"Common people" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... grew up with an amazing rapidity. Meantime, upon the site of the building, rum and Hollands were kept upon draught for all comers, so that the place was made the common resort and the scene for the orgies of all such of the common people as possessed a taste for strong waters, many coming from so far away as Newport ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... in defence of pilgrimages to the Holy Land and that is, that there arose on all sides a desire for liberty and the growth of a spirit of nationality that worked to the destruction of absolute government. The power of the common people began to assert itself. In 1215, England forced from John Lackland the Magna Charta, the foundation of all the liberty of English speaking people even in modern times. The very year in which Dante was born, representatives ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... observant people of education, and a translation of it by Florio is the one book we know for certain to have been in the library of Shakespeare; bred as he was by his father's arrangement among the common people, he always retained a friendly feeling towards his neighbours, and they cherished towards him feelings of very high regard; he was a quiet, tolerant man, and his writings reveal a character which commands the respect of men ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... will of its own. It is told at every move: "Don't do that; you will interfere with our prosperity." And when we ask, "Where is our prosperity lodged?" a certain group of gentlemen say, "With us." The government of the United States in recent years has not been administered by the common people of the United States. You know just as well as I do,—it is not an indictment against anybody, it is a mere statement of the facts,—that the people have stood outside and looked on at their own government and that all they have ...
— The New Freedom - A Call For the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People • Woodrow Wilson
... suffer any living woman to drag his name in the mire before all the world—to laugh to scorn the decree of the Roman Curia—to scratch out his name after her own and replace it with that of a Szekler peasant? That may be allowed to pass among common people, but the descendants of the Ferraras will find a way, or make one, to prevent such a scandal. It has become a necessity in my eyes that she should not walk the same ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... he ridiculed my charge, of which I freely granted him moreover the indefensible extravagance. I didn't pretend for a moment that we were talking of common things; I didn't pretend for a moment that he and she were common people. Pray, if they had been, how should I ever have cared for them? They had enjoyed a rare extension of being and they had caught me up in their flight; only I couldn't breathe in such an air and I promptly asked to be set down. Everything in the facts was monstrous, and most of all my lucid ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... preaching and the bent of mind of a set of men so intensely practical should have been at the same time intensely speculative. Nowhere in the world, unless perhaps in Scotland, have merely speculative questions excited the strong and engrossing interest among the common people that they have in New England. Every man, woman, and child was more or less a theologian. The minister, while he ground his scythe or sharpened his axe or laid stone-fence, was inwardly grinding and hammering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... the Bill of Rights, the privilege of free citizens to bear arms in self-defence has been refused to us. The Constitution of America affirms that right as appertaining to the common people, but the men of Ireland are forbidden to bear arms in their own defence. Where, then, lies the basis of the claim that they can be forced to take them up for ...
— Ulster's Stand For Union • Ronald McNeill
... principles of religion; they are the companions of our labours, and treated as such; they enjoy many perquisites, many established holidays, and are not obliged to work more than white people. They marry when their inclination leads them; visit their wives every week; are as decently clad as the common people; they are indulged in education, cherishing and chastising their children, who are taught subordination to them as to their lawful parents; in short, they participate in many of the benefits of our society ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... prepared for other disappointments. Before they entered the next town on their journey through Galilee the men talked soberly, a little fearfully, about what might happen. But, one after another, the villages of Galilee welcomed Jesus. The common people listened eagerly to the news that he proclaimed, and many believed. The disciples began to forget that Jesus had been driven ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... large and mighty accessions of collateral attestation? And how transcendently extraordinary, I had almost said miraculous, will it be estimated by candid and reasonable minds, that a writer whose object was a melioration of condition to the common people, and their deliverance from oppression, poverty, wretchedness, to the numberless blessings of upright and equal government, should be reviled, persecuted, and burned in effigy, with every circumstance of insult and execration, ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Chosen People of the Lord! It bred in them scorn of the Gentiles, for which there was no solvent in the Roman polity, the Roman citizenship, the Roman peace.—There must have been always noble protest-ants among them. The common people,—as the picture in the Gospels shows,—were ready enough to fraternize humanly with Gentiles and Romans; but the fact remains that at the time Judaism gave birth to Christianity, this narrow fierce antagonism to all other religions was the ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... unhappily made his enemy, and who is supposed to have employed the yauhahu in destroying him. The sorcerers being supposed to have the power of causing, as well as of curing diseases, are much dreaded by the common people, who never wilfully offend them. So deeply rooted in the Indian's bosom is this belief concerning the origin of diseases, that they have little idea of sickness arising from other causes. Death may arise from a wound ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... unimportant thing, a bunch of several hundred holds all the perfume of the spring. No flowers lie closer to the soil or bring the smell of earth more sweetly to the mind; upon the lips and cheeks they are as soft as a kitten's fur, and lie against the skin closer than tired eyelids. They are the common people of the flower world, yet have, in virtue of that fact, the beauty and simplicity of the common people. They own a subdued and unostentatious strength, are humble and ignored, are walked upon, unnoticed, rarely thought about and never praised; they are cut off in early youth ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... isn't anybody; she's quite different from common people. How I wish she'd hurry and come out again. She promised to kiss her hand to me from the horse's back, Papa. ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... neighborhood!" was the cry. "The rabble she has got, and is going to have, round her! All planks and sand, and tubs of mortar, now; you have to half break your neck in getting up there; and when it is settled it will be—such a frowze of common people! Why the foreman of our factory has engaged a house, and Mrs. Haslam, who actually used to do up laces ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... describing the young Radical's canvass as redoubtable. Cougham he did not fear: he could make a sort of calculation of the votes for the Liberal thumping on the old drum of Reform; but the number for him who appealed to feelings and quickened the romantic sentiments of the common people now huddled within our electoral penfold, was not calculable. Tory and Radical have an eye for one another, which overlooks the Liberal at all times except when he is, as they imagine, playing the game of either ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Filipinos were giving a theatrical performance. A Spanish political refugee directed the entertainment. On each side of the stage, roofed in with palm leaves, ran covered galleries for the dignitaries of the place; the uncovered space between these was set apart for the common people. The performers had chosen a play taken from Persian history. The language was Spanish, and the dresses were, to say the least, eccentric. The stage was erected hard by a public street, which itself formed part of the auditorium, and ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... of France or Spain at the same period. Many have imagined the English nobility a class sharply and definitely separated from the commonalty, and forming a distinct upper stratum of society. In point of fact no sharp line of social demarkation can be drawn between the peerage and the common people. For in England, even in the days of the Plantagenets, the younger sons of the nobles did not succeed to their fathers' rank, but sank to the gentry class, or at most became "knights." They usually married beneath the rank of their fathers and thus formed ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker
... the gifts of the prince nor means of appeasing the gods did the shameful suspicion cease, so that it was not believed that the fire had been caused by his command. Therefore, to overcome this rumor, Nero put in his own place as culprits, and punished with most ingenious cruelty, men whom the common people hated for their shameful crimes and called Christians. Christ, from whom the name was derived, had been put to death in the reign of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilate. The deadly superstition, having been checked for a while, began to break out again, not ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... fairies some of the men had learned wonderful secrets, and had become magicians and sorcerers, with powers so great that the entire island was reputed to be one of enchantments. Who these men were the common people did not always know; for while some were kings and rulers, others lived quietly hidden away in forests or mountains, and seldom or never showed themselves. Indeed, there were not so many of these magicians ...
— The Enchanted Island of Yew • L. Frank Baum
... colored ribbons, but with feet innocent of shoes. Soldiers and policemen tramp the streets, but neither are provided with footwear, and their clothes are often in tatters. The Jesuits taught the Indians to make shoes, but they alone wore them, exporting the surplus. Shoes are not for common people, and when one of them dares to cover his feet he is considered presumptuous. Hats they never wear, but they have the beautiful custom of weaving flowers in their hair. When flowers are not worn the head is covered by a white sheet called the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... IV.13: The owl was a baker's daughter.] This is in reference to a story that was once prevalent among the common people of Gloucestershire.] ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... merchants, they designate quite a different class of edifices. Our merchants, as a general thing, would object, both on the score of good taste and on grounds of disagreeable association with the signal, to raise such an ornament before the doors of their comfortable homes. The common people, however, so far from taking umbrage at the spectacle, would be rather gratified by the generosity of our grandees in being willing to show some of their finery out of doors. This would be the feeling especially of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... down and crush out these iniquities, but it is more than probable that, in the secret recesses of the mountain region, whither government officials would find it hard to penetrate, the shameful and degrading rites still found a refuge, rooted as they were in the depraved affections of the common people, ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... that Talbot was buried on the spot where he fell, whereas his body was carried from the field and taken to England. The ecclesiastical chronicler must have accepted the story in circulation among the common people, which is repeated to this day by the peasants around Castillon, who even point out a mound which they call 'Talbot's grave.' Shakespeare does not fall into this error, although he brings Jeanne d'Arc upon the battlefield, notwithstanding that she was ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... All around stood the 'Common People,' who made the ordeal still harder by 'many jeerings, mockings, scornes, and bitter jests' against the English, 'which I must not so much as bite my lippe against, but with an inforced patient care stood still.... ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... inclined, thinks gentlemen had better avoid personalities. Personalities are not tolerated in the South, where gentlemen are removed far above common people, and protect themselves by the code ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... unmeaning to say, as the common people do about festivals, that he should be adjudged the wisest of men, and the winner of the palm, who gives us the greatest amount of pleasure and mirth? For on such occasions, and when mirth is the order of the day, ought ...
— Laws • Plato
... mankind. There seems to me, at present, great occasion to raise a 'United Party for Virtue,' by forming the virtuous and good of all nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws. I at present, think, that whoever attempts this aright, and is well qualified, cannot fail of pleasing God, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... she saw: the women are idle, ignorant, and squalid; the men work as little and rob as much as they can. Polygamy is practised; and religion is reduced to the performance of a few formalities. The costume of the wealthier Kurds is purely Oriental, that of the common people varies from it a little. The men wear wide linen trousers, and over them a shirt confined by a girdle, with a sleeveless woollen jacket, made of stuff of only a hand's-breadth wide, and sewed together. Instead of white trousers, some wear brown, which are anything but picturesque, ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... justified, by his close association with the people, from his very childhood. Until he was made Pontifex Maximus he seems to have lived in a small house in the Suburra, in one of the most crowded and least fashionable quarters of Rome; and as a mere boy, it was his influence with the common people that roused Sylla's anxiety. To live with the people, to take their part against the nobles, to give them of all he had and of all he could borrow, were the chief rules of his conduct, and the fact that he obtained such enormous loans proves that ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... have accumulated much merit by the practice of virtues", and "involves the deliverance from metempsychosis" (Buddhism in Tibet, p. 99). According to the Prasanga school, the higher Path leads to Nirvana, the lower to Sukhavati. But Eitel calls Sukhavati "the Nirvana of the common people, where the saints revel in physical bliss for aeons, until they reenter the circle of transmigration" (Sanskrit-Chinese Dictionary). Eitel, however, under "Amitabha" states that the "popular mind" regards ...
— Death—and After? • Annie Besant
... cultivated arts and manufactures, the lower ranks of men among them had risen to a degree of opulence unknown elsewhere to those of their station in that barbarous age; had acquired privileges and independence, and began to emerge from that state of vassalage, or rather of slavery, into which the common people had been universally thrown by the feudal institutions. It was probably difficult for them to bring their sovereign and their nobility to conform themselves to the principles of law and civil government, so much neglected in every other country: it ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... on the rights and virtues of the "demos"—the Common People. Jefferson uses the expression again and again, and was the one man to popularize the word "Democrat." When Jefferson, wearing his suit of butternut homespun, rode horseback up to the Washington Capitol and tied his horse and walked over ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the lives of footmen, servants, and lackeys found an even more congenial freedom of play here. His knowledge of human nature was so profound that he instinctively touched the right keys, playing on the passions of the common people with a deftness far surpassing in effect the acquired skill of the mere master of oratory. He ordered his arguments and framed their language, so that his readers responded with almost passionate enthusiasm to the call he made upon them. Allied to his ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... archon. On the death of Perikles, Nikias at once became the foremost man in Athens, chiefly by the favour of the rich and noble, who wished to make use of him to check the plebeian insolence of Kleon; yet Nikias had the good-will of the common people, and they were eager to further his interests. Kleon, indeed, became very powerful by caressing the people and giving them opportunities for earning money from the State, but in spite of this, many of the lower classes whose favour he especially strove to obtain, ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... think, I think you're getting simply impossible to get on with. You simply never think the same as other people think. I should have thought it was only common decency at a time like this to stand up for your own class; but, no. It's always your own class that's in the wrong and the common people who ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... homes—I mean the homes of those admirably called by Grover Cleveland the 'plain people,' who are just the same class, I believe, as those indicated by Abraham Lincoln, when he said, 'God must greatly love the common people, for he made so many of them'—and put that list of articles on a free list or a ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... of thy wrath have overgone, and swallowed us up, coming down even as stones, spears, and arrows upon the wretches that inhabit the earth!—this is the sore pestilence with which we are afflicted and almost destroyed. O valiant and all-powerful Lord, the common people are almost made an end of and destroyed; a great destruction the ruin and pestilence already make in this nation; and, what is most pitiful of all, the little children, that are innocent and understand ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... child—and he had no more afterwards—should be suckled by his own mother, and that in his tender years he should have his character formed in the house of his parents, rather than learn less gentle or even boorish ways and habits in the houses of peasants or common people. When he was well grown, he began to exercise him in painting, seeing him much inclined to such an art, and possessed of a very beautiful genius: wherefore not many years passed before Raffaello, still a boy, became a great help to Giovanni in many works ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 04 (of 10), Filippino Lippi to Domenico Puligo • Giorgio Vasari
... having been acquired through diabolical agency. Even those persons cured through the instrumentality of some woman were ready when the hour came to assert their belief in her indebtedness to the devil for that knowledge. Not only were the common people themselves ignorant of all science, but their brains were filled with superstitious fears, and the belief that knowledge had been first introduced to the world through woman's obedience to the devil. Thus ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... religion. Honest mirth is not only tolerable but praiseworthy, and the prohibition of it is likely to breed discontent, and this our enemies ken fu' weel; for when," he continued, loudly and emphatically—"when shall the common people have leave to exercise if not upon Sundays and holidays, seeing they must labour and win their ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Love were misunderstood and misrepresented, both as regards their doctrines and their practices. Camden says that "under a show of singular integrity and sanctity they insinuated themselves into the affections of the ignorant common people"; that they regarded as reprobate all outside their Family, and deemed it lawful to deny on oath whatsoever they pleased. Niclas, according to Fuller, "wanted learning in himself and hated it in others." ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... happy anywhere but in California, among those common people," she replied; "and while I was willing to share your poverty THERE," she added dryly, "I prefer to share your wealth among civilized ladies and gentlemen. Besides," she continued, "we must consider Louise. She is as good as engaged to Lord Dunshunner, ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... and the Carolinas, the wide and pitiful difference between the residents of the cities and large towns and the residents of the country. There is no homogeneity, but everywhere a rigid spirit of caste. The longings of South Carolina are essentially monarchical rather than republican; even the common people have become so debauched in loyalty, that very many of them would readily accept the creation of orders of nobility. In Georgia there is something less of this spirit; but the upper classes continually assert their right to rule, and the middle and lower classes have no ability to free themselves. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... burdensome requirements which they were not careful to observe themselves. It is a grievous fault for students and scholars to make religion a matter of weariness and distaste, instead of a delight to the common people. Vs. 45, 46. ...
— The Gospel of Luke, An Exposition • Charles R. Erdman
... BOA, or LIZZY, or KATE would have been very nice as a companion, if she and you were sitting before the fire, and she wanted stamps and was going for them as a matter of business. Besides, there was only one of them at a time, and they didn't trouble common people much, but in this enlightened nineteenth century I have seen a poor, miserable, six foot dry-goods clerk turned out of a retail store by a strapping little female, who couldn't jump a counter worth shucks. I have seen him in his ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2, No. 29, October 15, 1870 • Various
... language of the people. At times he is primitive and coarse; but it is a Falstaffian note, the mark of universality rather than of limitation. His art was, in Tolstoy's phrase, "the art of a people—universal art"; and his style was rich in the locutions of the common people, rich and racy of the soil. A signal merit of his style is its admirable adaptation to the theme. The personages of his novels always speak "in character"—with perfect reproduction, not only of their natural speech, but also of their natural ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson
... how presumptuous this would in certain quarters be considered, if there were the least probability that "those in authority" would read these pages at all. The motive is involved in the modulus, and I am quite content to leave it there, while the "common people," it is hoped, may find herein, as I have found in the search for more light, encouragement, inspiration, and hope. And these may lead ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... The common people, in the lower parts of Virginia, have very sallow complexions, owing to the burning rays of the sun in summer, and the bilious complaints to which they are subject during the fall of the year; but those in the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... the rest of your life. Look here! What formerly was called fidelity and honesty, that's a tale with which old grannies used to humbug us. And a fellow that keeps his word is a scoundrel; such a one I would not trust as far as the door. The common people are essentially honest, because they are the common people. You ought to hear those gentlemen over there talk; there was a professor among them; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... it, and have been prevented by our ships from following it, and often lost much, treated me most kindly in their houses, and often accompanied me to the next place beyond them, bringing food for all in the way. The common people are extremely civil, and a very large proportion of the inhabitants in one district called Ambaca can read and write well. They were first taught by the Roman Catholic missionaries, and now teach each other so well, it is considered ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... intense form of that breaking down, just as what I call Salvation is its widest, most extensive form. We cast aside our reserves, our secrecies, our defences; we open ourselves; touches that would be intolerable from common people become a mystery of delight, acts of self-abasement and self-sacrifice are charged with symbolical pleasure. We cannot tell which of us is me, which you. Our imprisoned egoism looks out through this window, forgets its walls, and is for those ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... a well-known passage had given powerful utterance to a different view of the relation between work and wages:—"The liberal reward of labour as it encourages the propagation so it encourages the industry of the common people. The wages of labour are the encouragement of industry, which, like every other human quality, improves in proportion to the encouragement it receives."[225] But the teaching of Ricardo, and the writers who most closely followed him in his conception of the industrial system, leaned heavily in ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... think, Sir, they ought to have such an influence?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, Sir. Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should[166].' BOSWELL. 'But is there not reason to fear that the common people may be oppressed?' JOHNSON. 'No, Sir. Our great fear is from want of power in government. Such a storm of vulgar force has broke in.' BOSWELL. 'It has only roared.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it has roared, till the Judges in Westminster-Hall have been afraid to pronounce ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... songs it was decided to adjourn to a field at the rear of the tavern to have a game of cricket. Sides were formed, Rushton, Didlum, Grinder, and the other gentlemen taking part just as if they were only common people, and while the game was in progress the rest played ring quoits or reclined on the grass watching the players, whilst the remainder amused themselves drinking beer and playing cards and shove-ha'penny in the bar parlour, or taking walks around the village sampling the beer at the other ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... himself to win her. He recalled with a bitter smile how his informants had all described his rival in a disparaging tone, as unworthy of so fair a bride; and he knew that it was precisely those qualities which these common people were unable to appreciate that constituted the subtle charm by which John Saltram influenced others. The rugged power and grandeur of that dark face, which vulgar critics denounced as plain and unattractive, the rare fascination of a manner that varied from ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... most powerful encouragement to music, and the German Protestant composers even now were not so very far behind the Netherland ones. The Catholic Church could no longer claim the great Albrecht Durer, and, if art ceased to create images of the saints, with which the childish minds of the common people practised idolatry, so much the better. The Infinite and Eternal was no subject for the artist. The humanization of God only belittled his infinite and illimitable nature. Earthly life offered art material ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... said Faith, "and a weak one, as you see he calls himself. And he prays for the Christians at Ephesus, that God would grant them 'to be strengthened with might by his Spirit;' and they were common people. And the Bible says 'Be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might;'—we aren't bid to be strong in ourselves; but here again, 'Strengthened with might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... labour with all care and diligence to give certain rules to our language, and to render it pure, eloquent and capable of treating the arts and sciences'' (Art. 24). They proposed "to cleanse the language from the impurities it has contracted in the mouths of the common people, from the jargon of the lawyers, from the misusages of ignorant courtiers, and the abuses of the pulpit'' (Letter of Academy to ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... before Buckingham House, the King and Queen and the Princesses standing in one of the windows. The Prince, before the King got into his carriage, which the whole line waited for before they filed off, went off on a sudden with one hundred of the common people, with Mr. Wattie in the middle of them, huzzaing him, and was done evidently to lead, if possible, a greater number, and to make it penetrate into ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham
... his fiery energy, his practical shrewdness, and his ever keen glance into the feelings and characters of other. Nor were these his only claims to his country's favor. He retained the manners and custom of the common people, with what his friendly biographer terms "religious caution.—He dressed as plainly as the plainest of them," continues Mr. Wirt, "ate only their homely fare, and drank their simple beverage, mixed with them on a footing of the most entire and perfect equality, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... classes, the ignorant and indolent rabble.— Populus. The common people, tradesmen, mechanics, and the like. Hence, aliud agens, which implies that they were too busy with something else of a private nature, to give much attention to public affairs or the concerns of their neighbors.—Populus and vulgus are brought together in a similar way, Dial. de Clar. ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... as midnight silence go: He will not have your acclamations now. Hence, you unthinking crowd!— [The Common People go off on both parties. Empire, thou poor and despicable thing, When such as these make ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... His persecutors, as it had moved his own. But the only response to his appeal was, "Crucify Him, crucify Him." It is to be noted, however, that these cruel words now came from "the chief priests and officers." Apparently the common people were moved: they might have yielded, if their superiors had allowed them. But nothing could move those hard hearts; indeed, the sight of blood only inflamed them the more; and they felt certain that by sheer persistence they ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... Lubermirsky, lately arrived from Paris, confirm the reports of the misery in France for want of provisions, and give a particular instance of it, which is, that on the day Monsieur Rouille returned to Court, the common people gathered in crowds about the Dauphin's coach, crying, "Peace and bread, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... after some city in Spain or after their Saints. There are dozens of Santa Rosas, San Juans, and San Tomases. Even some of the towns, which have well-known Indian names, are called officially after some Spanish saint, but the common people stick to the old names, and they are not to be ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... For two sins the common people perish: they speak of the holy ark as a box and the synagogue as a resort for ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... killed, the raw liver, heart, &c. are considered dainties; the Christians follow their example, but with the addition of a glass of brandy with every slice of meat. In many parts of Syria I have seen the common people eat raw meat in their favourite dish the Kobbes; the women, ...
— Travels in Syria and the Holy Land • John Burckhardt
... names of the common wild flowers. They were ordinary people, so far as any one knows, who gave to one flower the name of the Star of Bethlehem and to another and much commoner flower the tremendous title of the Eye of Day. If you cling to the snobbish notion that common people are prosaic, ask any common person for the local names of the flowers, names which vary not only from county to county, but ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... that "the Lord must like common people, because he made so many of them." The path for the common people in France at this time led through heavy shadows. But a darker time was approaching. A system of oppression was maturing which was soon to envelop them in the obscurity ...
— A Short History of France • Mary Platt Parmele
... protuberances; his yellow-grayish hair was said to be silver and gold by certain young people who did not realize the impropriety of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. His nose, thick at the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, not without reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance showed a dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a man long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of avarice and upon the only human being who was anything whatever ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... apprehend our relation to these little ones. As we have accepted that high trust, so make us loyal to it. When our feet grow weary and our faith grows dim, help us to follow close after the ever perfect One who taught even as we are trying to teach. He it was whom the common people heard gladly. He it was who disdained not the use of objects and symbols, remembering it was the childhood of the race. He it was who spake in parables and stories, laying bare soul of man and heart of nature, and revealing each by divine analogy. He it was who took the little ones in His arms ...
— Marm Lisa • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... partaken of. The edible nuts mostly favoured before foreign supplies came into the market were the hazel, walnut, chestnut, and the famous Kent filberts. Although doubtless supplemented by any objects handy, the primitive method of cracking nuts with the teeth was generally practised by the common people. What more natural than for the early inventor to see in the human head the "box" in which to place his mechanical device and to give power and leverage by utilizing the legs of the man he had carved in wood. In the Middle Ages some remarkable ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... was! He was the Lord of life and glory. He made the worlds, and upholds them by His word of power (John i., Hebrews i.). But He humbled Himself, and became man, and was born of the Virgin in a manger among the cattle. He lived among the common people, and worked at the carpenter's bench. And then, anointed with the Holy Spirit, He went about doing good, preaching the Gospel to the poor, and ministering to the manifold needs of the sick and sinful and sorrowing. He touched the lepers; He was the Friend ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... there are a hundred absurd stories about him,—they used to say that he lived all alone in a cabin like a savage, and all that sort of thing, and was a friend of a dubious woman in the locality, whom the common people made a heroine of,—Miggles, or Wiggles, or some such preposterous name. But look at John there; can you conceive it?" The listener, glancing at a very handsome, clean-shaven fellow, faultlessly attired, could not conceive such an absurdity. So I therefore ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... patron of literature, or giver of entertainments, or builder of huge fortresses absurdly disproportioned to his territory and his revenues. Germany, it has been aptly said, became a mere tail to the French kite, its leaders feebly draggling after where Louis soared. Never had the common people of Europe or even the nobility had less voice in their own affairs. It was an age of absolute kingly ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... were not overmuch pestered with schooling. Mainly we were trained to be good Christians; to revere the Virgin, the Church, and the saints above everything. Beyond these matters we were not required to know much; and, in fact, not allowed to. Knowledge was not good for the common people, and could make them discontented with the lot which God had appointed for them, and God would not endure discontentment with His plans. We had two priests. One of them, Father Adolf, was a very zealous and ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... girl told me of a dance among the common people at Amsterdam, called the shepherd's dance. The two leaders are dressed as shepherd and shepherdess; they invent to the music all kinds of movements, descriptive of things that may happen in the field, ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... such constant sympathy with the common people, whom he respected too highly to flatter or mislead, he was rewarded by a reverence and a love hardly ever given to a human being. Among the humble working people of the South whom he had made free this veneration and affection easily passed ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... source of exaction rather than of satisfaction to the owner. The inequalities of burdens and of rank were great. The citizens were divided into three classes: (1) the privileged classes, (2) the Curials, (3) the common people. The first, freely speaking, were those who had in a manner succeeded in detaching themselves from the interests of the municipium to which they belonged; such were the members of the Senate, including ...
— The Communes Of Lombardy From The VI. To The X. Century • William Klapp Williams
... silver shilling came clinking down at the heels of the other boys from the galleries of the inn, where the people of the better classes, wealthy merchants, ladies and their dashing gallants, watched the children's company; but when Nick's songs were done the common people down below seemed all gone daft. They tossed red apples after him, ripe yellow pears, fat purple plums by handfuls, called him by name and brought him back, and cried for more and more and more, until the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... have been mistaken about you; that is, not altogether, but in part. You are not rich folks, it seems, but you are not common people, and that I could have sworn. What I call a shame is, that some people I have known are not in your place and you in theirs—you with their estates and borough interest, they in this dingle with these carts and animals; but there is no help for these things. Were I the great Mumbo ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were not used until nearly a hundred years after the Norman Conquest, and then only by kings and nobles. The common people in England had, however, nearly all got them by the fourteenth century; but in Scotland many people were still without surnames in the time of James I., and even those who had them could easily change one for another. Once a man ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... the total lack of any music in their cracked voices. Sometimes you see a space cleared in the street, and a foreigner playing, while a girl— weather-beaten, tanned, and wholly uncomely in face and shabby in attire dances ballets. The common people look on, and never criticise or treat any of these poor devils unkindly or uncivilly; but I do not observe that they ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... remained another important and vital element—the common people—the peasants, the small farmers, the artisans, and labouring classes—persons of slender means, for the most part too poor to emigrate, and who remained, as it were, rooted to the soil on which they had been born. ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... postage stamp. When he has paid it, he is simply allowed to take his own property where he wishes to take it, and do with it what he wishes to do. It is quite likely that this octroi may have something to do with the disinclination of the common people in France to part with small change as readily as do the Americans, and even the English. They must always have 'money in the pocket' if they want to bring a sausage and a bottle of beer through a 'barrier,' whereas an American is never called upon to pay cash down to his Government except at ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... 'Respect the burden, Madam.'" In the time of the empire, he directed attention to the improvement and embellishment of the market of the capital. "The market-place," he said, "is the Louvre of the common people." The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between the officers and ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... sunbeam, through a lofty and narrow window, fell upon her wild dress and features, and afforded her light for her occupation; the rest of the apartment was very gloomy. Equipt in a habit which mingled the national dress of the Scottish common people with something of an Eastern costume, she spun a thread, drawn from wool of three different colours, black, white, and gray, by assistance of those ancient implements of house-wifely, now almost banished from the land, the distaff and spindle. As she spun, she ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... made its appearance in the world, it produced a profound sensation. It spread on all sides with great rapidity; it was at once felt to be a religion for the common people; and some individuals of highly cultivated minds soon acknowledged its authority. For a time its progress was impeded by the persecutions of Nero and Domitian; but, about the beginning of the second ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Brindisi, he would have found some of the emigrants from the North. If he had gone to the north of the river Tiber, he would have seen a mixed population enjoying a greater civilization than the others, the aristocracy of which had come also from the northern mountains, though the common people were from Greece or its colonies. These people of Greek descent were called Etruscans, and it has been discovered that they had advanced so far in civilization, that they afterwards gave many of their customs to the city of Rome when it came to power. A confederacy known ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman
... after this grand ceremony, which, of course, creates infinite fun, they separate and go home. This matter is not at all confined to these, but wherever man meets woman it is the peculiar privilege of this hour. The common people think it necessary to drink what they call hot pint, which consists of strong beer, whisky, eggs, etc., a most horrid composition, as bad or worse than that infamous mixture called fig-one,[87] which the English people ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... hands every day and his face almost as often! In the monasteries bathing was permitted only to invalids and the very old. Perfume was used copiously, and filth and squalor abounded. This even in royal circles. Among the common people conditions were unspeakable. ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... Greekish gates, came the lords and lairds, in yellow coaches, gigs, and post chaises. By another gate, far up the glen, came most of the country folk, some walking, some riding, some driving, all merry, and with the best intentions of enjoying themselves. As the common people approached the house, they were directed to their different tables by the sexton, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... even. We have sufficient amiability, as a matter of good taste, to pretend to be amused and appear to laugh. The grimace is imitated well enough, but the real thing is never done. Go to the theaters of the common people—there you will see laughter. Go among the bourgeoisie, when they are amusing themselves; you will see them laugh to suffocation. Go to the soldiers' quarters, you will see men choking, their eyes full of tears, doubled up on their ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... name no more, among the dead, who found is being built, or the like, acceptable. 'Simple-minded common people and those of culture were alike protected against it by their attachment to the idiom of their mother tongue, with which they felt it to be directly at variance.' So Mr. White informs us. But the writers whom I have quoted are formidable exceptions. Even Mr. White will scarcely deny to them ...
— The Verbalist • Thomas Embly Osmun, (AKA Alfred Ayres)
... approved by a Multitude, tho' they are only the Rabble of a Nation, which hath not in it some peculiar Aptness to please and gratify the Mind of Man.... an ordinary Song or Ballad that is the Delight of the common People, cannot fail to please all such Readers as are not unqualified for the Entertainment by their Affectation ...
— Parodies of Ballad Criticism (1711-1787) • William Wagstaffe
... faced the Corso. The Corso is a wide promenade that runs along the Buda bank of the Danube. Across the river, on the hill, the royal palace looks down upon the little common people. In that day the monde and the demi-monde of Budapest walked on the Corso between twelve and one. Up and down. Up and down. The women, tall, dark, flashing-eyed, daringly dressed. The men sallow, meagre, and wearing those ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... courage to. Well, I won't put you in a hole, Mr. Hovstad. Let us say it is I that am the freethinker, then. I am going to prove to you, scientifically, that the "People's Messenger" leads you by the nose in a shameful manner when it tells you that you—that the common people, the crowd, the masses, are the real essence of the People. That is only a newspaper lie, I tell you! The common people are nothing more than the raw material of which a People is made. (Groans, laughter and uproar.) Well, isn't that the case? Isn't there an enormous ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... I was right, he is common," she thought disdainfully, as she went indoors and ascended the stairs. "And he may make it very disagreeable for us if he insists on bringing common people into the houses" There was a vague impression in her mind that the males of the ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... science. To all appearance, the political error which legitimated scarcity would have never been put an end to by them. The sanitary evils which press so severely upon the health and morals of the common people, would apparently go on for ever, for anything that philosophers have to say to the contrary. What concern have they taken in the question of education, either in promoting its extension to the masses, or improving its quality? Our national councils, and every deliberative ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 450 - Volume 18, New Series, August 14, 1852 • Various
... outcome of the workings of this dreaded court, of whose sessions and secrets the common people of the land had exaggerated conceptions, but whose sudden and silent deeds in the interest of justice went far to repress crime in that lawless age. We have seen the completion of the sentence, let us attend a session of ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... continued to bear Indian names and to give them to all places of importance: Sanskrit was the ecclesiastical and official language, for the inscriptions written in Khmer are clearly half-contemptuous notifications to the common people, respecting such details as specially concerned them: Asramas and castes (varna) are mentioned[273] and it is probable that natives were only gradually and grudgingly admitted to the higher castes. There ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... to London. But from his first appearance upon the stage in his new person of a sycophant or juggler, instead of his former person of a prince, all men may think how he was exposed to the derision not only of the courtiers, but also of the common people, who flocked about him as he went along, that one might know afar off where the owl was by the flight of birds; some mocking, some wondering, some cursing, some prying and picking matter out of his countenance and gesture ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... grammar of his native language, which procured him the name of the 'Grammarian,' besides a collection of homilies, some theological treatises, and a translation of the first seven books of the Old Testament. In imitation of Alfred, he devoted all his energies to the instruction of the common people, constantly writing in Anglo-Saxon, and avoiding as much as possible the use of compound or obscure words. After him appeared Cynewulf, Bishop of Winchester, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, and others of some note. There was also slowly piled up in the course of ages, and by a succession ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... miss this festival if I can help it. To me, as a passionate lover of mankind, especially of the common people, and more especially so when, united into a mass, the individuals forget for a time their own private ends and consider themselves part of a whole, in which there is, after all, the spirit of divinity, nay, God Himself—to me every popular festival is a real soul-festival, a pilgrimage, an ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... distant city which the Suffolk villagers called Lunnon, there was a Suffolk lad, whose relations kept a very little shop just by us, who was born at Uggeshall—pronounced Ouchell by the common people—on a very small farm, and who, as Unitarian preacher and newspaper writer, had been and was doing his best in the good cause; but it was not the influence of W. Johnson Fox—for it is of him I write—that did much in our little village to leaven the mass with the leaven of Reform. While ...
— East Anglia - Personal Recollections and Historical Associations • J. Ewing Ritchie
... related to the subject of a bill, but that is neither here nor there. The oration began with a lengthy tribute to the resources and history of his state, and ended by a declaration that the speaker was in Congress at no man's bidding, but as the servant of the common people of his district. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... then the priest: "The secrets, Caesar, of our mighty sires (9) Kept from the common people until now I hold it right to utter. Some may deem That silence on these wonders of the earth Were greater piety. But to the gods I hold it grateful that their handiwork And sacred edicts should be known ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... him the chief priests and rulers of the people. The latter are particularly mentioned, as though Pilate thought that his best method of saving Jesus would be by appealing over the heads of the priests to the humanity of the common people. When all were again assembled he made, as Luke tells us, a short speech to them, reiterating his conviction of His innocence, corroborating his own opinion by Herod's, and closing by a proposal which he hoped would meet the whole ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... now common; whereby the mean people live lawless, nobody to govern them, they care for nobody, having no dependance on anybody. By this method, and by the selling of the church-lands, is the ballance of the Government quite altered, and put into the hands of the common people. No ale-houses, nor yet inns were there then, unless upon great roads: when they had a mind to drink, they went to the fryaries; and when they travelled they had entertainment at the religious houses for three days, if occasion so ...
— Miscellanies upon Various Subjects • John Aubrey
... Lord Jesus Christ as King, sets him forth pre-eminently as The Man, going among men, eating and drinking with them, and speaking in such plain and simple terms that the "common people ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... Commissary-Depute of Ross, afterwards in Cromarty, Rev. Roderick Mackenzie, minister of Croy, John Mackenzie, a writer in Edinburgh, and several others of the name. The third bastard was named Alexander, and from him descended Clann Mhurchaidh Mhoir in Ledgowan, and many of the common people who resided ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... champions, once the martyrs, and now the hereditary assertors, of the great Guelf cause. The Cerchi, with less character and less zeal, but rich, liberal, and showy, and with more of rough kindness and vulgar good-nature for the common people, were more popular in Guelf Florence than the Parte Guelfa; and, of course, the Ghibellines wished ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... are beginning to see the pictures in the fire yourself. Well, he shall be a knight, but he shall not wear any armor and he shall not fight, and all the rest of the people we see shall be quite common people, mere tradesmen, a goldsmith and a tailor and a toy-maker and a cobbler and the like. But whether the young man is a knight or not, he and the pretty girl ought to know better than to look at each other in that way in church, with looks that seem to mean so ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... turned against us Jews, who are all people's dogs. Why not? Lastly the Barons and the people rose together against the King because of his cruelties. Nay—nay—the Barons did not love the people, but they saw that if the King eat up and destroyed the common people, he would presently destroy the Barons. They joined then, as cats and pigs will join to slay a snake. I kept the accounts, and I watched all these things, ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... enable us to realise that to live as a man is great, requiring profound philosophy for its ideal, poetry for its expression, and heroism in its conduct. Owing to this vital method of culture the common people of India, though technically illiterate, have been made conscious of the sanctity of social relationships, entailing constant sacrifice and self-control, urged and supported by ideals collectively expressed in one ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... case. Lately I have been sending a subscription book around. I first sent it to the highest official here, and it was immediately returned with fifty dollars. It encouraged me very much, for I know the work is approved of by the officials and the common people, and they are both helping all they can." Once she reported that at a time when the financial outlook was unusually discouraging, an unknown non-Christian Chinese sent a messenger several hundred li with a gift of ...
— Notable Women Of Modern China • Margaret E. Burton
... perspiration from his forehead. "I will come back in my own time; and it can never be wiped out. For you shook all my faith in my old world. That's the worst thing that can happen a man. I only believe in the very common people now—those who are not put upon their honour. One doesn't expect it of them, and, unlikely as it is, one isn't often deceived. I think we'd better ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the night, That poorly satisfy our eyes, More by your number, than your light, You common people of the skies; What are you when ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... And had a small, clean bakeshop, where they sold Bread, cakes and little pies. Well, so it went! These were not Italy's saints, nor yet the gods, Majestic, calm, unmoved, of ancient Greece. No, they were only townsfolk, common people, And graced a common church—that stood and stood Through war and fire and pestilence, through ravage Of time and kings and conquerors, till at last The century dawned which promised common men The things they long had hoped ...
— The Campfire Girls on the Field of Honor • Margaret Vandercook
... clear the building from the ruins and from the earth and stones which remained from them. More than a thousand Indians, without exaggeration, came to offer their services; men, women, and children; young men and girls, and old men; chiefs and common people—all busied themselves to such an extent that the place appeared like an anthill or a beehive. These were assisted by the inhabitants of all the neighboring villages, who, animated and encouraged by the religious of St. Dominic, St. Francis, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... common people pay for their beds and meals with Cook's coupons! [Sitting upon the arm of the further settee in the centre and swinging her feet.] Oh, it doesn't matter. I suppose it'll have to be Swanage, or some brisk resort of that description. ...
— The 'Mind the Paint' Girl - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... was gentle, loving, and affectionate. He was simple and homely, even to commonness. Fond of all common pleasures and enjoyments, he was anything but an austere man, or a bigot; for he was hearty, genial, and even "jolly." Luther was the common people's hero in his lifetime, and he remains so in Germany to ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... wanted home-knit stockings, the English and French and Germans sent us such perfect ones. White was still all the style, unless you wore black, or blossom-coloured silk. Of course there were common people who put slate-colour on their children, because white made so much washing. And as for ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... shame, it will halt of a sudden, and bungle back its way to honour. Then there is the love of the beau geste which is an even stronger motive very often than the love of right-doing for its own sake. The favorite character of the Japanese drama is the otokodate, the chivalrous champion of the common people who rescues beauty in distress from the lawless, bullying, two-sworded men. It tickled Tanaka's remarkable vanity to regard himself as the protector of this lonely and unfortunate lady. It might be said of him ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... far as to advise that she should be sewed up in a sack and thrown at once into the Seine; but this was not what the authorities wanted. The whole elaborate trial, and the extorted recantation, were devised for the purpose of demonstrating her to be a witch, and thus destroying her credit with the common people. That they intended afterwards to burn her cannot for an instant be doubted; that was the only fit consummation for ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... from Gogol's Cloak," said a Russian writer. And Dostoyevsky's novel, Poor People, which appeared ten years later, is, in a way, merely an extension of Gogol's shorter tale. In Dostoyevsky, indeed, the passion for the common people and the all-embracing, all-penetrating pity for suffering humanity reach their climax. He was a profound psychologist and delved deeply into the human soul, especially in its abnormal and diseased aspects. Between scenes of heart-rending, abject ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... gladiators (munera) did not as yet take place at ludi or on public festivals, but they may be mentioned here, because they were already becoming the favourite amusement of the common people; Cicero in the pro Sestio[493] speaks of them as "that kind of spectacle to which all sorts of people crowd in the greatest numbers, and in which the multitude takes the greatest delight." The consequence was, of course, that candidates for election to magistracies took every opportunity of ...
— Social life at Rome in the Age of Cicero • W. Warde Fowler
... which there is none more debasing; when they cease to fight the battles of ambitious place- hunters and begin in true earnest to fight their own, then, and not till then, will the faults of our social organism be rapidly reduced to the minimum. When the common people of this country decline to be divided into two or more hostile camps by "issues" carefully concocted by political harlequins, then will the combined wisdom, purified of partisan prejudice, evolve ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... palace; bidding Ulysses, as she departed, keep an eye upon the coach, and to follow it on foot at some distance: which she did, because if she had suffered him to have rode in the coach with her, it might have subjected her to some misconstructions of the common people, who are always ready to vilify and censure their betters, and to suspect that charity is not always pure charity, but that love or some sinister intention lies hid under its disguise. So discreet and attentive to appearance in all ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... say the newspapers of the day, prevaricated foully. He was found guilty of manslaughter. This favourable verdict was received with universal applause, "not only from the court and all the gentlemen present, but the common people shewed a mighty satisfaction, which they testified ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... daubed with grease and red ocher. As soon as they arrived in front of the Mission-house, they sat down in a circle on each side of the Caffre king, who was treated with marked respect by all, and by the common people in particular, who assembled on his presence. Every one who happened to pass by gave what was termed a 'salute' of honor to the king, who did not appear to consider that it required any ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... himself the life of the Americans, the way the common people lived—he wanted to git information to ...
— Samantha at the World's Fair • Marietta Holley |
