... hastened from his inglorious conflict, maddened with rage and disappointment. He returned on board, went down into his cabin, and threw himself on his bed. His hopes and calculations had been so brilliant—rid of his enemy Smallbones—with ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... hold him off, to hamper and beguile and kill him in that quest. He had but to lift his eyes to see all that, as much a part of his world as the driving clouds and the bending grass, but he kept himself downcast, a grumbling, inglorious, dirty, fattish little tramp, full of dreads ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... Must I, in slow decline, To mute inglorious ease old age resign? Or, bold ambition kindling in my breast, Attempt some arduous task? Or, were it best, Brooding o'er lexicons to pass the day, And in that ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... little brains, Grown weary of inglorious rest, Left home with all its straws and grains, Resolved to know beyond his nest. When peeping through the nearest fence, "How big the world is, how immense!" He cried; "there rise the Alps, and that Is doubtless famous Ararat." His mountains were the works of moles, ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... tremendous fate Of guilty souls; the gloomy realms of woe; And all the horrors of the world below; I next presume to sing: what yet remains Demands my last, but most exalted strains. And let the muse or now affect the sky, Or in inglorious shades for ever lie. She kindles, she's inflam'd so near the goal; She mounts, she gains upon the starry pole; The world grows less as she pursues her flight, And the sun darkens to her distant sight. ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... which strikes the luminaries of the world with sudden darkness and extinction, by awakening them to too exquisite a perception of its influences, dooms to a slow and poisonous decay those manner spirits that dare to abjure its dominion. Their destiny is more abject and inglorious as their delinquency is more contemptible and pernicious. They who, deluded by no generous error, instigated by no sacred thirst of doubtful knowledge, duped by no illustrious superstition, loving nothing on this earth, and cherishing no hopes beyond, yet keep aloof from sympathies with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... the natives from earthly clods to the clouds, and where beckoning hands strove vainly to inspire them with heavenly hopes; around them, glistening in the sunlight, the marble slabs where sleep the rude forefathers of the hamlet, some mute inglorious Miltons who came from England in the early sixties, whose tombstones are pierced by rifle bullets fired at the maraudering red skins. These are the cities of the dead, far more populous than the ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... come around from behind the counter, tripped on his long white apron and gone sprawling on the ground, and the faithless Wiggle, taking advantage of this inglorious mishap, started pulling on the apron with all his might and main. Loyal Pepsy was only human, and tears of laughter streamed down her cheeks, and the neighboring woodland echoed to the sound of the ...
— Pee-wee Harris • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... great pity that it could not have ended in a more imposing manner. The last act of the drama was so inglorious that I am almost ashamed to tell it. He was the King of the Trout Stream; over and over he had run Fate's gauntlet, and escaped with his body unharmed and his wits sharper than ever; he knew the wiles of the fly-fishermen better than any other trout in the river; and ...
— Forest Neighbors - Life Stories of Wild Animals • William Davenport Hulbert
... monster's wake. He headed straight for the ship, which lay-to almost motionless, filling me with apprehension lest he should in his blind flight dash that immense mass of solid matter into her broadside, and so put an inglorious end to all our hopes. What their feelings on board must have been, I can only imagine, when they saw the undeviating rush of the gigantic creature straight for them. On he went, until I held my breath for the crash, when at the last ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... order to avoid such untoward incidents that the Franco-British troops were evacuated. D'Annunzio was left to do his worst. Rieka was one of the problems which the Peace Conference had failed to solve, and now they were in much the same inglorious position as the Great Powers who in 1913 warned Turkey not to mobilize, since they would not allow the Balkan Confederation to make an attack, and after the attack gave it out that the Balkan States would not be permitted to acquire any new ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... From this—to one who reads it now—the General seems to emerge in a damaged condition. The best that can be said for him is that he and many of his officers were sick of the war, which they regarded as an iniquitous job, and inglorious to boot. They knew that a very strong party in England, headed by the Aborigines Protection Society, were urging this view, and that the Colonial Office, under Mr. Cardwell, had veered round to the same standpoint. This is probably the true explanation ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... these warriors, reproaches have, as is always the case, been raised against them. Who can be ignorant that such disorders have always been the bad side of great wars, the inglorious part of glory; that the renown of conquerors casts its shadow like every thing else in this world! Does there exist a creature ever so diminutive, on every side of which the sun, great as is that luminary, can shine at once? It is therefore a law of nature, that large bodies ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... one of the most promising officers, and had early been promoted to commandant. Whether through overweening ambition on his part or not I cannot say, but Vilonel, accused of insubordination, was thenceforth given the distasteful and inglorious task of commandeering. He wearied of this, and applied for active service, but in vain. Then, smarting under a sense of injustice, he took the fatal step—deserted. Not content with this, he wrote a letter out of the British camp to one of our field-cornets, urging upon ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... Gervaise admitted; "and to my mind it is shocking that four-fifths at least of the Order, pledged to oppose the infidels, should be occupied with the inglorious work of looking after the manors and estates of the society throughout Europe, while one-fifth, at most, are here performing the duties to which all are sworn. Of the revenues of the estates themselves, a mere fraction finds its way hither. Still, ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... cease with disconcerting abruptness. I realized to some extent what a predicament that would be. But on the whole, I think the only real worry was the definite task Grim had given me—the thankless, and very likely desperate, inglorious one of trying to keep ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... a poor-spirited cowardly Phrygian, dishonourably in love with life: for the son of Peleus, boldest of all Heroes, so to vilify himself, is a disgrace; it gives the lie to all your life; you might have had a long inglorious reign in Phthia, and your own choice was death ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... interests of his sovereign, less for the protection of the Church, and least of all for his own reputation, set forth with all speed for Civita Vecchia, to do what he could upon the Flemish frontier to atone for his inglorious campaign in Italy. The treaty between the Pope and the Duke of Alva was signed on the 14th September (1557), and the Spanish general retired for the winter to Milan. Cardinal Caraffa was removed from the French court to that of Madrid, there to spin new schemes for the embroilment ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Church of England; but we are as powerless to make them members of the General Convention as we should be to force them into the House of Commons. The same holds true at home. If the several dioceses fail to discover their own "inglorious Miltons," and will not send them up to General Convention, General Convention may, and doubtless does, lament the blindness of the constituencies, but it cannot correct their blunder. The dioceses in which the "experts" canonically reside had had full warning that ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... beaten to death by the party of Dioscorus, and who carried to St. Leo a faithful report of that Council's acts. At the same time the Lucanian Libius Severus succeeded to the throne. All that is known of him is that he was an inglorious creature of Ricimer, and prolonged a government without record until the autumn of 465, when his maker got tired of him. He disappeared, and Ricimer ruled alone for nearly two years. Yet he did ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... see disappear from our English system, if system it may be called, where so much is the growth of blind and incoherent forces. It is nevertheless obvious that an idle and luxurious class exists in this country, and that it is less exempt than in our own from the reproach of preferring inglorious ease to the furtherance of liberal ideas. It is rapidly increasing, and I am not sure that the indefinite growth of the dilettante spirit, in connection with large and lavishly-expended wealth, is an unmixed good, even in a society in which freedom of development has obtained so many interesting ...
— The Point of View • Henry James
... strangely tranquil air. With some the tranquility verges on childishness. One feels that they have not conquered the world, they have but escaped it; and, as one pities the soldier who flies the battle, so one mourns for the want of courage which has condemned these women to an inglorious peace. But here and there another kind of face is to be seen. Here and there we come across a countenance bearing the tragic impress of toil and grief and passion; and we feel it possible that in this haven alone perhaps could a nature which had striven ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... for reading; but, from all that she saw, and from all the conversation she could hear, she found hints for action and subjects for thought. To see Francis in the British Parliament was a worthy ambition, and to give up such a probable career for an inglorious and obscure life with herself was not to be thought of. His wistful looks and earnest tones were to be treasured up in her heart for ever; but her own love for him was not of that imperious and unreasonable nature that she could ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... is a dedicated man. He accepts risks with a laugh, and toil with, perhaps, a grumble, but he does not flinch. Obscure and inglorious perils are his, and hardships that only himself can gauge. Be sure that they are not unrecorded. They shine, and their splendour is hidden, like those lanterns that were hidden under the coats of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Bast. Oh inglorious league: Shall we vpon the footing of our land, Send fayre-play-orders, and make comprimise, Insinuation, parley, and base truce To Armes Inuasiue? Shall a beardlesse boy, A cockred-silken wanton braue our fields, And flesh his ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Loki, realising the fierce wrath of Odin and of the other gods, fled before them, yet could not escape his doom. And grief unspeakable was that of gods and of men when they knew that in the chill realm of the inglorious dead Baldur must remain until the twilight of the gods had come, until old things had passed away, and all things had ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang |
