"Ploughboy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fetter clips The native freedom of the Saxon lips; See the brown peasant of the plastic South, How all his passions play about his mouth! With us, the feature that transmits the soul, A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk Tie the small muscles when he strives to talk; Not all the pumice of the polished town Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down; Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race By this one mark,—he's awkward in the face;— Nature's rude impress, long before he knew ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... confidence on the wisdom of the ancients, look with suspicion on all proposed improvements. This primitive instrument, represented in the engraving, having been tied to a bar of wood laid across the neck of two bullocks, and placed under the management of a ploughboy, the ground is scratched a few inches deep after every shower. This process prepares the ground for the seed, and nature being generous, a very fair crop is produced. In the Mysore country the farmers were never so prosperous as they are at the present ...
— Old Daniel • Thomas Hodson
... through the mist and dew, Cloys with tasting: What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, And the caked snow is shuffled 20 From the ploughboy's heavy shoon; When the Night doth meet the Noon In a dark conspiracy To banish Even from her sky. Sit thee there, and send abroad, With a mind self-overaw'd, Fancy, high-commission'd:—send her! She has vassals to attend her: She will bring, in spite of frost, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... picture one could see of their miserable state, was such that "any stony heart would rue the same." Mr. Froude affirms that in Munster alone there had been so much devastation that "the lowing of a cow or the sound of a ploughboy's whistle was not to be heard from Valentia to the Rock of Cashel." It was made a boast by at least one of those engaged in ruling Ireland on behalf of the Queen that he had reduced some of the populations so ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... on chest and back, his short corduroys, his mighty calves, his big red rural face. We greeted these things as children greet the loved pictures in a storybook lost and mourned and found again. We recognised them as one recognises the handwriting on letter-backs. Beside the road we saw a ploughboy straddle whistling on a stile, and he had the merit of being not only a ploughboy but a Gainsborough. Beyond the stile, across the level velvet of a meadow, a footpath wandered like a streak drawn by a finger over a surface of fine plush. We followed it from ...
— A Passionate Pilgrim • Henry James
... not so flattering. In its effects upon civilization a literature can only be judged by that portion of it which touches the popular heart, which descends to the humblest fireside, and is most eagerly sought after by the ploughboy and the operative. All other, however brilliant it may be—and the more brilliant or profound the farther it is generally removed from the minds of the masses—is to them but as the stars of a winter night, cold and distant, radiating little warmth to the longing soul, too far away to awaken ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... red-lipp'd fruitage too, Blushing through the mist and dew, Cloys with tasting: What do then? Sit thee by the ingle, when The sear faggot blazes bright, Spirit of a winter's night; When the soundless earth is muffled, And the caked snow is shuffled From the ploughboy's heavy shoon.... Fancy, high-commission'd:—send her! She has vassals to attend her: She will bring, in spite of frost, Beauties that the earth hath lost; She will bring thee, all together, All delights of summer weather; All the buds ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Rarey's system consists in the fact that it may be taught to, and successfully practised by, a ploughboy of thirteen or fourteen for use on all except extremely ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... man's breast had she ever laid her head in trust and love. She had been loved, but it had never brought her satisfaction. From Justine there was devotion; but it had, as she thought, been purchased, paid for, like the labour of a ploughboy. And if she saw now in Justine's eyes a look of friendship, a note of personal allegiance, she knew it was because she herself had ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... concern. Sometimes a jailbird just released from prison would find in the Mission House an opportunity to recover his self-respect. But whoever the guest was, soldier, sailor, tinker, tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, or thief, he was judged at the Mission House as a man. Some of the visitors repaid their host by theft or fraud; but when they did, nobody uttered proverbs or platitudes about mistaken kindness. ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... ploughboy. Presently he came opposite, and she believed from his voice that he was one of the boys on her own farm. He was followed by a shambling tramp of heavy feet, and looking through the ferns Bathsheba could just discern in the wan light of daybreak a team of her own horses. They stopped to drink ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the servant of Jesus. It is said of the great John Hunt, that when a young man, he gave no promise of the talents he shewed in the work of the Ministry. We have spoken with one who knew him before his conversion, who made us smile as he described his gait and style of life. Yet this ungainly ploughboy became a man whom to know was to admire. It was in Christ's hands, though, he improved ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... flame this crumbling boundary, 85 Whose loose blocks topple 'neath the ploughboy's foot, Who, with each sense shut fast except the eye, Creeps close and scares the jay he hoped to shoot, The woodbine up the elm's straight stem aspires, Coiling it, harmless, with autumnal fires; 90 In the ivy's paler blaze the martyr ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... "Nature does nothing by leaps. She does not, in this case, introduce into a region of spirit and spiritual life a being who has known little else than matter and material life, with small comprehension even of that. To do so would be analogous to transferring suddenly a ploughboy into a company of metaphysicians. The pursuit of any topic implies some preliminary acquaintance with its nature, aims, and mental requirements; and the more elevated the topic, the more copious the preparation for it. It is inevitable that a ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... builds his nest. His notes consist of a clear mellow whistle, repeated at short intervals as he gleams among the branches. There is in it a certain wild plaintiveness and naivete extremely interesting. It is not uttered with rapidity, but with the pleasing tranquillity of a careless ploughboy, whistling for amusement. Since the streets of some of the American towns have been planted with Lombardy poplars, the orioles are constant visiters, chanting their native "wood notes wild," amid the din of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 356, Saturday, February 14, 1829 • Various
... "Amen!" at early chapel in the morning. In his reading, poor Harry permitted himself to go a-gadding after all the Nine Muses, and so very likely had but little favour from any one of them; whereas Tom Tusher, who had no more turn for poetry than a ploughboy, nevertheless, by a dogged perseverance and obsequiousness in courting the divine Calliope, got himself a prize, and some credit in the University, and a fellowship at his college, as a reward for his scholarship. ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to the disfavor in which Wyclif's doctrines were held, no English versions had been printed until the Protestant divine William Tyndale highly resolved to make the holy book more familiar to the ploughboy than ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... as an antidote for the Secretary of the Treasury's contraction of the currency. Democratic politicians accepted this policy the more readily, too, because of the attractive cry—"the same currency for the bondholder and the ploughboy." ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... across the lonely down; One solitary picture struck my eye: A distant ploughboy stood against the sky— How far he ...
— Poems of Passion • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... am," the younger man answered brutally. "It's your own fault. You choose to make a fisherman or a labouring man of yourself. I haven't seen you in a decent suit of clothes for years. You won't dress for dinner. Your hands and skin are like a ploughboy's. And, d—n it all, you're my elder brother! I've got to introduce you to my friends as the head of the De la Bornes, and practically their host. No wonder I don't ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim |
