"Commoner" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contents,"—which brought its author a great name, as well it might. When in London Ward met Wilkins and formed a lifelong friendship with him. They were both men of learning, moderate, dexterous, and successful. Ward entered Wadham as a Fellow Commoner in October 1649, became Savilian Professor of Astronomy, and in 1659 President of Trinity. Like Wilkins, he was ejected from his Headship at the Restoration, and like him obtained high preferment under the new regime and became a Bishop. Both ...
— The Life and Times of John Wilkins • Patrick A. Wright-Henderson
... eye;" perhaps two, but only one is mentioned); try and think what PITT looked like generally, and what he did with his arms, which you finally decide to fold across your chest, though conscious that you more resemble NAPOLEON crossing the Alps than the Great Commoner sitting at his ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... per acre, and the expenses upon its proper culture should not exceed one-half that amount. The colonists would find it to their interest to turn their attention to such articles as this, for which there is an extensive demand at home, instead of confining themselves exclusively to the commoner and bulkier products, which they export at a much less profit, and which when once the market is fully supplied, may fall to a price at which they cannot afford ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... habituated to require subservience and to take no thought for the morrow, is the birthright and the criterion of the gentleman at his best; and it is in popular apprehension even more than that, for this demeanour is accepted as an intrinsic attribute of superior worth, before which the base-born commoner delights ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen
... nonsense,' said Jacinth. 'It may just happen that some of those we know to be richer are—well, rather commoner—but you can't make any rule ...
— Robin Redbreast - A Story for Girls • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... I'll think no more on't. Give me some music; look that it be sad: I'll sooth my melancholy, 'till I swell, And burst myself with sighing— [Soft music. 'Tis somewhat to my humour: Stay, I fancy I'm now turned wild, a commoner of nature; Of all forsaken, and forsaking all; Live in a shady forest's sylvan scene, Stretched at my length beneath some blasted oak, I lean my head upon the mossy bark, And look just of a piece, as I grew ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Fourth—The "Oh, just-anything-good-you-know" reader. Her name is legion. She never knows what she has read. Yet the social student who failed to take into account the desultory, pastime reader, would miss a great factor in the spread of ideas. Fifth—The person who does not read. He is commoner than most suppose. He is often young, more often boy than girl, oftener young man than young woman. He commits eternally what Mr Putnam aptly calls the great crime against the library of staying away from it. He is classed among the patrons of the library somewhat as the western schoolma'am ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana
... but merely honorary, and every way expensive), and put himself into a port and course of living agreeably thereunto, and having also removed my brother from Thame school to Merton College in Oxford, and entered him there in the highest and most chargeable condition of a Fellow Commoner, he found it needful to retrench his expenses elsewhere, the hurt of which fell upon me. For he thereupon took me from school, to save the charge of maintaining me there; which was somewhat like plucking ...
— The History of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself • Thomas Ellwood
... afternoon it seems a very vale of content, basking in sun and shadow, green, deep, and silent. But it is also a place of storms, for its name means the "glen of white waters," and mist and snow are commoner in its confines than ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... The commoner type of magnesite deposits is represented by those of Greece, California, Venezuela, and many other countries. These consist of veins and replacements in serpentine. The original rock was a highly magnesian igneous ...
— The Economic Aspect of Geology • C. K. Leith
... the umlaut of {o}, is common in MHG. and still commoner in NHG., yet all words containing this umlaut are really new formations due to levelling or analogy, because primitive Germanic {u} (Sec. 15) did not become {o} in OHG. when followed by an {[)i]} or {j} in the next ...
— A Middle High German Primer - Third Edition • Joseph Wright
... me, abbe, more than I deserve. My birth renders easy to me what may be difficult for the vulgar. A commoner is compelled to have some restraint in all his doings. He is tied down to rigid probity; but a gentleman enjoys the honour of fighting for his king and his pleasure, and does not need to encumber himself with foolish trifles. I have seen active service under M. de Villars, ...
— The Queen Pedauque • Anatole France
... Sussex, to be with his grandfather Standsfield, while a plague was raging in London. There he remained, after Standsfield's death in 1627, till 1630, when he was sent to the free school at Southover near Lewes and kept there until he went up to Balliol College, Oxford, as a fellow-commoner in 1637, being then 16 years of age. It was his father's intention to have placed him at Eton 'but I was so terrefied at the report of the severe discipline there that I was sent back to Lewes, which ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... differed as to what these terms meant. The intent was good, the timing was wrong. Pitt, for reasons still somewhat obscure, accepted a peerage and became Lord Chatham and opened the door to cries of corruption and sell-out by the "Great Commoner." More significantly, Chatham was trying to lead a ministry from the House of Lords. He could not bring it off and sank deeper into that melancholia which left him mentally incapacitated during much of his ministry's ...
— The Road to Independence: Virginia 1763-1783 • Virginia State Dept. of Education
... things more on those walls. A pair of spurs, of make modern enough, hung between two pewter dish-covers. Hanging book-shelves came next; for although most of my uncle's books were in his bed-room, some of the commoner were here on the wall, next to an old fowling-piece, of which both lock and barrel were devoured with rust. Then came a great pair of shears, though how they should have been there I cannot yet ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... when he met Godwin at thirty, and he had packed into his half century a more various experience of men and things than the studious and sedentary Godwin could have acquired if he had lived the life of the Wandering Jew. Theirs was a friendship of mutual stimulation and intimate exchange which is commoner between a man and a woman than between two men. They met almost daily, and in spite of some violent lovers' quarrels, their affection lasted till Holcroft's death in 1809. It is not hard to understand their quarrels. Neither of them had natural tact, and Godwin's sensibility ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... an appearance of catering for philosophers and the learned only. It must be admitted that neither of the two great free-thinking Royalists, Hobbes and Herbert, is a wholly pleasant character; but it may be at least said for the commoner (it cannot be said for the peer) that he was constant to his principles, and that if somewhat careful of his skin, he never seems to have been tempted to barter his conscience ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... says Dr. Fuller (i), " a Gentleman- Commoner in Oxford; where, being but fourteen Years old, and yet three Years standing, he was call'd out to dispute ex tempore, before the Earls of Leicester and Warwick, with the matchless ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... General Ireton's regiment, called for "impartial and speedy justice" upon public criminals, and demanded "that the same fault may have the same punishment in the person of King or Lord as in the poorest Commoner." Such petitions to Fairfax appear to have dropped in upon him from regiment after regiment at St. Alban's during the next fortnight. One Petition, however, heard of in London Oct. 30, was from Colonel Ingoldsby's regiment, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... gentle art of goldsmith from his nephew's father. Though Robert's indentures bound him for ten years, Sir William is supposed to have offered no remonstrance when he was asked, long before that term expired, to cancel the engagement and allow Robert to enter Cambridge, which he did as fellow-commoner at St. John's College. At the end of two years he transferred himself to Trinity Hall, with a view to economy and the pursuit of the law—the two frequently go together. He received his degree of B. A. in 1617, and his M. A. in 1620, having ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Lords. Mr. Vaughan, whom I could not to my grief perfectly hear, did say, if that they should be obliged in this manner to, exempt the Lords from every thing, it would in time come to pass that whatever (be [it] never so great) should be voted by the Commons as a thing penall for a commoner, the contrary should be thought a priviledge to the Lords: that also in this business, the work of a conventicle being but the work of an hour, the cause of a search would be over before a Lord Lieutenant, ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... cannot be so clearly traced in the same remains when locked up in stone. There is a vast deal of skilful carpentry exhibited—if carpentry I may term it—in the coverings of these ancient ichthyolites. In the commoner fish of our existing seas the scales are so thin and flexible,—mere films of horn,—that there is no particularly nice fitting required in their arrangement. The condition, too, through which portions of unprotected skin may be presented to the water, as over and between the rays ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... the letter: And why should not That, which authority Prescribes, esteemed be Advantage got ? If th' prayer be good, the commoner the better, Prayer in the Church's words, as well As sense, of all prayers bears ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... possible you can take my consent for granted. Sara is the daughter of plain people with no family to boast of, but I tell you this, sir, I am a man with few wants, and I will give Sara the largest dowry that has ever been given by prince or commoner. I reckon I'm worth five million pounds, and I'll settle four and a half upon her. Theos wants money, and that may take things a bit smoother in ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... for two years lived in his father's house, in comparative idleness, loitering in the fields, and reading much, but desultorily. In 1728, being flattered with some promises of aid from a Shropshire gentleman, named Corbet, which were never fulfilled, he went to Oxford, and was entered as a commoner in Pembroke College. His father accompanied and introduced him to Dr Adams, and to Jorden, who became his tutor, recommending his son as a good scholar and a poet. Under Jorden's care, however, he did little except translate Pope's "Messiah" into Latin verse,—a task which he ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... is of large extent; but even to the smaller plantations of the Downs it is wonderful what a number come in the course of a year. Besides the shed just visited, there would be certain to be another more or less ornamented near the keeper's cottage, and probably others scattered about, where the commoner vermin could be nailed without the trouble of carrying them far away. Only the owls and hawks, magpies, and such more striking evidences of slaughter were collected here, and almost ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... commoner disease than syphilis; how common it is very difficult to say. It is also an older disease, for the ancient Egyptians knew it, and the Biblical King Esarhaddon of Assyria, as the records of his court show, once caught it. It seems to some people no more serious than ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... made me one of the descendants of those pious ancestors who cast their fortunes in the wilderness in preference to giving up their hold on faith and charity! The building is much inferior in comfort and true taste to the commoner American churches, and met with my ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... commoner was rather sudden. I went alone to Boston, and when I reached out my free pass, the conductor read it through and handed it back, saying in a gruff voice, 'It's worth nothing; a dollar and a quarter to Boston.' Think what a downfall! ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... resembling an oblong cocoa-nut, with an insipid tenacious kernel, called, by the natives, neeoogoola, or red cocoa-nut, as it assumes a reddish cast when ripe. The third sort is called ongo ongo, and much commoner, being generally found planted about their fiatookas. It seldom grows higher than five feet, though sometimes to eight, and has a vast number of oval compressed nuts, as large as a pippin, sticking immediately to the trunk, amongst the leaves, which are not eat. There is plenty of excellent sugar-cane, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... is getting more and more scarce every day. That great moralist, Dr. Johnson, said that he should prefer to dine with a Duke than the most agreeable of Commoners. I myself at present should prefer to dine with a leg of mutton than the most agreeable of human beings—Duke or Commoner. I hear, on what I believe to be good authority, that we shall see the end of our fresh meat on or about the 20th ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... what he was reading. Yet the taste was not only genuine, it was exclusive; I tried in vain to offer him novels; he would none of them, he cared for nothing but romantic language that he could not understand. The case may be commoner than we suppose. I am reminded of a lad who was laid in the next cot to a friend of mine in a public hospital and who was no sooner installed than he sent out (perhaps with his last pence) for a cheap Shakespeare. ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a native of Shansi, the old rule that a man might not act as magistrate in his own province having been repealed. He was not as his predecessor, carried in a sedan chair, but walked, or rode in a cart as a commoner. He wore cotton clothes in place of the gorgeous silk and satin embroidered gowns, and when he sent to invite us to dine with his wives, his card was foreign except for the characters written ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... paint, the fashionable custom of the time. The Duke of Hamilton had died two years before, in 1758, and the duchess became subsequently the wife of Colonel John Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyle. The narrative observes the remarkable circumstance, that the untitled daughter of an Irish commoner should have been the wife of two dukes and the mother of four. By her first husband she was the mother of James, seventh duke, and of Douglas, eighth duke, of Hamilton; and by her second husband, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... shining again; only that gaunt old head raised proudly, owing no man anything but courtesy. The glow deepened, as she thought of it. It was strange, too, that, with the deep, slow-moving nature of this girl, she should have striven so eagerly to throw this light over the future. Commoner natures have done more and hoped less. It was a poor gift, you think, this of the labor of a life for so plain a duty; hardly heroic. She knew it. Yet, if there lay in this coming labor any pain, any wearing effort, she clung to it desperately, as if this should banish, it might be, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... at all until the fifteenth century, are only covered with rude stones, and look more like the interior of a vast open drain than anything; pigs and other animals stroll into them from the open doorways of the commoner houses, and even the richer families seem to consider that the highway is little more than a ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... filled since childhood, for I was proud of the western diggers, proud of my blood; and at that moment, with British "Tommies" sprawling on the grass at my feet, and the Boer farmers grouped amongst them, I would sooner have called myself an Australian commoner than the son of any peer in any other ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... which the situation of the Pere Goriot is inverted. Poor Eugenie is the victim of a domestic tyrant, who is, perhaps, Balzac's most finished portrait of the cold-blooded and cunning miser. The sacrifice of a woman's life to paternal despotism is unfortunately even commoner in real life than in fiction; and when the lover, from whom the old miser has divided her during his life, deserts her after his death, we feel that the mournful catastrophe is demanded by the sombre prologue. The book may indeed justify, ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... in the House, was much subdued in the presence of his sovereign, and along with many defects had one great virtue in his Majesty's eyes, which was that he shared the King's desire to destroy the factions. The King was accordingly ready to receive the Great Commoner, even though he insisted on bringing "the Constitution," and Earl Temple into the bargain, with him to St. James's Palace. But when it appeared that Earl Temple was opposed to the repeal of the Stamp Act, Mr. Pitt declined ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... most interesting part of the garden, is that devoted to wax dolls. There are other beds for the commoner dolls—for the rag dolls, and the china dolls, and the rubber dolls, but of course wax dolls would look much handsomer growing. Wax dolls have to be planted quite early in the season; for they need a good start ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... of Sir Henry Neville, and grandson of Sir Henry Neville (1564?-1615), courtier and diplomatist under Elizabeth and James I, Henry Neville was born in Billing-bear, Berkshire, in 1620. He became a commoner of Merton College in 1635, and soon after migrated to University College, where he passed some years but took no degree. He travelled on the continent, becoming familiar with modern languages and ...
— The Isle Of Pines (1668) - and, An Essay in Bibliography by W. C. Ford • Henry Neville
... these in its immediate results, Dante, while he began his poem in Latin, the learned language of the time, soon transposed and completed it in Italian, the corrupted Latin of his commoner contemporaries, the tongue of his daily life. That is, he wrote not for scholars like himself, but for a wider circle of more worldly friends. It is the first great work in any modern speech. It is in very ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to London would be likely to take all or half the walks described in Mr. Hare's two thick volumes, even if the word walks should be so interpreted as to include commoner modes of transit between distant points of interest and through interminable thoroughfares. In Rome or Venice the tourist may be expected to follow religiously the prescriptions of his guide-book: he is there ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... Lactance in the De falsa religione. If Juvenal, Martial, Petronius, are more reticent, it is because they were not Fathers of the Church, nor yet antiquarians. No one among us exacts a description of a spire. The phallus was as common to them, commoner even. It was on the coins, on the doors, in the gardens. As a preservative against Envy it hung from children's necks. On sun-dials and water clocks it marked the flight of time. The vestals worshipped it. At weddings it was used in a manner ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... tend further to increase my doubts; and in any event I am sure that by the time I was old enough to stumble over Mr. Harper's favorite big words I was old enough to tell the difference between an ordinary animal—say, a house cat—and any one of the commoner forms of plant life, such as, for example, the scaly-bark hickory tree, practically at a glance. I'll add this too: Nick Carter never wasted any of the golden moments which he and I spent together in elucidating for ...
— A Plea for Old Cap Collier • Irvin S. Cobb
... Pacific, bears the noble forests of the Sierra Nevada and the Coast Ranges, and among them trees which are the wonder of the world. As I stood in their shade, in the groves of Mariposa and Calaveras, and again under the canopy of the commoner redwood, raised on columns of such majestic height and ample girth, it occurred to me that I could not do better than to share with you, upon this occasion, some of the thoughts which possessed my mind. In their development they may, perhaps, lead us up to questions ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... common since the romantic and pre-Raphaelite movement, and getting commoner with the spread of theories of intellectual anarchy and nervous degeneracy, one is often tempted to answer impatiently, "Get out of the way, you wretched young people; don't you see that there isn't room or ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee
... for I wish to see these things from the point of view of a commoner. See, there is the pillar of fire spoken about. Truly, my good friend, the glory of the Lord is ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... great nicety to disengage this virtue from the commoner elements with which it may be found in combination. Few artists, not Goethe or Byron even, work quite cleanly, casting off all debris, and leaving us only what the heat of their imagination has wholly fused and transformed. Take, for instance, the writings of Wordsworth. ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater
... Professor there reclined upon a divan the form of Sir Reginald Elphinstone, sometimes called by his friends "the handsome baronet," said to be the richest commoner in England. At the age of thirty-five, having freely exposed himself to all known sources of peril, except those involved in a trip to the Polar regions, in his eager pursuit of sport and adventure, Sir Reginald seemed, for the moment, to have no object left him in life but to shoot as many rings ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... head with a yet sadder air. Had she been the daughter of a commoner, he would not have let her send the telegram; as it was he did. Half-way to the station he had grown yet more curious about it; and he asked her again why she ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... time, the sky-blue Chatterer (Ampelis cotinga). It was on the topmost bough of a very lofty tree, and completely out of the reach of an ordinary fowling-piece. The beautiful light-blue colour of its plumage was plainly discernible at that distance. It is a dull, quiet bird. A much commoner species was the Cigana or Gipsy (Opisthocomus cristatus), a bird belonging to the same order (Gallinacea) as our domestic fowl. It is about the size of a pheasant; the plumage is dark brown, varied with reddish, and the head is adorned with a crest of long feathers. It is a remarkable bird ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... my most abandoned associates, would not rather have disputed the clearest evidence of his senses, than have suspected of such courses, the gay, the frank, the generous William Wilson—the noblest and most commoner at Oxford—him whose follies (said his parasites) were but the follies of youth and unbridled fancy—whose errors but inimitable whim—whose darkest vice but a careless ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... age, I was transplanted to Cambridge, where I bloomed for two years in the blue and silver of a fellow commoner of Trinity. At the end of that time (being of royal descent) I became entitled to an honorary degree. I suppose the term is in contradistinction to an honourable degree, which is obtained by pale men in spectacles and cotton stockings, after thirty-six ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Arnold, was born June 13, 1795, at East Cowes, Isle of Wight, where his father was collector of customs. His early education was undertaken by a sister; and in 1803 he was sent to Warminister School, in Wiltshire. In 1807 he went to Winchester, where, having entered as a commoner and afterwards become a scholar of the college, he remained till 1811. In after life he always cherished a strong Wykehamist feeling, and, during his headmastership at Rugby, often recurred to his knowledge there first acquired, of the peculiar ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... the despotic ends of European despots: they point to the freest government in the world for examples of their own absolutism, shield their autocracy beneath its democracy, and with it annihilate the rights of the commoner. ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... it. And that is why I conceive no book on Greenwich complete without a chapter devoted to him who came to be known as "the great Commoner of Mankind." He spoke of himself as a "citizen of the world," and there are many quarters of the globe that can claim a share in his memory, so ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin
... are now to be resorted to. On the lawn a line of men forms. They bend their necks, cowering before the fierce glow, but daring it, and prepared to face it at even closer range. You are to witness now an exhibition of that heroism which is commoner with us than we think, that spirit of do and dare which mocks at danger and even welcomes pain. It is a far finer sentiment than the cold-hearted calculation which looks ahead, and figures out first whether it ...
— Back Home • Eugene Wood
... Seventy-Eighth Highland regiment had taken her prisoner. It is true, Jeannette was treated with deference, and her food was sent to her from the officer's table, and she had privacy on the ship which the commoner prisoners had not. It is also true that Colonel Fraser was a gentleman, detesting the parish-burning to which his command was ordered for a time. But the habitantes laid much to his blue eyes and ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... is one Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq; would soon be truss'd up for his bloody predictions, and putting good subjects in terror of their lives: And that henceforward to murder a man by way of prophecy, and bury him in a printed letter, either to a lord or commoner, shall as legally entitle him to the present possession of Tyburn, as if he robb'd on the highway, or cut your ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... Dome upon dome, rising one behind the other, of all sizes and shapes, their beautiful tiles gleaming here and there as the light from the rising moon touched them, delicate spires, pointing upwards, tipped with silver light, low roof of the commoner's dwelling and pillared facade of old and stately palace intervening, and, far away, those cold white, solitary peaks overtopping all else, rising into the region of the stars, made up a ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... so, his face seemed almost to change its shape: the cheek-bones to become more salient, the nose sharper, the eyes catlike, the large but well-shaped mouth venomous instead of passionate. He looked older and also commoner directly his insouciance departed from him, and one could divine a great deal of primitive savagery beneath his ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... early editorial about you, said that we should now see what stuff there is in the new President by watching whether you would stop lynchings. They forever quote Bryce on the badness of our municipal government. They pretend to think that the impeachment of governors is common and ought to be commoner. One delicious M.P. asked me: "Now, since the Governor of New York is impeached, who becomes Vice-President[23]?" Ignorance, unfathomable ignorance, is at the bottom of much of it; if the Town Treasurer of Yuba Dam gets a $100 "rake off" on a ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... the case for the prosecution there was that in the leading counsel's manner—a gravity, a kindness, an inclination to neglect the commoner methods of scoring—that suggested, with the sudden chill of unexpectedly bad news, a foregone conclusion. The reality of his feeling reference to the painful position of the defendant's father, the sincerity of his regret on behalf of the bank, ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... is not to his liking, he chews his buyo or withdraws without disturbing the others who perhaps find pleasure in it. Only at times the commoner sort will howl when the actors embrace or kiss the actresses, but they never go beyond that. Formerly, dramas only were played; the local poet composed a piece in which there must necessarily be a fight every second minute, ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... the metropolis there is neither time nor inclination for these remote calculations. Every man depends on the quantity of sense, wit, or good manners he brings into society for the reception he meets with in it. A Member of Parliament soon finds his level as a commoner: the merchant and manufacturer cannot bring his goods to market here: the great landed proprietor shrinks from being the lord of acres into a pleasant companion or a dull fellow. When a visitor enters ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... of raising water, which is commoner in Egypt than in Mesopotamia at the present day, is the shadduf, and is worked by hand. It consists of a beam supported in the centre, at one end of which is tied a rope with a bucket or vessel for raising the water, and at the other end is fixed a counterweight.* On an Assyrian bas-relief found ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, And Assyria In The Light Of Recent Discovery • L.W. King and H.R. Hall
... magnitude of the discovery let us rehearse the few facts known of the inconspicuous life of Thomas Traherne. He was born about the year 1636, the son of a Hereford shoemaker, and came in all probability (like Herbert and Vaughan) of Welsh stock. In 1652 he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner. On leaving the University he took orders; was admitted Rector of Credenhill, in Herefordshire, in 1657; took the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1669; became the private chaplain of Sir Orlando Bridgman, at Teddington; and died there a few months after his ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... It is so easy for the world's heroines to remain calm against attack. My Mary was made of commoner stuff—the wretched, baser clay of which not I, but my neighbours, not you, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... pictures and adventures which were true, and one could not help continually making guesses about them. Yes, the feeling that Marco had was that his father's attraction for him was a sort of spell, and that others felt the same thing. When he stood and talked to commoner people, he held his tall body with singular quiet grace which was like power. He never stirred or moved himself as if he were nervous or uncertain. He could hold his hands (he had beautiful slender and strong hands) quite still; he could ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to meet her new guests, and to show them into a commoner room, below stairs, when her movement was anticipated by the door's opening, and a man's standing on the threshold. It was now too late to prevent the intrusion, and a little surprise at the appearance of the new-comer held all mute and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in failing, from fear of wounding living susceptibilities, to assert with energy that which he knew to be the real case with Byron. More than any one, Moore experienced the fatal influence which injures independence in aristocratic England. An Irishman by birth, and a commoner, Moore was flattered to find himself elevated by his talents to a position in aristocratic circles which he owed to his talents, but which he was loath to resign. The English aristocracy then formed a kind of clique whose wish it was to govern England on the condition ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... stormiest debate that had ever been recorded in the annals of the Preposterous Society, an institution that had lately celebrated its fifth anniversary. Hadria, fired by opposition, declared that the success of great people was due not simply to their greatness, but to some smaller and commoner quality which brought them in touch with the majority, and so gave their greatness ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... dissolution," the doctor corrected him. "But there is a far commoner moment than that, one that occurs constantly to us all, whereas dissolution ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... systems, however, reflect the idiosyncrasies of their makers, and have never won wide approbation. Morality must remain largely experimental, individual. Conscience will play a very useful role in spurring us to our recognized duty in the commoner situations, but for all the more delicate decisions we need a more ultimate touchstone. We must grasp the underlying principles of right conduct, and weigh the relative goods attainable by each possible act. A well-balanced and ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... it, for that does good, and pacifies and unites men. But where a bit of mortality, because it has a genealogical tree and a coat of arms, rears up like an Arabian horse, and prances in the street, and says in the room, 'People out of the street have been here,' when a commoner has been—that is nobility in decay, and become a mere mask—a mask of the kind that Thespis created; and people are glad when such an one is ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... matter-of-fact to call in the aid of imagination, he describes in the simplest and most direct terms the circumstances in which he found himself, and the impressions which these circumstances had made on his own mind. He calls things by their right names; no euphuism or transcendentalism,—the plainer and commoner the better. He tells us of his farm life, its joys and sorrows, its mirth and care, with no embellishment, with no concealment of repulsive and ungraceful features. Never having seen a nightingale, he makes no attempt ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... of the Roentgen rays has shown that fracture of individual carpal bones is commoner than was previously supposed, and that many cases formerly looked upon as severe sprains are examples ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... the long tete-a-tetes they had together. She drew him out, encouraging and pressing him to tell her everything about himself. She was always apprehending a jarring note, the inevitable sign of the man's coarser clay, of his commoner upbringing, the clash of his caste on hers. But she was struck instead by his inherent refinement, by his unformulated instincts of well-doing and honour. He was hazy about the use of oyster-forks, had never seen a finger-bowl, committed to her eyes a dozen little solecisms which he hastened ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... term indicating the presence of albumin in the urine. This may depend on a number of morbid conditions, of which kidney troubles, acute illnesses and venous congestion are some of the commoner. But after exclusion of all known pathological causes, there still remains a large class of cases among subjects who appear to be in perfect health. This form has been called functional or physiological albuminuria, intermittent albuminuria, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... Pitt fainted away. Of all the estimates of Pitt none breathes deeper devotion than that of Wellesley. Was it not because he at last saw the pettiness of his own pride and petulance when contrasted with the self-abnegation of him who was truly the Great Commoner? And did not even his meteoric career in the East pale before the full-orbed splendour of the quarter of a century of achievement which made up the ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... barbarous. Head-dresses in gold, tall and pointed, are said to have been found occasionally; but the museums of Europe have not yet been able to secure any, as they are usually melted down by the finders. Broad ribbons of gold, which may have depended like strings from a cap, are commoner, and were seen by Mr. Loftus. Altogether, the ornaments indicated a strong love of personal display, and the possession of considerable wealth, but no general diffusion of a correct taste, nor any very advanced skill in design ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 6. (of 7): Parthia • George Rawlinson
... taboo was and is connected with the native religions of the Pacific islands. We have adopted the word and use it in its true meaning of forbidden. If an article were dedicated to a god, or used in his worship, or had been touched by him, or claimed by a chief or a priest, no commoner dared lay finger on it, for it was as sacred as the ark of the covenant. Some canny planters kept boys out of their orchards and palm groves by offering the fruit to certain gods until it was ripe, for a sign of taboo kept out all marauders till ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... wrong, my lord; if I were so He might have bought me at a common price: Do not believe him. O, behold this ring, Whose high respect and rich validity Did lack a parallel; yet, for all that, He gave it to a commoner o' the ...
— All's Well That Ends Well • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... that they should have gone to different schools. The matter, however, had been left to Mr. Wilkinson, and as he thought Winchester good for his own son, he naturally thought the same school good for Sir Lionel's son. But Bertram was entered as a commoner, whereas Wilkinson was in the college. Those who know Winchester will understand, that though, as regarded school business and school hours, they were at the same establishment, they were not together at the much more important hours of eating, sleeping, and playing. ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... usually be planted as close as two to three feet apart each way, especially if one gets many of them from the fields, so that he does not have to buy them. If there are not sufficient of the permanent bushes for thick planting, the spaces may be tilled temporarily by cheaper or commoner bushes: but do not forget to remove the fillers as rapidly as the ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... which it has elected to construct a nest. Round this tree it establishes a sphere of influence into which none but a favoured few birds may come. All intruders are forthwith set upon by the pair of little furies, and no sight is commoner at this season than that of a crow, a kite, or a hawk being chased by two irate drongos. The nest of the king-crow is a small cup, wedged into the fork of a branch high ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... turn, to wear the shackles prepared for them by your indifference or your maneuvers." In other words, whoever has a good roof over his head, or wears good clothes, man or woman, idler or industrious, noble or commoner, is available for the prison or the guillotine, or, at the very least, he is a taxable and workable serf at pleasure; his capital and accumulations, if not spontaneously and immediately handed over, form a criminal basis ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... competitors are incepting Bachelors of Arts after the examination for that Degree. My day of examination (apparently) was Jan. 21st. The candidates were Turner, Cankrein, Cleasby, and Mr Gordon. The first three had been my private pupils: Mr Gordon was a Fellow-commoner of St Peter's College, and had just passed the B.A. examination as Senior Wrangler, Turner being second. My situation as Examiner was rather a delicate one, and the more so as, when I came to examine the papers of answers, Turner appeared distinctly the first. Late at night ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... generation of the family had produced patchwork curtains and coverlet; and patchwork was patchwork in those days, before the early Yates and Peels had found out the secret of printing the parsley-leaf. Scraps of costly Indian chintzes and palempours were intermixed with commoner black and red calico in minute hexagons; and the variety of patterns served for the useful purpose of promoting conversation as well as the more obvious one of displaying the work-woman 's taste. Sylvia, for instance, began at once to her old friend, Molly Brunton, who had accompanied her into this ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... constructed of the ordinary grades of cotton cannot be mercerized to advantage. The cost of producing high-grade mercerized yarn is about three times that of an unmercerized yarn of the same count, spun from the commoner qualities of cotton. ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... absolute integrity of the attendants of the theatre would appear to have been a subject of suspicion. "Penny galleries" are referred to by some early writers, and from a passage in the "Gull's Horn Book," 1609—"Your groundling and gallery commoner buys his sport for a penny"—it is apparent that the charges for admission to the yard, where the spectators stood, and to the galleries, where they sat on benches, were the same. In Dekker's "Satiromastix," one of the characters speaks scornfully ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... am now to begin this with telling MD that I dined with the Secretary to-day, who is much out of order with a cold, and feverish; yet he went to the Cabinet Council tonight at six, against my will. The Secretary is much the greatest commoner in England, and turns the whole Parliament, who can do nothing without him; and if he lives and has his health, will, I believe, be one day at the head of affairs. I have told him sometimes that, if I were a dozen years younger, I would cultivate his favour, and trust my fortune with his. ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... Spirit of the Whole Creation, and judge, who is the thief, he who takes away the Freedom of the Common Earth from me, which is my Creation Right; Or I, who take the Common Earth to plant upon for my free livelihood, endeavouring to live as a Free Commoner, in a Free Common-wealth, in Righteousness and Peace."—WINSTANLEY, The ...
— The Digger Movement in the Days of the Commonwealth • Lewis H. Berens
... nobody could die in peace without him any more than without my father. I was delighted at the thought of being his patient. I think I see him now standing with his back to the fire, and taking his lancet from his pocket, while preparations were being made for bleeding me at the arm, which was a far commoner operation then than ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... in his article upon seals in the Discovery Report[62] that the Weddell and the crab-eater seal, which are the two commoner of the Antarctic seals, have agreed to differ both in habit and in diet, and therefore they share the field successfully. He shows that "the two penguins which share the same area have differentiated in a somewhat similar manner." The Weddell seal ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... how the right honourable Dumany Kornel, a member of the Hungarian landed gentry, and also of the medical profession, if I rightly remember, a rather fast-living bachelor, and rejected Commoner, has been metamorphosed into Cornelius Dumany, the Silver King, the South American nabob, the matador of the Bourse, husband of a beautiful countess, and father of five children, within such a short period. Tell ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... awful quiet since she told him he had a picturesque name. Said it'd do for to put into a book which she's goin' to write, but when it come to choosin' a husband she'd prefer to tie up to a commoner name. An' so Lon didn't graze on that range ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... exhausit lusciniola, &c., &c." He mentions, as the rivals most dreaded by her admirers, Norris, the singer, whose musical talents, it was thought, recommended him to her, and Mr. Watts, a gentleman commoner, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... like roughing it, Mr. Stafford, sir," he said. "I can tell in a minute when a man's 'hard' right through, and been doing square and honest work. It seems strange to us commoner people that you gentle folks should be so fond of going through all sorts of hardships and perils just for the fun of it; but, after all, it's not to be wondered at, for that's the kind of spirit that has helped Englishmen to make England ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... to Cannes, where "villa life" might be considered even more aristocratic than at "Monte"; and Dom Ferdinand took himself and his ally out of danger's way when Dodo refused to understand that only flirtation, not marriage, was possible with a "commoner." The price of Dauntrey hospitality had, however, fallen. Those who could be attracted by the bait of their barren title had now to be looked for low in the social scale: and it was difficult to get eligible partis with whom to dazzle heiresses. The slender Austrian ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... from Westminster School. It is in symbolism of these students that the celebrated Great Tom of Christchurch clangs each evening 101 times. Besides these students, there are generally nearly 1000 independent members, consisting of noblemen, gentlemen commoners, and commoners. To be a gentleman commoner of Christchurch, all other advantages being equal, is the most "correct thing" in the University; none can compete with them, unless it be the gentlemen commoners of Magdalen. The Christchurch noblemen, or ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... give a sufficient idea of the commoner forms of declension in the classical West Saxon of the time of AElfred. The pronunciation has already been briefly explained ...
— Early Britain - Anglo-Saxon Britain • Grant Allen
... Hotel, as he never failed to explain to his visitors, were those long ago occupied by his political idol, Henry Clay. His couch stood in the exact spot where Mr. Clay had died; and he no doubt thought—possibly wished— that his own end might come just where that great Commoner had breathed his last. This, however, was not to be. His last hours were spent at the capital of his native commonwealth, which had, with scarce a dissenting voice, just honored itself by electing him to its ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson
... memory of the Cid by the virulence of their hatred. Aben Bassam wrote: "The might of this tyrant was ever growing until its weight was felt upon the highest peaks and in the deepest valleys, and filled with terror both noble and commoner. I have heard men say that when his eagerness was greatest and his ambition highest he uttered these words, 'If one Rodrigo brought ruin upon this Peninsula, another Rodrigo shall reconquer it!' A saying that filled the hearts ...
— The Lay of the Cid • R. Selden Rose and Leonard Bacon
... rough, that would not have been stronger and more brilliant by cutting," said Bart, with vehemence. "All I contend for is, that genius, as I have supposed, can make the most and best of things, often doing with them what other and commoner minds cannot do ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... "Those bottles are intended for the Kings. No commoner touches them, least of all a Human and ...
— Rastignac the Devil • Philip Jose Farmer
... inner council of war. "Howard," says Thomas Fuller, "was no deep-seaman, but he had skill enough to know those who had more skill than himself and to follow their instructions." As far as as possible for a commoner, ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... commoner families of the south of England, who have held the lands of their fore-fathers through every change of dynasty and religion, the Buckleys of Clere stand deservedly high among the brightest and the oldest. All down the stormy page of this great island's history one sees, once ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... givers of two gifts which shall be like in all respects. It is plain enough in this case also that "the gracious favour" of his royal highness, even if halved, would more than counterbalance the whole value of the commoner's ...
— Hiero • Xenophon
... which is seen in the lower classes and even then not very frequently, its representative is squarely built, and has prominent cheek-bones, oblique eyes, a more or less flat nose with a large mouth. The Malay type is much commoner. Its characteristics are small stature, good and sometimes square build, a face round or angular, prominent cheek-bones, large horizontal eyes, a weak chin, a short neck, broad well-developed chest, short legs, and small delicate hands. ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... a finely appointed carriage and she heard John say: "Rather sultry. Home down the lake shore, George." She wished their driver had not been named "George," but after all it made no difference. There could not be a commoner name than John, and she knew of but one that she liked better. For the ensuing three days she lived in a Lake Shore home of wealth. She watched closely not to trip in the heavy rugs and carpets. She looked at wonderful paintings and long shelves of books. ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... slipshod or guesswork means. To secure the benefit of modern methods for the early recognition of syphilis those who expose themselves, or are exposed knowingly, to the risk of getting the disease by any of the commoner sources of infection, should seek expert medical advice at once on the appearance of anything out of the ordinary, no matter how trivial, on the parts exposed. The commoner sources of infection may be taken to be the kissing of strangers, the careless use of common personal and ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... using points wherever they can be used, is of importance in precise composition of every sort, such as laws, contracts, legal and ecclesiastical statements, and the like. The open, or easy, system, omitting points wherever they can be omitted, is used generally in the commoner forms of composition. The tendency, sometimes pushed too far, is toward an extremely open style of punctuation. The general attitude of writers and printers may be summed up by saying that you must ...
— Punctuation - A Primer of Information about the Marks of Punctuation and - their Use Both Grammatically and Typographically • Frederick W. Hamilton
... fellow, I only repeat what I have heard. As for me, I don't know any more. I have kept out of the way for more than three months. And besides, it matters little to me whether Micheline be a commoner or a princess, the wife of Delarue or of Panine. I shall be none the richer or the poorer, shall I? Therefore I need not care. The dear child will certainly have millions enough to marry easily. And her adopted sister, the stately Mademoiselle ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... vestibule. This was the bottom of the sea, which showed an illumination of its own and which he even saw paved—when at a given moment he drew up to sink a long look over the banisters—with the marble squares of his childhood. By that time indubitably he felt, as he might have said in a commoner cause, better; it had allowed him to stop and draw breath, and the case increased with the sight of the old black-and-white slabs. But what he most felt was that now surely, with the element of impunity pulling him as by hard firm hands, the case was settled for what he might have seen above had ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James
... was inevitable. And Audley Egerton had no chance of return for his own seat, for the great commercial city identified with his name. Oh, sad, but not rare, instance of the mutabilities of that same popular favour now enjoyed by his successors! The great commoner, the weighty speaker, the expert man of business, the statesman who had seemed a type of the practical steady sense for which our middle class is renowned,—he who, not three years since, might have had his honoured choice of the largest popular constituencies in the kingdom,—he, Audley ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton |
