"Courtier" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... great a courtier not to see and feel it. He bowed respectfully, replying to his Majesty, "Sire, I would not presume to follow the King's eyes, however much I ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... to the throng on the dais and spoke a few words to a courtier who advanced as he sat down. The courtier must have spoken of them, for the king at once looked down at Johnston and Thorn-dyke and nodded his head. The courtier spoke to a page, and the youth left the dais and ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... Gerald describes the manner of life and characteristics of the people. All are trained to arms, and when the trumpet sounds the alarm, the husbandman rushes as eagerly from his plough as the courtier from his court. Agricultural work takes up little of their time, as they are still mainly in a pastoral stage, living on the produce of their herds, and eating more meat than bread. They fight and undergo hardships and willingly sacrifice their lives for their country ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little
... inextricably united to the almost innocent shamelessness of the second, and a narrative gift equal to that of either in idiosyncrasy, and ranging beyond the subjects of both. Himself a soldier and a courtier (his abbacy, like many others, was purely titular and profitable—not professional in the least), his favourite subjects in literature, and obviously his idols in life, were great soldiers and fair ladies, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... former days was not limited to the manufacture of phenomena for the market-place, of buffoons for the palace (a species of augmentative of the courtier), and eunuchs for sultans and popes. It abounded in varieties. One of its triumphs was the manufacture of cocks for ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Pompadour is not generally known in all its particulars, though much has been written of her by persons of every shade of opinion. Some have exalted her virtues, while others have multiplied her crimes. Both parties are right, and both wrong. A courtier, and a man seeking to be revenged, are not historians when they write. With a little patience, and by a careful study of the writers of the eighteenth century, we are enabled to seize here and there a faithful trait of ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... perceptible, contemptuous smile played on the lips of this man, and a flash of hatred, and, withal, of scorn burst from his eyes. But this never lasted longer than a moment; his pale and sickly face immediately resumed its impenetrable aspect, and the smile of a polite courtier reappeared on his lips. This was Talleyrand, first minister of the emperor—Talleyrand, who had originally served the Church as a priest, then the republic as a minister—who had deserted and betrayed both to ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... my head last night, and when I slept Methought I stood in Canterbury Minster, And spake to the Lord God, and said, 'O Lord, I have been a lover of wines, and delicate meats, And secular splendours, and a favourer Of players, and a courtier, and a feeder Of dogs and hawks, and apes, and lions, and lynxes. Am I the man?' And the Lord answer'd me, 'Thou art the man, and all the more the man.' And then I asked again, 'O Lord my God, Henry ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... pounds, in fair gold, out of my study: An hundred of it I was to have paid a courtier this afternoon for ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... suppression. Wolsey first made public the infamies which disgraced the Church; while, notwithstanding, he died the devoted servant of the Church. This evidence is surely admissible? But no: Wolsey, too, must be put out of court. Wolsey was a courtier and a timeserver. Wolsey was a tyrant's minion. Wolsey was—in short, we know not what Wolsey was—or what he was not. Who can put confidence in a charlatan? Behind the bulwarks of such objections, the champion of the abbeys may well believe ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... entering into a bargain with a man who would make quite sure that he was getting his money's worth; and he knew in his heart that he had something better to do than to play, however successfully, the part of a courtier. Nor was he personally attached to Frederick; he was personally attached to no one on earth. Certainly he had never been a man of feeling, and now that he was old and hardened by the uses of the world he had grown to be ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Bamberg, and bears him off to his castle at Jaxthausen. The contrasted characters of the two chief personages in the play are now brought before us—Gottfried the rough soldier, honest, resolute, and Weislingen, more of a courtier than a soldier, weak and unstable. Overborne by the stronger nature of Gottfried, Weislingen agrees to break his alliance with the Bishop, and, as a pledge for his future conduct, betroths himself to Gottfried's sister Marie, who, ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... a good courtier, was inquiring of monsieur le cardinal after the health of his nieces; he regretted, he said, not having the pleasure of receiving them at the same time with their uncle; they must certainly have grown in stature, beauty and grace, ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... lustre, until they have adopted a form of expression, as well as a system of manners, different from that which is proper to mankind at large. In Elizabeth's reign, the court language was formed on the plan of one Lillie, a pedantic courtier, who wrote a book, entitled "Euphues and his England, or the Anatomy of Wit;"[3] which quality he makes to consist in the indulgence of every monstrous and overstrained conceit, that can be engendered by a strong memory and a heated brain, applied to the absurd purpose of hatching unnatural conceits.[4] ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... enough for that. Many of these officers wear decorations in advance. The colonel's manly breast bears at least eight of them. He has much to make up. Some of them—for instance, the two stately Swedes with their bland courtier eyes—are looking rather pale; perhaps they have been wounded as well as decorated ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Grace," said the little Prince, bowing low with true courtier-like grace and suavity, "I will, with your permission, crave my boon as a Christmas favor at wassail time ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... As Lempriere's agent, as the old friend of the family, he could not have done otherwise. All was over between him and Marguerite, yet he could not forget that, by the wish of the young lady's friends, if not by her own, he had once been her affianced husband. As for the death of the courtier, it was not in itself a subject for much regret; and, further, it had been wholly the consequence of the dead man's own actions, from his deceit towards the ladies to his final ferocity and foul play in an encounter ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... Pacha, doff your courtier's garb; We have given to courtesy all of its dues; Spring to your throne on the back of your barb, Shake to the breezes your regal burnous, Wave ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... lately sharply reprimanded and taxed by a Popish flattering Courtier, a Priest, because with such passion I had written, and so vehemently had reproved the people. But I answered him and said, "Our Lord God must first send a sharp pouring shower, with thunder and lightning, and afterwards cause it mildly to ...
— Selections from the Table Talk of Martin Luther • Martin Luther
... the Rank of Service,[FN271] in which the student distinguishes himself by his loyalty to the Mind-King, and becomes a courtier to 'serve' him. He is in constant 'service' to the King, attending him with obedience and love, and always fearing to offend him. Thus the student in this stage is ever careful not to neglect rules and precepts laid ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... introduced into Munster by Elizabeth, a word may not be out of place on Edmund Spenser and Walter Raleigh, the first a great poet, the second a great warrior and courtier. They both united in advocating the extermination of the native race, a policy which Henry VIII. was too high-minded to accept, and Elizabeth too great a despiser of "the people" to notice. To Henry and Elizabeth ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... courtier retired somewhat disconcerted by this Catholic but not very courteous reply, and reported it to a renegado of Antiquera. The latter, eager, like all renegados, to show devotion to his newly-adopted creed, volunteered to return with the courtier and have a tilt of words with the ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... was a favorite of Kaunitz and a thorough courtier. At an earlier period, when ambassador at Petersburg, he wrote French comedies, which were performed at the Hermitage in the presence of the empress Catherine. The arrival of an unpleasant despatch being ever followed by the production ...
— Germany from the Earliest Period Vol. 4 • Wolfgang Menzel, Trans. Mrs. George Horrocks
... Lee; "that's why I don't like him. He's not a real artist. He's a courtier. God gave him a talent, and he makes a mean use of it. Uses it to flatter people. He's like these long-haired violinists who play anything you ask them to ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... was made of more yielding materials than Reynolds; assumed more the airs of a courtier—humoured the king. Perhaps like Sir Pertinax he had a theory upon the successful results of 'booing and booing.' He never contradicted; always smiled acquiescence; listened complacently to the most absurd opinions upon ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... Brave without Fury, Great without Pride, Gay without Vanity, Wise without Affectation, knows how to Obey and how to Command; he knows great Things enough to manage them, and is so Master of himself, as not to let them manage him; he knows how to be a Courtier without Ambition, and to Merit Favour rather than to seek it; he scorns to push his Fortunes over the Belly of his Principles, ever Faithful to himself, and by consequence to all that Trust him; he has too great a Value for Merit to envy it ...
— Atalantis Major • Daniel Defoe
... no hurt, but 'tis always the fashion of your true bred Courtier, to be more ceremonious in his Civilities to Ladies than Men;—and he desires to know how ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... soul! when you tell that story, you trespass very much upon our good manners. Talking of courtesy, you must meet a friend of mine, who has been a courtier all his life; he cannot help bowing, I have seen him bow to his horse and thank him after he had dismounted— beg pardon of a puppy for treading on his tail; and one day, when he fell over a scraper, he took his hat off, and made it a ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... eulogists marching in front of Yudishthira as he made his progress from the field of Kurukshetra towards Hastinapur. But these very men are spoken of in the same poem as Brahmans. Naturally as time went on these courtier priests became hereditary bards, receded from the parent stem and founded a new caste." "The best modern opinion," Sir H. Risley states, [281] "seems disposed to find the germ of the Brahman caste in the bards, ministers and family ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Sirajuddaula was dead. Mir Jafar handed him to his son Miran with strict orders to guard him. Acting on a mocking suggestion of Miran, a courtier named Muhammad Beg took a band of armed men to the Nawab's room, and hacked him to death. Next morning his mutilated body was borne on an elephant's back through the streets, and it was known to his former subjects that the prince who had ruled them so evilly ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... thoughts sometimes flew back to the wondrous summer evening when I trod the Nollichucky trace with Tom and Polly Ann, when I first looked down upon the log palace of that prince of the border, John Sevier. Well I remembered him, broad-shouldered, handsome, gay, a courtier in buckskin. Small wonder he was idolized by the Watauga settlers, that he had been their leader in the struggle of Franklin for liberty. And small wonder that Nick Temple should be ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... did not imitate his protector in showing any startling fidelity to the fallen. He became a courtier, was permanently in favour with the King and with the King's son, and died established in the great territorial position which he had come into by ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... at Rome, Tasso was received by the Cardinals Cinzio and Pietro Aldobrandini, nephews of the pope, not as a courtier, but as a friend. At their palace he completed the "Jerusalem Conquered," and published it with a dedication to Cardinal Cinzio. This work was preferred by its author to the "Jerusalem Delivered." It is remarkable that Milton ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... this is worse, far worse, than we had suffered Ourselves to dream of at Vienna. There 15 We saw it only with a courtier's eyes, Eyes dazzled by the splendour of the throne. We had not seen the War-Chief, the Commander, The man all-powerful in his camp. Here, here, 'Tis quite another thing. 20 Here is no Emperor more—the Duke is ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... de Treville, the elegant and noble courtier, Athos in his most cheerful days might advantageously sustain a comparison. He was of middle height; but his person was so admirably shaped and so well proportioned that more than once in his struggles ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of Brunswick, a work of immense research [11],—besides these, and a multitude of similar and dissimilar avocations, he was deep in politics, German and European, and was occupied all his life long with political negotiations. He was a courtier, he was a diplomat, was consulted on all difficult matters of international policy, was employed at Hanover, at Berlin, at Vienna, in the public and secret service of ducal, royal, and imperial governments, and charged with all sorts of delicate and difficult commissions,—matters ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... was tabled in the house of one Alberto Scipione, an old Roman courtier in dangerous times, having been steward to the Duca di Pagliano, who with all his family were strangled, save this only man, that escaped by foresight of the tempest. With him I had often much chat of those affairs; into which he took pleasure to look back from his native ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton
... flush of pleasure that brightened it wonderfully. But however pleased she might be, Lady Geraldine Challoner was the last of women to demonstrate her pleasure in her lover's arrival by any overt act. She received him with the tranquil grace of an empress, who sees only one courtier more approach the steps of her throne. They shook hands placidly, after Mr. Fairfax had shaken hands and talked for two or three minutes with Lady Laura Armstrong, who ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Well, you will never make a courtier! You know, of course, what has happened to me; that I have no longer a husband—have had none for a year and a half. Have you also heard that I am now quite a poor woman? Tell me what ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... conversation at length in a letter to Cecil, wishing his correspondent to perceive "how he had need of a long spoon that should eat potage with the Devil." The discussion must have been an earnest one. Sir Thomas was not disposed to boast of being a finished courtier. In fact, he declares that, as to framing compliments, he is "the verriest calf and beast in the world," and threatens to get one Bizzarro to write him some, which he will get translated (for all sorts of people), and learn them by heart. He managed on this occasion to ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... and a courtier," he said, playfully pinching Bourrienne's ear so violently that the latter was scarcely able to conceal a shriek of pain under a smile. "Yes, indeed, you are a regular courtier, and the republic has done well to banish you, for flattery is something very aristocratic, ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... cheerful company. Dante, poor and banished, with his proud earnest nature, with his moody humours, was not a man to conciliate men. Petrarch reports of him that being at Can della Scala's court, and blamed one day for his gloom and taciturnity, he answered in no courtier-like way. Della Scala stood among his courtiers, with mimes and buffoons (nebulones ac histriones) making him heartily merry; when turning to Dante, he said: 'Is it not strange, now, that this poor fool should make himself so ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... mouse. My second is in pheasant, but not in grouse. My third is in limp, but not in stiff. My fourth is in smoke, but not in whiff. My fifth is in waistcoat, but not in vest. My sixth is in eager, but not in zest. My seventh is in high, but not in low. My whole was a courtier of long ago, An author who travelled in foreign lands, And died at last by ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the moment, and all eyes were fastened on the tall and distinguished form of Dr. Bayard as he strode across the parade, his handsome, portly figure showing to excellent advantage in his snug-fitting uniform. They saw him bare his head and bow with courtier-like grace to Miss Forrest and again to her escort as he stopped and extended his hand. Then, after a few words, he again bowed as gracefully as before and passed on in ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... in one manner, and speak one dialect. The bard is not to choose his expression among the singular accents of different conditions. He has not to guard his language from the peculiar errors of the mechanic, the peasant, the scholar, or the courtier, in order to find that elegant propriety, and just elevation, which is free from the vulgar of one class, the pedantic of the second, or the flippant of the third. The name of every object, and of every sentiment, is fixed; and if his ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.
... in the person of the aristocratic Virginian planter who has already been mentioned as taking a part in the French and Indian War. At first, George Washington was criticized for bringing the gravity of a judge and the dignified bearing of a courtier to the battlefield, but he soon proved his ability. He was wise enough to retreat before superior forces, always keeping just out of harm's way, and occasionally catching his incautious pursuer unawares, as at ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... acknowledgment I stuck to my flag, and the man's command of quaint but correct English convinced me that I would have to specialize in something more than first thought if I was to cope with this tea-house proprietor whose armor is the subtle manners of the courtier. ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... 'tis well spoken! Turn to good account The moment which presents itself but once! Truly this courtier reads a useful lesson If not in his sense good, at ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... last of a defeated host, viewing destruction and desolation around him. His fondest hopes were blighted; he felt as one robbed of his very soul; he was wretched and dejected, and turned from the spot with the feelings of an outcast, an alien; or as a once powerful courtier, removed from the presence of his sovereign, to a perpetual expatriation. Strawberry Hill had for ever lost its interest to him; the only treasure it contained held out no prospect of possession. In his heart there was a blank, which ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro
... God to see, to those at the bottom that we ourselves do not dare to see. There may be octaves for the family,—father, Jehovah, tyrant,—husband, proprietor, male,—lover, lecher,—for the occupation,—employer, master, exploiter,—competitor, intriguer, enemy,—subordinate, courtier, snob. Some never come out into public view. Others are called out only by exceptional circumstances. But the characters take their form from a man's conception of the situation in which he finds himself. If the environment to which he is sensitive ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... hath spoke truth, and so prevented what I meant to move to thee. There dwells near us a Gentleman of bloud, Monsieur Brisac, of a fair Estate, six thousand Crowns per annum, the happy Father of two hopeful Sons, of different breeding; the Elder, a meer Scholar; the younger, a quaint Courtier. ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... Ecglaf, and seemingly a confidential courtier of Hrothgar. Taunts Beowulf for having taken part in the swimming-match. Lends Beowulf his sword when he goes to look for Grendel's mother. In the MS. sometimes ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... a SPANIEL advanced, with a courtier-like mien, His manners were gentle, his coat soft, and clean, His nose was jet black, and his ears were so long, They swept on the ground, as he passed through the throng, Thus he spoke— "We boast to mankind an attachment ...
— The Council of Dogs • William Roscoe
... eight stories of a courtier of King Charles Second, which are here gathered together, the Castles are at their best, reviving all the fragrant charm of those books, like The Pride of Jennico, in which they first showed an instinct, amounting to genius, for sunny romances. The book is absorbing * * * and is as spontaneous ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... the gentle arts taught by his mother, and he wore his fine red velvet tunic and breeches with the grace of a courtier. We have seen, before, what a dandified gentleman Will Scarlet was; and Allan-a-Dale, the minstrel, was scarcely less goodly to look upon. While the giant Little John and broad-shouldered Will Stutely made up in stature what little ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... alive to hear the answer of Achilles Tatius. He was too good a courtier, however, to make any imprudent reply. "It was my duty," he replied, "to desire to be as near your Imperial Highness as your faithful Follower ought, wherever you might wish yourself for ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... perceived it confusedly. And so with revelations perceived through visions. If a prophet was a countryman he saw visions of oxen, cows, and the like; if he was a soldier, he saw generals and armies; if a courtier, a ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... modification, adhered to their provincial costume, picturesque as any in the world. Still, relatively to the pale history of the voyage, and his own pale face, there seemed something so incongruous in the Spaniard's apparel, as almost to suggest the image of an invalid courtier tottering about London streets in the time ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... served as a seat where merchants or suppliants might wait, sheltered from the sun by the shadow of the vast building at their backs, till their business fell to be disposed of (Plate XV. 1). Meanwhile they could beguile the time by watching the ever-changing picture in front of them, where gay courtier figures, with gold and jewels on neck and arm, mingled with grave citizens of substance from the town, or gathered round some Egyptian visitor, newly arrived on board one of the Keftiu ships, to discuss some matter of trade—a clean-cut and austere-looking figure, in ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... if common Swedish words were hardly fit to express his thankfulness, so he astonished Alma by dropping on one knee and kissing her hand, as he had seen "a courtier saluting a queen" in a "history ...
— The Golden House • Mrs. Woods Baker
... falling to pieces already. I care not, though, like Anacharsis, I were pounded to death in a mortar: and yet that death were fitter for usurers, gold and themselves to be beaten together, to make a most cordial cullis for the devil. He hath his uncle's villainous look already, In decimo-sexto. [Enter Courtier.] Now, sir, what ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... how hard it was to be practical and keep remote benefits in mind when she was so beautiful and so tempting and so trustful. He said aloud: "I am impatient, soul's delight! Is it strange?" And he bowed like a stage courtier to a stage ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... had him at his mercy, however, Mannikin, turning to the Princess, assured her that he had no desire to kill anyone who called himself her courtier, and then he bade the furious and humiliated Fadasse rise and thank the Princess to whom he owed his life. Then, amid the sounding of the trumpets and the shoutings of the people, he and Mousta ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... detained by illness in the "holy isle" in Northumberland, near Barwick. On his recovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment from the Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his way as a courtier, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Sir, what five years service has not done, five hundred years will not attain to. I have twice, Sir, been turned off like a Common footman, with most opprobrious language, without money or cloaths. As I am a bad courtier and can't help speaking truth, I am very sure it would not be long before I experienced a third time your friendship for me, if I was unadvized enough to make the tryall. No, Sir, princes are never ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang
... fought in the Low Countries, and had fought a duel himself in France with some uncivil fellow. He never looked handsomer, brighter, more gallant than then, and his faded sea-clothes became him as well as the richest gala suit or finest uniform that courtier or soldier ever wore. He had an exquisite neatness of his person ever, and had contrived every day upon that island to shave himself, so that while most of his fellows bore bristling beards, and my own chin was as raspy as a hedgehog, ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... is rather to command, a vigilant moral sense and great energy of character are needed. The Greeks—those artists of the spoken or written word—were artificial by the time of Ulysses, sophists by the time of Pericles, cunning, rhetorical, and versed in all the arts of the courtier down to the end of the lower empire. From the talent of the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to themselves, and the disputes of the vulgar were decided by the weapons which nature had given them, or by cudgels cut, broken, or hemmed out of the next wood. But now, sir, the clouted [*Patched ] shoe of the peasant galls the kibe of the courtier. The lower ranks have their quarrels, sir, and their points of honour, and their revenges, which they must bring, forsooth, to fatal arbitrament. But well, well! it will last my time—let us have in this fellow, this Vanbeest Brown, and make ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... you that death has dealt hardest with the poor who dwell in crowded lanes and alleys. But now the very air reeks with poison. It may be carried in the folds of a woman's gown, or among the feathers of a courtier's hat. They are wise to go who can go. It is only such as I, who have to work for my grandchildren's bread, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation; nor the musician's, which is fantastical; nor the courtier's, which is proud; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious; nor the lawyer's, which is politic; nor the lady's, which is nice; nor the lover's, which is all these: but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, extracted ...
— As You Like It • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... not have that fatal honor. 'To please,' how humiliating the word! 'to obey' quite the opposite! A soldier runs the chance of death, and there's an end. But in what base compliances, what sacrifices of himself, what compositions with his conscience, what degradation of his own thought, may not a courtier be involved! Ah, De Thou, my dear De Thou! I am not made for the court; I feel it, though I have seen it but for a moment. There is in my temperament a certain savageness, which education has polished only on the surface. At a distance, I thought myself adapted to live in ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... your good sense,' replied Major Melville. 'Observe now: this young man, descended of a family of hereditary Jacobites, his uncle the leader of the Tory interest in the county of—, his father a disobliged and discontented courtier, his tutor a nonjuror, and the author of two treasonable volumes—this youth, I say, enters into Gardiner's dragoons, bringing with him a body-of young fellows from his uncle's estate, who have not stickled at avowing, in their way, the High Church principles they learned at Waverley-Honour, in ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... conquered us seems nearer to ourselves than the part of us that has yielded. Of all our characteristics, self-esteem is the one that most readily changes its home, for we are instinctively aware that it has never truly formed part of us. The self-esteem of the courtier who waits on the mighty king soon finds more splendid lodging in the king's boundless power; and the disgrace that may befall him will wound his pride the less for that it has descended from the height of a throne. ...
— Wisdom and Destiny • Maurice Maeterlinck
... further north, and the huge freight-trains go smoking and clanking over the fen all day. I often walk along the grassy flood-bank for a mile or two, to the tiny decayed village of Mepal, with a little ancient church, where an old courtier lies, an Englishman, but with property near Lisbon, who was a gentleman-in-waiting to James II. in his French exile, retired invalided, and spent the rest of his days "between Portugal and Byall Fen"—an odd pair of localities to ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... calamities, cancer and consumption, idiocy and madness, must excite our unqualified surprise. And when the originator of this singular truth ascribes, as in the page now open before me, the declining health of a disgraced courtier, the chronic malady of a bereaved mother, even the melancholy of the love-sick and slighted maiden, to nothing more nor less than the insignificant, unseemly, and almost unmentionable ITCH, does it not seem as if the very soil upon which we stand were ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... gathered a group of Venetian personages, members of the Loredano family, which was a special patron of St. Ursula's Guild, and gave this panel. The types are all vividly realised and differentiated: the courtier looking critically at the arrivals; the frankly curious bourgeoisie; the man of fashion passing with his nose in the air, disdaining to stare too closely; the fop with his dogs and their dwarf keeper. Far beyond stretch the lagoons; the sea and air of Venice ...
— The Venetian School of Painting • Evelyn March Phillipps
... keys, early on the following evening I entered the wine-cellar, and, concealed in an empty cask that would have held a dozen of me, waited for something to turn up. Really, when I think of myself, a diplomate, a courtier, a man-about-town, curled in a dusty, musty wine-barrel, I am moved with vexation and laughter. Nothing, however, turned up,—and at length I retired, baffled. The next night came,—no news, no identification of my black-browed man, no success; but I felt certain that something must ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Philip Sidney, was a true type of the lofty aspiration and manifold activity of Elizabethan England. He was scholar, poet, courtier, diplomatist, statesman, soldier, all in one. Educated at Oxford and then introduced at court by his uncle, the Earl of Leicester, he had been sent to France when a lad of eighteen, with the embassy which went to treat of the queen's proposed marriage ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... across the very heart of the cathedral. Both unite only in asking help from Mary; but Blanche is a woman, alone in the world with young children to protect, and most women incline strongly to suspect that Mary will never desert her. Pierre, with all his masculine strength, is no courtier. He wants to rule by force. He carries the assertion of his sex into the very presence of the Queen ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... and yet his lord has in his heart either baseness or villainy, never will he be so courteous as to tell him the truth; rather he makes him think and believe that no one could be a match for him in prowess or in knowledge; and the lord thinks that the courtier is telling the truth. He who believes another anent some quality which he does not possess knows himself ill; for even if he is faithless and stubborn, base and as cowardly as a hare, niggardly and foolish and malformed, worthless in ...
— Cliges: A Romance • Chretien de Troyes
... the ultrafastidious set Howells tells us that Charles Eliot Norton and Prof. Francis J. Child were about the only ones who accorded him unqualified approval. The others smiled and enjoyed him, but with that condescension which the courtier is likely to accord to motley and the cap and bells. Only the great, simple-hearted, unbiased multitude, the public, which had no standards but the direct appeal from one human heart to another, could recognize immediately his mightier heritage, ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the nonce was the courtier, the artistic idler, the dilettante in the art of luxurious living; and Payne, conscious of his dirt-smudged overalls, envied him the elegance with which he played the role. That Garman was interested in the crudities of business seemed an improbability; that he was connected with ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... friends, because if you should happen not to like these, you could abandon them without ceremony or expense. Why not also attend the opera and your various social functions by proxy, through your secretary? If he were as good a courtier as he is "literary adviser," he might succeed in getting as much enjoyment out of the receptions and dinners as you would, if you were to attend in person. Then, think of the time you would save! We ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... bearing and pleasant manners, to be one of Nature's own gentlemen. No man could discover in him any trait of character even remotely allied to the uncivilized savages, as the Tibetans are held in the estimation of Europeans. He might very well have passed for a trained courtier, only that he was too good to be one. He came to the house while I was there. On the first occasion he was accompanied by a Goorkha youth, named Sundar Lall, an employee in the Darjiling News office, who acted as interpreter. But we soon found out that ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... strong, nay, even with convulsed feeling, and her fine eyes, usually so soft and alluring, flashed fire as she concluded. Deerslayer could not but observe this extraordinary emotion; but with the tact of a courtier, he avoided not only any allusion to the circumstance, but succeeded in concealing the effect of his discovery on himself. Judith gradually grew calm again, and as she was obviously anxious to appear to advantage in ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... THIRD COURTIER. But nothing can be done without the Italian's maps and charts. No one but he knows the route over ...
— Children's Classics In Dramatic Form • Augusta Stevenson
... for the abjurations of the heretics. Pelisson had the administration of the fund. He had been born a Protestant, but he abjured his religion, and from a convert he became a converter. Voltaire says of him, in his "Siecle de Louis XIV.," "Much more a courtier than a philosopher, Pelisson changed his religion ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... precarious position, so that he might throw off all dependence on his chief. The harrier turned against the huntsman; the minister gave him cuts with the whip and caresses, alternately, and set up rivals to him. But des Lupeaulx behaved like an adroit courtier with all competitors; he laid traps into which they fell, and then he did prompt justice upon them. The more he felt himself in danger the more anxious he became for an irremovable position; yet he was compelled ...
— Bureaucracy • Honore de Balzac
... Victoria with less humility to commemorate his success in battle. He is an honest, plain, down-looking citizen, lame and tall, somewhat at a loss for conversation, apparently amiable and good-natured, but certainly neither courtier nor orator; a man of undeniable bravery, capable of supporting almost incredible hardships, humane, and who has always proved himself a sincere lover of what he considered liberty, without ever having been actuated by ambitious ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Judge them all by their merits, but not by their ages Keep good company, and company above yourself Know their real value, and how much they are generally overrated Knowledge is like power in this respect Knowledge of a scholar with the manners of a courtier Laughing, I must particularly warn you against it Lazy mind, and the trifling, frivolous mind Let me see more of you in your letters Little minds mistake little objects for great ones Loud laughter is the mirth of the mob Low buffoonery, or silly accidents, ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... reception of pilgrims from every part of the Christian world. Not a vestige of these buildings is left. They were deserted by the pious inhabitants, it is said, at the time when Henry the Eighth suppressed the monasteries, and gave the Abbey and the broad lands of Vange to his faithful friend and courtier, Sir Miles Romayne. In the next generation, the son and heir of Sir Miles built the dwelling-house, helping himself liberally from the solid stone walls of the monastery. With some unimportant alterations and repairs, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... ambition dreams of glory, Give the poet laurell'd fame, Let renown in song and story Consecrate the hero's name; Give the great their pomp and pleasure, Give the courtier place and power; Give to me my bosom's treasure, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... be in active service. We expect great things of the Australasians, the Twenty-ninth Division, and our Lancashire men; and I know that we shall receive of your best. Good-day, gentlemen." And off rode the handsome courtier and soldier with a rousing cheer ringing in his ears. There's nothing like brains; and there's a great deal in tact. Ask ...
— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell
... life and quickness, which is the strength and sinews, as it were, of your penning by pretty sayings, similitudes, and conceits; allusions from known history, or other common-place, such as are in the Courtier, and the second ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... without study. An author partakes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and disappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier, or a statesman; nor can I conceive why his affairs should not excite curiosity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room or the factions of a camp.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 4 (of 6) • Boswell
... another party, Sir Pertinax—ha, ha, ha! we had what was called the cabinet council, which was composed of a duke and a haberdasher,—a red hot patriot and a sneering courtier,—a discarded statesman and his scribbling chaplain,—with a busy, bawling, muckle-headed, prerogative lawyer;—all of whom were every minute ready to gang together by the lugs, about the in and ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... indeed! what had she done to be so scourged? One address we miss: there is no ode in this book to Maecenas, who was out of favour with Augustus, and had lost all political influence. But the friend is not sunk in the courtier. The Ides or 13th of April is his old patron's birthday—a nativity, says Horace, dearer to him almost than his own, and he keeps it always as a feast. With a somewhat ghostly resurrection of voluptuousness dead and gone he bids Phyllis come and keep it with him. All things are ready, a cask ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... the seclusion of the women's apartments, Peter's acts were likely to astonish them still more and to give offense. Rowing in a boat, instead of sitting in it surrounded by his grandees; working like a carpenter, instead of merely giving his orders through a courtier, and fighting with foreigners and grooms, were acts so unlike to what a czar should do, that Peter made a host of enemies. Little did he care! No sooner was he free to do as he pleased, than he rushed off to Archangel, the only port Russia could call ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... of the age. 'The Ship of Fools' was not only read by the cultivated classes who could appreciate the subtle flavor of the work, but—especially in Germany—it was a book for the people, relished by burgher and artisan as well as by courtier and scholar. Contemporary works contain many allusions to it; it was in fact so familiar to every one that monks preached upon texts drawn from it. This unique and powerful book carried the spirit of the Reformation where the words ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... Binet and Courtier made an elaborate series of experiments on the action of music on the respiration (with the double pneumograph), the heart, and the capillary circulation (with the plethysmograph of Hallion and Comte) on a single subject, a man very sensitive to music and himself ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... was only the wind among the reeds. "Alas!" he said, "I have fled everywhere in search of silence, and yet here the very reeds speak." The simple and comparatively unlearned monks around him looked with a profound respect on the philosopher, courtier, scholar, who had cast away the real pomps and vanities of this life, such as they had never known. There is a story told, plainly concerning Arsenius, though his name is not actually mentioned in it, how a certain old monk saw him lying upon a softer mat than his fellows, and indulged ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... existence. I have been struck more than once with the anxiety of these gentry to hook themselves on to the train of any lady who was either the relative of a man in power or who was supposed to be on intimate terms with a minister or a courtier. Every man, said Sir Robert Walpole, has his price, and Bismarck might be justified in making the same reflection as far as regards what is ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the government which he himself served. He found it necessary to apologize for his garb, suited rather to the trail than to the drawing-room. He stood in the hall of the Chouteau home, a picture of the soldier of the frontier rather than the courtier of the capital. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... seated, his battle-axe and shield by his side, his chin upon his mailed breast, with but one old crone for companion, and notwithstanding his crimes and misdeeds, a pang of compassion shot through me as I looked upon Twala thus "fallen from his high estate." Not a soldier of all his armies, not a courtier out of the hundreds who had cringed round him, not even a solitary wife, remained to share his fate or halve the bitterness of his fall. Poor savage! he was learning the lesson which Fate teaches to most of us who live long enough, that the eyes of mankind are blind to the discredited, ...
— King Solomon's Mines • H. Rider Haggard
... displays: as intersticed with many a brilliant drop to friendly beck and clubbish hail, to moisten the viands or cool the incipient cayenne. No unfamished livery-man would desire better dishes, or high-tasted courtier better wines. With men that meet to commune, that can converse, and each willing to give and receive information, more could not be wanting to promote well-tempered conviviality—a social compound of mirth, wit, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... into beauties, but there is certainly no court, of which the taste is so absurd, grotesque, and monstrous, as that to which Major Denham was now introduced. An enormous protruding belly, and a huge misshapen head, are the two features, without which it is vain to aspire to the rank of a courtier, or fine gentleman. The form, valued perhaps as the type of abundance and luxury, is esteemed so essential, that where nature has not bestowed, and the most excessive feeding and cramming cannot supply it, wadding is employed, and a false belly produced, ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... entertainment the day before, and several tit-bits, which some of the servants had purloined, were hid under the seat of a window. The Country Guest was immediately placed in the midst of a rich Persian carpet: and now it was the Courtier's turn to entertain; who indeed acquitted himself in that capacity with the utmost readiness and address, changing the courses as elegantly, and tasting everything first as judiciously, as any clerk of the kitchen. The other sat and ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... at the Villa Irma, for the detective seemed somehow to have given place to the courtier, and so merry was his mood, so infectious his good nature, that even madame came under the spell of it. She sang with him, she even danced a Russian polka with him; she sat with him at dinner, and flirted with him in the salon afterward; and when the time came for her to ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... not the man to play the courtier and his hot blood was under little control. When Baard neglected him in favor of his royal visitor, he broke into such a rage that the queen, to quiet him, tried one of her underhand arts. She bade Baard to mix sleeping herbs with ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... fact, out of this group of malcontents, Moreau, Bernadotte, Augereau, Macdonald, and others, he feared only the hostility of the first. The victor of Hohenlinden lived in sullen privacy near to Paris, refusing to present himself at the Consular Court, and showing his contempt for those who donned a courtier's uniform. He openly mocked at the Concordat; and when the Legion of Honour was instituted, he bestowed a collar of honour upon his dog. So keen was Napoleon's resentment at this raillery that he even proposed to send him a challenge to a duel in the Bois de Boulogne.[283] The challenge, of course, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... kingdom. He accordingly summoned the Archbishop before a royal council at Northampton to answer to certain charges made against him. Becket answered the summons, but he refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of the council, and appealed to the Pope. "Traitor!" cried a courtier, as he picked up a bunch of muddy rushes from the floor and flung them at the Archbishop's head. Becket turned and, looking him sternly in the face, said, "Were I not a churchman, I would make you repent that word." Realizing, however, that ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... was certainly a dreadful dash of vinegar in his composition; but if he did not hate hard enough, hit hard enough, and weigh men, motives, and books, nicely enough to satisfy Dr. Johnson, the Bolt-Courtier must have been a very leech of verjuice. There is a passage in one of his letters to Pope,—I cannot just now put my hand upon it,—in which he suggests, in rather coarse language, the subject of "The Beggar's Opera" as a capital ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... Providence, as we are all aware, that most men must end their temporal course pretty much as they began it; nor will the thoughtful repine at this dispensation. In lands where nature in the many is not trampled upon by injustice, feelingly may the peasant say to the courtier— ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... morning, 1755, when the whole populace, from beggar to priest, courtier to lackey, was making its way to church, the town of Lisbon was shaken to its foundations by an earthquake. The shock came about ten o'clock, just as the Misericordia of the mass was being sung in the crowded churches; and Frankland, who was riding ...
— The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees • Mary Caroline Crawford
... her husband, and that we both had loved thee. I dared not listen to the brutal thing thou hintedst at—that now I might fatten where I had hungered. Thou hadst to answer for the baseness of that thought to the King of kings, when thou wentest forth alone, no subject, courtier, friend, wife, or child to do thee service, journeying—not en prince, George; no, not en prince! but as ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the monstrosities of experience! At the head of the council of finance, a place was found for the Duke of Noailles, active in mind and restless in character, without any fixed principles, an adroit and a shameless courtier, strict in all religious observances under Louis XIV., and a notorious debauchee under the Regency, but intelligent, insolent, ambitious, hungering and thirsting to do good if he could, but evil if need were, and in order to arrive at his ends. ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot |
