"Meanly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the year, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as a lieutenant's cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man must be able to defy anchylosis of the knee and thigh joints; he must have a soul above meanness, in order to live meanly; must lose all relish for money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any creed, educational system, school, or institution you please, and select Paris, that city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of hell, as the soil ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... and his gift, which could not be declined, consigned almost without eliciting a glance of approbation, to the hand of a freedman; while, the next moment, as an old white-headed countryman, plainly and almost meanly clad, although with scrupulous cleanliness, approached his presence, the consul rose to meet him; and advancing a step or two took him affectionately by the hand, and asked after his family by name, and listened with profound consideration to the garrulous narrative of the good ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... be persuaded, as he ought of this principle, that we are all originally descended from God, and that He is the Father of gods and men, I conceive he never would think meanly or degenerately concerning himself. Suppose Caesar were to adopt you, there would be no bearing your haughty looks. Will you not be elated on knowing yourself to be the son of Jupiter, of God Himself? Yet, in fact, we are not elated; but having two things in our composition, intimately ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... Freedom's glorious Cause I've meanly quitted For the sake of pelf; But ah, the Devil has me outwitted; Instead of hanging ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... afresh by this quotation,—"provided they do not carry off the property of their neighbors, basely, meanly; as, for example, you would do if you failed within three months, and my ten thousand ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... course. That he should be uncertain on the point was ridiculous. Yet, try as he would, he could not be sure. There were moments when he seemed on the very verge of settling the matter, and then some invisible person would meanly insert a red-hot corkscrew in the top of his head and begin to twist it, and this would interfere with calm thought. He was still in a state of uncertainty when Bayliss returned, bearing ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... she said, "I don't want to pile up the agony. Besides," she added, with an obvious effort, "I must be honest. I—I know I have given you reason to think meanly of me—vilely! But, don't you see, Mark, I—I have done with all that. I was never so anxious to make the best of myself. Not that it can ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... pre-eminent worth. In truth, there is nothing more valuable. It is, then, highly injurious to entertain low notions respecting it, and men who indulge in loose conversation on the subject are likely at the same time to think meanly of women. Beware of them, and if you hear them expressing such opinions in your presence, withdraw from them at once as unworthy of your company. Never fear but they will respect you ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous
... than in any feature of the face, in a sort of very true proportion between the hand and its fingers, between each finger and its joints, each joint and each nail; a something which says that such a hand could not do anything ignoble, could not take meanly, nor strike cowardly, nor press falsely; a quality of skin neither rough and coarse, nor over smooth like satin, but cool and pleasant to the touch as fine silk that is closely woven. The fingers of such hands are very straight and very elastic, but not supple like young snakes, as some fingers ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... she interrupted, growing indignant. "Listen, Leo: you know nothing about me, and what you think you know will have been told you by slanderous tongues. Therefore I will not take offence at what you have said; but I request you not to think so meanly of me as to believe I would sacrifice my name and my person on the altar of Mammon, and make a mariage de raison—the most unreasonable and immoral union ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... being great of heart, as women commonly are who are verily in love, resolved, although counselled to the contrary by many of her friends and kinsfolk, to appear, choosing rather, confessing the truth, to die with an undaunted spirit, than, meanly fleeing, to live an outlaw in exile and confess herself unworthy of such a lover as he in whose arms she had been the foregoing night. Wherefore, presenting herself before the provost, attended by a great ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... those fine days which the April of the other year meanly grudged us, a poet, flown with the acceptance of a quarter-page lyric by the real editor in the Study next door, came into the place where the Easy Chair sat rapt in the music of the elevated trains and the vision of the Brooklyn Bridge towers. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... not come to you with any claim of my own," the indignant lips trembling. "You shall not think so meanly of me as that. I told you why my father needs the money—all that he told to Mr. Neckart. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... entities, they were just collections of houses covering men and women. And men were either fools or crooks, and women were either ugly bores or pretty—bitches.... Men and women, they were born crudely, as a calf is born of a cow, they lived foolishly or meanly, and they died.... And they were hustled out of the house quickly.... They thought themselves so important, and they lacked the faithfulness of the dog, the cleanliness of wild animals, the strength of horses, the ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... in the spirit of social democracy to offer no prizes. Office in it, being the reward of no great distinction, brings no great honour, and being meanly paid it brings no great profit, at least while honestly administered. All wealth in a true democracy would be the fruit of personal exertion and would come too late to be nobly enjoyed or to teach the art of liberal living. It would be ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... wise, would meanly wait The dull delay of tardy Fate, When Life's delights are shorn? No! When its outer gloss has flown, Let's fling the tarnish'd bauble down As lightly ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... supplement to it. This instinct is more or less futile in most women because they are more or less ignorant of the realities as to wise and foolish expenditure. But it is found in the most extravagant women no less than in the most absurdly and meanly stingy. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Dr. X——, "that any woman should be so meanly selfish, as thus to expose the reputation of her friend merely to preserve her own vanity ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... "Eck haughtily ascended a pulpit splendidly decorated, while the humble OEcolampadius, meanly clothed, was forced to take his seat in front of his opponent on a rudely carved stool."(261) Eck's stentorian voice and unbounded assurance never failed him. His zeal was stimulated by the hope ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... modern French novel. We meet with the same sentiments, maxims, and philosophy. What were the gods for? They were superfluous and useless, or mischievous, but theology taught that they kept the whole thing going. They dealt meanly with men. Athena took the form of Deiphobus in order to persuade Hector to meet Achilles and be killed.[1643] They sent dreams to men to mislead them. What can men do against that? They mixed in the fights of men, but availed ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... that doubtless had foundered in the storm of yesterday.—Once more I am in England; and, to use the words of a venerable though apocryphal writer, "Here will I make an end. And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... journey. This kind of itinerant picnic was called "tuck-a-nuck "—a word of Indian origin, or "mitchin," while the box or hamper or bucket that held the provisions was called a "mitchin-box." I can fancy that no thrifty or loving housewife allowed the man of her household to go to market with too meanly filled a mitchin-box, but took an honest pride in sending him off with a full stock of rich doughnuts, well-baked bread, well-filled pies, and at least well-cooked porridge, which he could devour without shame before the eyes ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... have been to the M'wootan N'zige! well, you don't look much the better for it; why, I should not have known you! ha, ha, ha!" I was not in a humour to enjoy his attempts at facetiousness; I therefore told him, that he had behaved disgracefully and meanly, and that I should publish his character among the adjoining tribes as below that of the most petty chief that I had ever seen. "Never mind," he replied, "it's all over now; you really are thin, both of you;—it ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... landed at Kagoshima, in Satsuma. Here they had little success, only the family and relatives of Anjiro accepting the new faith, and Xavier set out on a tour through the land, his goal being Kioto, the mikado's capital. Landing at Amanguchi, he presented himself before the people barefooted and meanly dressed, the result of his confessed poverty being that, instead of listening to his words, the populace hooted and stoned him and his followers. At Kioto he was little ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... period, will not hesitate to regard the arrival of Mr. West as an important event. In the sequel of this work, it may be necessary to allude to the moral and political causes which affect the progress of the fine arts, and opportunities will, in consequence, arise to show how meanly they were considered, how justly, indeed, it may be said, they were rejected, not only by the British public in general, but even by the nobility. A few eminent literary characters were sensible of their importance, and lamented the neglect to which ...
— The Life, Studies, And Works Of Benjamin West, Esq. • John Galt
... meanly, but I looked at her and laughed, That none might know how bitter was the cup I quaffed. Along came Joy and paused beside me where I sat, Saying, 'I came to see what you ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... of these works were meanly printed, and were usually found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... head. "Well! Aramis," continued Porthos, "I have dreamed, I have imagined that an event has taken place in France. I dreamt of M. Fouquet all the night, of lifeless fish, of broken eggs, of chambers badly furnished, meanly kept. Villainous dreams, my dear D'Herblay; very unlucky, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... hands with. The father, enraged at this prediction, threw his son into the sea. He was rescued, and after many adventures, married the daughter of the king of Sicily. One day, while riding through Messina, he saw his father and mother, meanly dressed, sitting at the door of an inn. He alighted from his horse, entered their house, and asked for food. After his father and mother had brought him water to wash his hands he revealed himself to them and forgave his father for ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... Bois to the shabby skulker in the banlieue, he had something to say. He had been everybody's victim. The world had been against him. Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had acted meanly. Nobody could imagine half his sufferings. While he dwelt on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that interested ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... Megaris (then Theodoret's capital) was ablaze with bonfires on the night that the Comte de la Foret entered it at the head of his forces. Demetrios, meanly clothed, his hands tied behind him, trudged sullenly beside his conqueror's horse. Yet of the two the gloomier face showed below the count's coronet, for Perion did not relish the impendent interview with King Theodoret. They came ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... him, and honoureth him at her pleasure, and commandeth that all be obedient to him, and do his commandment so long as he shall please to be there. Now feel they safer in the castle for that the king hath so meanly departed thence, and it well seemeth them that never will he dare come back for dread of his nephew more than of any other, whereof make they much ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... said that Webster rarely indulged in personalities. When we consider how great were his powers of sarcasm and invective, how constant were the provocations to exercise them furnished by his political enemies, and how atrociously and meanly allusions to his private affairs were brought into discussions which should have been confined to refuting his reasoning, his moderation in this matter is to be ranked as a great virtue. He could not take a glass of wine without the trivial fact being announced all over the country as indisputable ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... wrought a wonderful doorway, which was fast falling apart when I saw it. This gave access to a large room, the former Cloth Hall, now used as a sort of theatre and quite disfigured at one end by a stage and scenic arch. The walls were stenciled meanly with a large letter A surmounted by a crown. The interior had ...
— Vanished towers and chimes of Flanders • George Wharton Edwards
... (as he said) at Timon's feasts, as he had in greater things tasted his bounty; but that he ever came with that intent, or gave good counsel or reproof to Timon, was a base, unworthy lie, which he suitably followed up with meanly offering the servant a bribe to go home to his master and tell him that be had not found Lucullus ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... cynic or think meanly of my fellow-man shall come, my mind will hark back to those two unpretending fellows and bow in reverence before the selflessness and immensity of the human soul. Needing bread, they gave it freely away; needing strength, they poured themselves out unsparingly; needing encouragement, they became ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... seemed to be getting nowhere I meanly rolled the lady a cigarette. She hates to stop knitting to roll one, but she will stop ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... imagined that he might have remembered prosperous days before the railway through Monte Cassino and Sparanise robbed Terracina of her robber's dues from south-bound travellers. His vast hotel, entered meanly by a little hall, was dimly lighted by candles. With another feeble creature, once a man, he preceded me, and speaking poor French said he had had my letter and had prepared me the best apartment in his house. We climbed ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... not much fancy having his prize counted so meanly. He immediately proceeded to bite the coin, and then started to ringing it on the hard surface of the oak table that had all the scorched spots on it, ...
— Phil Bradley's Mountain Boys - The Birch Bark Lodge • Silas K. Boone
... and person, and with plenty to say for himself on all subjects, was esteemed highly and regarded much by those who knew him, in spite of those little foibles which marred his character; and I must beg the reader to take the world's opinion about him, and not to estimate him too meanly thus early in this ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Punch this week reiterates The Times's slurs at the meagerness and poverty of the American contribution. This is meanly invidious and undeserved. The inventors, artisans and other producers of our Country who did not see fit to incur the heavy expense of sending their most valuable products to a fair held three to five thousand miles away ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... round the room, as his companion tossed down the second glassful; not in curiousity, for he had seen it often before; but in a restless and suspicious manner habitual to him. It was a meanly furnished apartment, with nothing but the contents of the closet to induce the belief that its occupier was anything but a working man; and with no more suspicious articles displayed to view than two or three heavy bludgeons which stood in a corner, and a 'life-preserver' that hung over ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Limmeb's Hotel.—This justly esteemed Hotel was much frequented by the late unfortunate Lord Camelford. Entering the coffee-room one evening, meanly attired, as he often was, he sat down to peruse the papers of the day. Soon after came in a "dashing fellow," a "first-rate blood," who threw himself into the opposite seat of the same box with Lord C, and in a most consequential ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... in me. Empty is my stomach, and look you," and she pointed across the room to a pile of nets beside a wooden bench. "There are three score rents to mend and the day is done." She turned to the doorway and for a moment stood looking out, barefooted, meanly clad and unkept, yet of comely form and with abundant dark hair falling around an oval face of more than ordinary beauty. She sighed and turned back into ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... so taken aback that I didn't even answer as well as I could. And then I lost the paper I had stolen—couldn't find it anywhere, and for weeks I was in constant terror lest it should turn up. Then I saw the fellows were all suspecting you to be the thief, and you know how meanly I took advantage of that to hide my own guilt. Oh, Greenfield, what a wretch, what a miserable wretch ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... nature of the country. I will now read you a description of another country, at a different period, at the end of the seventeenth century:—"There are at this day (besides a great number of families very meanly provided for by the Church boxes, with others, who, with living upon bad food, fall into various diseases) 200,000 people begging from door to door. These are not only no ways advantageous, but a very grievous burthen to so poor a country; and ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... known such hot impatience, such increasing anxiety; never had I felt so bitterly that the last chance was vanishing for me to strike an honest blow in a struggle wherein I, hitherto inert, had figured so meanly, so ingloriously. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... impossible for mothers of families to get help from the intelligence-offices, and ladies were obliged through lack of cooks and chambermaids to do the work of the kitchen and the chamber and parlor, they learned to realize what such work was, how poorly paid, how badly lodged, how meanly fed. From this practical knowledge it was impossible for them to retreat to their old supremacy and indifference as mistresses. The servant problem was solved, once for all, by humanity, and it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Homos returned to us now, he would give offence by preaching ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... through his eyes when ushered so suddenly into the company of those whom his earliest education had taught him to treat with awe and reverence. The degree of embarrassment, which his demeanor evinced, had nothing in it either meanly servile, or utterly disconcerted. It was no more than became a generous and ingenuous youth of a bold spirit, but totally inexperienced, who should for the first time be called upon to think and act for himself in such society and under such disadvantageous circumstances. ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... of hearing, leaving me almost desperate, both at being an eavesdropper to such a conversation, and that Madge could think so meanly of me. To say it, too, to Lord Ralles made it cut all the deeper, as any fellow who has ...
— The Great K. & A. Robbery • Paul Liechester Ford
... Mr. Hathaway, of all the guardians, could not have been always the help and counselor—in fact, the elder brother—of poor Yerba! Paul was conscious that he winced slightly, consistently and conscientiously, at the recollection of certain passages of his youth; inconsistently and meanly, at this suggestion of a joint relationship with ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... of mercy came. From her Marquez the tyrant learned that his speculation in treachery had collapsed. Louis Napoleon wanted no more of that stock. Besides, every French bayonet was needed in France. The rabid Leopard heard, and that night meanly crept away to save his own loathsome pelt. Bombs had begun to fall into the City, when a Mexican general worthier of the name took upon himself the heroic shame of unconditional surrender. The Oaxacans ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... hotel, I was a little surprised to find the streets of this gay city so meanly lighted. Lamps placed at gloomy distances from each other, suspended by cords, from lofty poles, furnish the only means of directing the footsteps of ...
— The Stranger in France • John Carr
... too much below his birth, he answered: "It hath been judged formerly, that the domestic servants of the King of Heaven should be one of the noblest families on earth. And though the iniquity of late times have made clergymen meanly valued, and the sacred name of priest contemptible, yet I will labor to make it honorable. . . . And I will labor to be like my Saviour, by making humility lovely in the eyes of all men, and by following the merciful and meek example of ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... and amity which had subsisted between his father and him. But Pompey's deputies having executed their commission, began to converse with less restraint with the king's troops, and to advise them to act with friendship to Pompey, and not to think meanly of his bad fortune. In Ptolemy's army were several of Pompey's soldiers, of whom Gabinius had received the command in Syria, and had brought them over to Alexandria, and at the conclusion of the war had left with Ptolemy the ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... of the rest of his property. The building was destroyed. The furniture, and with it the books and works of art so diligently collected, were stolen or sold. Cicero thought, and was probably right in thinking, that the Senate dealt very meanly with him when they voted him something between four and five thousand pounds as compensation for his loss in this respect. For his house at Formiae they gave him half as much. We hear of his rebuilding the house. He had advertised the contract, he tells ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... recalled from an absorbing period of oblation and self-examination, surveyed the young girl. The reflection of dark colors from the hangings and tapestries softened the pallor of her face; her hair hung about her in disorder; her figure, though meanly garbed, was replete with youth and grace. Silent she continued in the ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... hardly have been the cause of such a violent sickness. It looked more as if it had been brought about by something he had eaten or drunk. By this time the conviction he had tried to resist, that Rochester was meanly sacrificing him, became definite. Overbury is hardly to be blamed if he came to a resolution to be revenged on his one-time friend by bringing him to utter ruin. King James had been so busy in the Essex nullity suit, ...
— She Stands Accused • Victor MacClure
... barn, and that by such meetings as these, being indeed most apostolical and primitive, they will in a short time advance more in Christian knowledge and reformation of life than by the many years preaching of such an incumbent,—I may say such an incubus ofttimes,—as will be meanly hired to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... 28. Next day the battle was renewed. According to parliamentary usage, the report of the address was brought up, and Pulteney seized the opportunity to make another vehement attack on the convention and the ministers. He accused the Prime-minister of meanly stooping to the dictates of a haughty, insolent Court, and of bartering away the lives and liberties of Englishmen for "a sneaking, temporary, disgraceful expedient." But the interest of the day was to come. The address was agreed to by a majority of 262 against ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... as soon as the curtain rose that night, and he lived somewhere out of his body as long as the playing lasted, which was well on to midnight; for in those days the theatre did not meanly put the public off with one play, but gave it a heartful and its money's worth with three. On his first night my boy saw "The Beacon of Death," "Bombastes Furioso," and "Black-eyed Susan," and he never afterwards saw less than ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... five miles distant; and the Master of Ravenswood could not but, in common courtesy, offer the shelter of his roof for the rest of the day and for the night. But a flush of less soft expression, a look much more habitual to his features, resumed predominance when he mentioned how meanly he was provided for the entertainment ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... Still there was much left to say. He could own that he thought she would now accept his hand; and when Fairthorn looked happy at that thought, and hinted at excuses for her former fickleness, it was a great relief to Darrell to fly into a rage; but if the flute-player meanly turned round and became himself Caroline's accuser, then poor Fairthorn was indeed frightened; for Darrell's trembling lip or melancholy manner overwhelmed the assailant with self-reproach, and sent him sidelong into one of his ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... displeasing to the First Consul, who had no objection to flattery though he despised those who meanly made themselves the medium of conveying it to him. Duroc once told me that they had all great difficulty in preserving their gravity when the cure of a parish in Abbeville addressed Bonaparte one day while he was on his journey to the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... officers, a German, was repulsed by the young girl he had impudently approached, but the other one, a Frenchman, took advantage of the other sister, and after committing the dastardly outrage, he ran away with his companion. Marquis, shall I name you the man who acted so meanly? It was the then ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... up the business of an age. I suppose I need not name 'Pericles, Prince of Tyre,' nor the historical plays of Shakspeare, besides many of the rest, as the 'Winter's Tale,' 'Love's Labour Lost,' 'Measure for Measure,' which were either founded on impossibilities, or at least so meanly written, that the comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... him, John Milton, clean her boots and fetch things for her? Was it not perfectly plain to them that her present sickening politeness was solely with a view to extract from them caramels, rock-candy, and gum drops, which she would meanly keep herself, and perhaps some "buggy-riding" later? Alas, John Milton, it was not! For standing there with her tall, perfectly-proportioned figure outlined against a willow, an elastic branch of which she had ...
— A First Family of Tasajara • Bret Harte
... projects were his pretence. I could not but look upon this short absence as an evasion of his promise; especially as he had taken such precautions with the people below; and as he knew that I proposed to keep close within-doors. I cannot bear to be dealt meanly with; and angrily insisted that he should directly set out for Berkshire, in order to engage his ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... to procure myself a little water when I heard a step, and looking through a small chink, I beheld a young creature, with a pail on her head, passing before my hovel. The girl was young and of gentle demeanour, unlike what I have since found cottagers and farmhouse servants to be. Yet she was meanly dressed, a coarse blue petticoat and a linen jacket being her only garb; her fair hair was plaited but not adorned: she looked patient yet sad. I lost sight of her, and in about a quarter of an hour she returned bearing the pail, which was now partly filled with ...
— Frankenstein - or The Modern Prometheus • Mary Wollstonecraft (Godwin) Shelley
... extreme to the other was again shown, and universal suffrage was adopted. This would have been wise if intelligence and honesty had also been universal. But the result proved it to be an exceedingly bad policy, for it created a large class of voters who held the high privilege of citizenship so meanly, and were themselves so venal, that they would even sell their votes to the highest bidder. This, supplemented by the immorality of some of the intelligent citizens, made politics corrupt and the name of politician too ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... into the meanly lighted saloon, while O'Brien reluctantly turned up the light again. For a moment the saloonkeeper's shrewd eyes surveyed the newcomer, and, as they did so, a quiet, derisive contempt slowly curled his ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... malevolence proceeded from a flaccidity which meanly envied the activities and enthusiasms of other men. As a writer he was superficial; he had not the requisite energy for forming a clear or profound judgment on any question of difficulty; Johnson's comment, "He thinks justly but he thinks faintly" sums up the truth about ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair
... that occur to me of this narrow, confined, illiberal, unscientific, and servile kind of imitators. Guido was thus meanly copied by Elizabetta Sirani, and Simone Cantarini; Poussin, by Verdier and Cheron; Parmigiano, by Jeronimo Mazzuoli; Paolo Veronese and Iacomo Bassan had for their imitators their brothers and sons; Pietro de Cortona was followed by Ciro Ferri and Romanelli; Rubens, ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... return I met with—You have always, as a mark of your politeness, let me know how meanly you think of every one in ...
— Clarissa, Volume 5 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... forged in the fire of love, well tempered with Bible truths. Such a sword will make even the angel of the bottomless pit flee, its edge will never blunt, and it will cut through everything opposed to it. (3). Decision of character, perseverance to the utmost; no trimming or meanly compounding for truth, but a determination, in the Lord's strength, to come off more than conquerors. It is blessed fighting when hand and heart are engaged, and the sword grows united ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... scales of pauperism with open door, and a common staircase. After him they silently slunk in, and followed by stealth up four flights, and saw him tap at a poor wicket, which was opened by an aged woman, meanly clad. Suspicion was now ripened into certainty. The informers had secured their victim. They had him in their toils. Accusation was formally preferred, and retribution most signal was looked for. Mr. ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... this hostel of two portals as finally thou needs must go, What of the porch and arch of Being be of high span or meanly low? ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... house the children grow up, thinly and meanly clad, [119] to that bulk of body and limb which we behold with wonder. Every mother suckles her own children, and does not deliver them into the hands of servants and nurses. No indulgence distinguishes the young master ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus
... picture of dismay. He had meanly ignored the note, with the intention of cheating Mrs. Barclay. He had supposed it was lost, yet here, after some years, appeared a man who knew of it. As Mr. Barclay had been reticent about his business affairs, he had never told his wife about having deposited ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... satisfy Vitellius. He delighted in and commended the name and the life and all the practices of its former owner, yet he found fault with the structure itself, saying that it had been badly built and was scantily and meanly equipped. When he fell ill one time he looked about for a room to afford him an abode; so little did even Nero's surroundings satisfy him. His wife Galeria ridiculed the small amount of decoration found ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... pieces of eight, silver and gold. Ah! simple vanity said I whom this world so much dotes on, where is now thy virtue, thy excellency to me? You cannot procure me one thing needful, nor remove me from this desolate island to a place of plenty. One of these knives, so meanly esteemed, is to me more preferable than all this heap. E'en therefore remain where thou art to sink in the deep as unregarded, even as a creature whose life is not worth preserving. Yet, after all this exclamation, I wrapt it up in a piece ...
— The Life and Most Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of - York, Mariner (1801) • Daniel Defoe
... kissed it; seemingly devoid of pain, 235 Or care, that what so tenderly he pressed Was a dependant on [13] the obdurate heart Of one who came to disunite their lives For ever—sad alternative! preferred, By the unbending Parents of the Maid, 240 To secret 'spousals meanly disavowed. —So ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... that it was not wrong to tell falsehoods to hide a secret, nor to make promises they never meant to keep. People used to do so who would never have told a lie on their own account to their neighbor, and Lord Burleigh and Queen Elizabeth did so very often, and often behaved meanly and shabbily to people who had trusted to their promises. Her other fault was vanity. She was a little woman, with bright eyes, and rather hooked nose, and sandy hair, but she managed to look every inch a queen, and her eye, when displeased, was like ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... turning the religious out of them upon the world to starve. His Grace sends Royal Commissioners to visit them, and be judge and jury both. They were coming here, but I have friends and some fortune of my own, who was not born meanly or ill-dowered, and I found a way to buy them off. One of these Commissioners, Thomas Legh, as I heard only to-day, makes inquisition at the monastery of Bayfleet, in Yorkshire, some eighty miles away, of which my cousin, Alfred Stukley, whose ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... it tend to disperse these gloomy apprehensions, when Isabel found that the room assigned her was at the extreme end of the corridor, scantily, even meanly furnished, and had apparently been long unoccupied, as, although it was now June, there was something damp, chilly, and uncomfortable about it. During the whole of this visit, she was destined to suffer from annoyances of ...
— Isabel Leicester - A Romance • Clotilda Jennings
... an ante-chamber into a dining-room, thence into an inner chamber, and next into the Duke's room. In the ante-chamber stood Sir William Stanley, the Deventer traitor, conversing with one Mockett, an Englishman, long resident in Flanders. Stanley was meanly dressed, in the Spanish fashion, and as young Cecil, passing through the chamber, looked him in the face, he abruptly turned from him, and pulled his hat over his eyes. "'Twas well he did so," said that young gentleman, "for his taking it off would hardly have ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... mad," replied the girl, "for I do intend to accept Aunt Susan's bounty. I will wear her pretty dresses, and all the other things she happens to send me, and I will take her money and do my best, my very best, to get the Scholarship; but all the same, mother, I shall do it meanly, I know I shall do it meanly. It would be better for me to give up the Scholarship and go as a poor girl to Stoneley Hall. Mother, there is such a thing as lowering yourself in your own eyes, and I ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... in my face. No, I had never pressed him; I had never even encouraged him to come. I was proud of him, proud of his handsome looks, of his kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others were happy; proud, too—meanly proud, if you like—of his great wealth and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for thee: Deign on the passing World to turn thine Eyes, And pause awhile from Learning to be wise; There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail; Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail. See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just; To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust. If Dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's Life, and Galileo's End. [Footnote g: ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... occasion of laughter. And when I had washed and wiped my selfe, and returned home againe, I never remembred any such thing, so greatly was I abashed at the nodding and pointing of every person. Then went I to supper with Milo, where God wot we fared but meanly. Wherefore feigning that my head did ake by reason of my sobbing and weeping all day, I desired license to depart to my Chamber, and so ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... difficult to say whether he was more absurd than cruel or more cruel than absurd. Mrs. Fyne, with the fine ear of a woman, seemed to detect a jeering intention in his meanly unctuous tone, something more vile than mere cruelty. She glanced quickly over her shoulder and saw the girl raise her two hands to her head, then let them fall again on her lap. Fyne in front of the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... back from the river, being densest in the English Concession. The American quarter, Hong-Que, although not as well filled with fine houses, is the next in importance, while the French Concession, nearest to the great city within the walls, is meanly built, and has more of the native element than either of the others. For, although it is contrary to Chinese law for any native to hold property in any of the foreign possessions, in practice large numbers of Chinamen rent tenements from their foreign owners, and even own them, the property ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We—even we here—hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed, this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... to ensnare a lion with such a flimsy rat-trap? Wise persons do not hunt lions with these contraptions: for it is the nature of a rat-trap, fair cousin, to ensnare not the beast which imperiously desires and takes in daylight, but the tinier and the filthier beast that covets meanly and attacks under the cover of darkness—as do you and your seven skulkers!" The man was rather terrible; not a Frenchman within the hut but ...
— Chivalry • James Branch Cabell
... nature to, But little difference he made Sopp'd by the fog's asthmatic shade; From day's beginning till its close The day no brighter grew. Above the sheets, the sleeper's nose Peep'd shyly, as afraid, While 'neath the dark and draughty flue The burnt-out cinders meanly strew The hearth, where now no firelight glows, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 24, 1891. • Various
... for common tables, and when they had not kail they probably had nothing. The numbers that go barefoot are still sufficient to shew that shoes may be spared: They are not yet considered as necessaries of life; for tall boys, not otherwise meanly dressed, run without them in the streets; and in the islands the sons of gentlemen pass several of their first years ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... arts of a courtier to win the favor of his sovereign and of his minions and favorites; reckless as to honest debts; torturing on the rack an honest parson for a sermon he never preached; and, when obliged to confess his corruption, meanly supplicating mercy from the nation he had outraged, and favors from the monarch whose cause he had betrayed. The defects and delinquencies of this great man are bluntly and harshly put by Macaulay, without any attempt to soften or palliate them; as if he would ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord
... on Embro with a bright vivacity of eye, which forewarned the circle of one of his eloquent flashes: a smile of expectant enjoyment passed round,—"hallucination is the dust-heap and limbo of the meanly-equipped man of science to-day, just as witchcraft was a few hundred years ago. The poor creature of science long ago, when he came upon any pathological or psychological manifestation he did not understand, used to say, 'Witchcraft! ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... can receive from the drama, and to whom the very idea of what an author is cannot be made comprehensible without some pain and perplexity of mind: the error is one from which persons otherwise not meanly lettered, find it almost impossible ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... in Brabant, then called Hasbain, was educated in the abbey of St. Tron, and for his great learning and virtue was made referendary, chancellor of France, and prime minister, by Charles Martel, mayor of the French palace, in 737. He was always meanly clad from his youth; he macerated his body by fasting, watching, and hair-cloths, and allowed his senses no superfluous gratifications of any kind. His charity to all in distress seemed to know no bounds; he supported an incredible ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... did not realize my meaning when I said that this man may be taken as being quite on the same intellectual plane as myself. You do not imagine that if I were the pursuer I should allow myself to be baffled by so slight an obstacle. Why, then, should you think so meanly ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... of my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... Milton, which the author of this article drew up some years ago for a public society, and which is printed in an abridged shape, he took occasion to remark, that Dr. Johnson, who was meanly anxious to revive this slander against Milton, as well as some others, had supposed Milton himself to have this flagellation in his mind, and indirectly to confess it, in one of his Latin poems, where, speaking of Cambridge, and declaring that he has no longer any ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... millions who slave for industrial production; I see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible creatures of luxury, and some leading lives of shame and indignity; tens of thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and unsatisfying trivialities, hundreds of thousands meanly chaffering themselves, rich or poor, in the wasteful byways of trade; I see gamblers, fools, brutes, toilers, martyrs. Their disorder of effort, the spectacle of futility, fills me with a passionate desire to end waste, to create order, to develop understanding... ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells
... an affected laugh, pointing to a corner, in which lay a mass of leaves so green and fresh that they looked as if plucked but a day or two before: "truly, Nathan has not invited me to his hiding-place to lodge me meanly (Heaven forgive me for laughing at the poor man; for we owe him our lives!) nay, nor to send me supperless to bed. See!" she added, pointing to a small brazen kettle, which her quick eye detected among ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... 'T is impossible to behave more meanly than the Marshal's lady. The woman must be a fury. My gracious Lord, save me ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... was as cheaply and meanly furnished as any that the three girls from Lakeview Hall had ever seen. Nan thought she had seen poverty of household goods and furnishings when she had lived for a season with her Uncle Henry Sherwood at Pine Camp, in the woods of Upper ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... came in competition. Indeed I think our Indians have outdone the Romans in this particular. Some of the greatest of those Roman heroes have murdered themselves to avoid shame or torments; but our Indians have refused to die meanly or with little pain, when they thought their country's honour would be at stake by it; but have given their bodies willingly to the most cruel torments of their enemies, to show, as they said, that 'the Five Nations' consisted of men whose courage and resolution could not be shaken. But ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... was at the denouement. For now we were in Paris, rather meanly lodged in a dingy hotel on a narrow street leading from what with us might have been Piccadilly Circus. Our rooms were rather a good height with a carved cornice and plaster enrichments, but the furnishings were musty and the general air depressing, notwithstanding the effect of ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... counties flout counties; obscure towns sharpen their wits on towns as obscure as themselves—the same evil principle lurking in poor human nature, if it cannot always assume predominance, will meanly gratify itself by insult or contempt. They expose some prevalent folly, or allude to some disgrace which the natives have incurred. In France, the Burgundians have a proverb, Mieux vaut bon repas que bel habit; "Better a good dinner than a fine coat." ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Both were meanly dressed in clothes full of rents and patches. They sat upon a block of wood, each holding the end of a rope which extended upward and was lost amid the shadows above. The wind-driven rain reached them and snuffed the piece of candle ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... superiority of this settlement instead of prolonged war. This is the close: "We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud and ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... 'Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.' BOSWELL. 'Lord Mansfield does not.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, if Lord Mansfield were in a company of General Officers and Admirals who have been in service, he would shrink; he'd wish to creep under the table.' BOSWELL. 'No; he'd ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... well acquainted with the India Company, and by no means a friend to this bill, has told you that a ministerial influence has always been predominant in that body,—and that to make the Directors pliant to their purposes, ministers generally caused persons meanly qualified to be chosen Directors. According to his idea, to secure subserviency, they submitted the Company's affairs to the direction of incapacity. This was to ruin the Company in order to govern it. This was certainly influence ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... sailing up to moorings with half-a-dozen captured merchantmen. But a few weeks before, he had come home from a cruise with a little money in his pockets. He had clubbed together with some shipmates, and had purchased a small ship with the common fund. She was but meanly equipped, yet her first cruise to the westward, on the coast of Campeachy, was singularly lucky. Mansvelt at once saw his opportunity to win recruits. A captain so fortunate as Morgan would be sure to attract followers, for the buccaneers asked that their ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... scientifically, use more machinery, and generally bring more brains to bear upon their work than the English farmer. The practical conclusion is, that if farmers in England worked hard, lived frugally, were clad as meanly as those of the States, were content to drink filthy tea three times a day, read more and hunted less, the majority of them may continue to live in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... [Elizabeth enters, meanly clad, carrying her new-born infant; Isentrudis following with a taper and gold pieces on a salver. ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... writers, some, our own despise; The ancients only, or the moderns prize. Thus wit, like faith, by each man is applied To one small sect, and all are damn'd beside. Meanly they seek the blessing to confine, And force that sun but on a part to shine, Which not alone the southern wit sublimes, 400 But ripens spirits in cold northern climes; Which from the first has shone on ages past, Enlights the present, and shall warm the last; Though each ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... already courageous enough. He said that these Eastern girls were not used to having any sort of attention; that there was only about a tenth or fifteenth of a fellow to every girl, and that it tickled one of them to death to have a whole man around. He was not meanly exultant at their destitution. He said he just wished one of these pretty Boston girls—nice, well dressed, cultured, and brought up to be snubbed and neglected by the tenths and fifteenths of men they ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... coach or footmen, and in her old cinder clothes, having nothing left of all her finery but one of the little slippers, fellow to that she dropped. The guards at the palace gate were asked if they had not seen a princess go out. They said they had seen nobody go out but a young girl very meanly dressed, who had more the air of a poor ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... considered beneath the dignity of the men. These walked before erect and graceful, decked with ornaments which set off to advantage the symmetry of their well-formed persons, while the poor women followed, meanly attired, bent under the weight of the children and utensils, which they carried everywhere with them, and disfigured and degraded by ceaseless toils. They were very early married, for a Mohawk had no other ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... revealed his innermost soul? Yet, now, his narrow-minded fellow-dramatists—but no! not fellow-dramatists: mere contemporary playwrights, immeasurably far behind him in rank—eaten up, as they were, with envy and jealous malice, meanly derided everything sacred to him; holding up his ideals to ridicule before a jeering crowd. It has long ago been surmised that Sonnet lxvi. belongs to the 'Hamlet' period. But now it will be better understood why that sonnet speaks of 'a maiden virtue rudely strumpeted; [66] of 'right ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... it, and drank. The laird listened, and lifted up his heart. Not much passed between them. The memories of the English lord were not such as he felt it fit to share with the dull old Scotchman beside him, who knew nothing of the world—knew neither how pitilessly selfish, nor how meanly clever a man of this world might be, and bate not a jot of his self admiration! Men who salute a neighbour as a man of the world, paying him the greatest compliment they know in acknowledging him of their kind, ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... only a few disconsolate wretches crawling over the deserted comb! Shame upon the faint-hearted and cowardly of our own race, who, if overtaken by calamity, instead of nobly breasting the dark waters of affliction, and manfully buffetting with their tumultuous waves, meanly resign themselves to their ignoble fate, and sink and perish where they might have lived and triumphed; and double shame upon those who thus "faint in the day of adversity," when living in a Christian land, they might, if ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... wishes to taste all sorts of conditions: that is the act of a God who is not a fool. However mortals may regard him, I should think very meanly of him if he never quitted his redoubtable mien, and were always in the heavens, standing upon his dignity. In my opinion, there is nothing more idiotic than always to be imprisoned in one's grandeur; above all, a lofty rank ...
— Amphitryon • Moliere
... ungenerous man, meanly refused to give a copy of the Musical Museum to Burns, who desired to bestow it on one to whom his family was deeply indebted. This was in the last year of the poet's life, and after the Museum had been brightened by so ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... so meanly of me, Mr. Dodd. If it was not for my cowardice, I should enjoy this voyage far more than the luxurious ease you think so dear ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... favourable to the Chevalier than usual, although he suffered no loss of any consequence. Then a little thin old man, meanly clad, and almost repulsive to look at, approached the table, drew a card with a trembling hand, and placed a gold piece upon it. Several of the players looked up at the old man at first greatly ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... Charters thee with Gold supply'd, Peter and Charters had been deify'd. But ev'ry Lord, each gen'rous Friend implore, And by Subscriptions meanly swell thy Store. When to the Town by sordid Int'rest led, Mump for a Dinner, flatter for a Bed. Then to thy Grot retire, indulge thy Spite, And rail at those who for Subsistence write. Summon thy Rags, invoke thy scurril Muse, With keenest Malice Addison ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... London. A large meanly furnished room; a single candle on the table; a child asleep in a little crib. JULIAN sits by the table, reading in a low voice out of a book. He looks older, and his hair is lined with grey; his eyes ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... a low stool, and wept as she heard the unfeeling remarks and low jests, as the vulgar crowd pulled about the furniture, turning it from side to side, declaring they had no idea Esq. Clinton's mansion was so meanly furnished. But we will not dwell upon this ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... now. He'll wait as long as may be. He would sin, but he would not sin meanly. In his conception of himself a greatness, even in transgression, must clothe all that he does. He'll wait, gravely and decently, even though to wait is his heavy risk." He made a gesture with his hand. "Do I not know ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... should have desired to halt, for scarcely had his sleigh stopped, when a little old woman, meanly clad, with fisher's boots, and a net filled with bley-fish in her hand, stepped up ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V1 • William Mienhold
... of the Portuguese, that I could not but hate them most heartily from the beginning, and all my life afterwards. They were so brutishly wicked, so base and perfidious, not only to strangers but to one another, so meanly submissive when subjected, so insolent, or barbarous and tyrannical, when superior, that I thought there was something in them that shocked my very nature. Add to this that it is natural to an Englishman to hate a coward, it all joined together to make the devil and a Portuguese ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... the firmest attachment to the rights of mankind, can they so soon forget the principles that then governed their determinations? Can Americans, after the noble contempt they expressed for tyrants, meanly descend to take up the scourge? Blush, ye revolted colonies, for having apostatized ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... did that sort of thing with a vengeance! When the speech-making set in, these very men who had been all expressing their profound contempt for the Lord Mayor behind his back, now flattered him to his face in such a shamelessly servile way, with such a meanly complete insensibility to their own baseness, that I did really and literally turn sick. I slipped out into the fresh air, and fumigated myself, after the company I had kept, with a cigar. No, no! it's useless to excuse these things (I could quote dozens of other instances that have come under my ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... is not a single plant, not a fig tree, vine, olive, pear, nor flower bed, but bears the trace of your attention. I trust, however, that you will not be offended if I say that you take better care of your garden than of yourself. You are old, unsavoury, and very meanly clad. It cannot be because you are idle that your master takes such poor care of you, indeed your face and figure have nothing of the slave about them, and proclaim you of noble birth. I should have said that you were one of those who should wash well, eat ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... inspiration which come naturally to authors in contact with their kind were being denied me. Age was bringing me no "harvest home." In short, at the very time when I should have been most honored, most recompensed, in my work, I found myself living meanly in a mean street and going about like a man of mean concerns, having little influence on my ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... same kind." Excellently well said. But what inconsistency in saying, at the same time, "These observations of Dr Warton are, in general, very just and sensible." And again, "I by no means think so meanly of it as Dr Warton." Meanly, indeed! Why, he has just told us he thinks it equal to any thing of the same kind Pope ever wrote. But the distinguished Wintonian chose to speak nonsense, rather than speak harshly of old Joe. What are Dr Warton's "in general ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... himself well qualified to undertake, as he wrote an excellent hand, and was a master of arithmetic and accounts. This, however, he deemed a business below him, and confident of future better fortune, when he should be unwilling to have it known that he once was so meanly employed, he changed his name, and did me the honour to assume mine; for I soon after had a letter from him, acquainting me that he was settled in a small village (in Berkshire, I think it was, where he taught reading and writing to ...
— Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin • Benjamin Franklin
... the dress he had formerly refused and next day clothed himself in another new suit which he had received from us in the autumn. Ever since his arrival at the fort he had dressed meanly and pleaded poverty but, perceiving that nothing more could be gained by such conduct, he thought proper to show some of his riches to the strangers who were daily arriving. In the afternoon however he made another ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... as any of our late famed plays." He relates, moreover, that these performances attracted "a great confluence of auditors," insomuch that the Red Bull, a playhouse of large size, was often so full, that "as many went back for want of room as had entered;" and that meanly as these "drolls" might be thought of in later times, they were acted by the best comedians "then and now in being." Especially he applauds the actor, author, and contriver of the majority of the farces—"the incomparable Robert ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... for the commanding genius of Washington and his moral authority, and for the command which France and Spain obtained of the seas; on the petty quarrelsomeness with which the rights of the Colonists were urged, and the meanly skilful agitation which forced on the final rupture; on the lack of sustained patriotic effort during the war; on the base cruelty and dishonesty with which the loyal minority were persecuted and the private rights guaranteed by the peace ignored. ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood
... apart, And self-reproach a stranger to my heart; My zeal still prompts, ambitious to pursue The foe, ye fair, of liberty and you: Grateful for praise, spontaneous and unbought, A generous people's love not meanly sought; To merit this, and bend the knee to beauty, Shall be my earliest ...
— Paul Jones • Hutchins Hapgood
... discourse Will ne'er have end. Sit still; and, my good wife, Entreat thy tongue be still; or, credit me, Thou shalt not understand a word we speak; We'll talk in Latin. Humida vallis raros patitur fulminis ictus, More rest enjoys the subject meanly bred Than he that bears the kingdom in his head. Great men are still musicians, else the world lies; They learn low strains after the notes ...
— Sir Thomas More • William Shakespeare [Apocrypha]
... of agglutinated New York surnames to which his was more or less affiliated. They always amuse me, those names, which more than any in the world give the notion of social straining; but I doubt if they affected the imagination of Mr. Gage, either in this way or in the way I meanly meant them to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been roguish in their lives have been remembered by their higher accomplishments. A string of sonnets or a novel or two, if it catches the fancy, has wiped out a tap-room record. The winning of a battle has obliterated a meanly spent youth. It is true that for a while an old housewife who once lived on the hero's street will shake a dubious finger on his early pranks. Stolen apples or cigarettes behind the barn cram her recollection. But even a village ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... honourable war, Which ever have held as granted that the track Of armies bearing hither from the Rhine— Whether in peace or strenuous invasion— Should pierce the Schwarzwald, and through Memmingen, And meet us in our front. But he must wind And corkscrew meanly round, where foot of man Can scarce find pathway, stealing up to us Thiefwise, by out back door! Nevertheless, If English war-fleets be abreast Boulogne, As these deserters tell, and ripe to land there, It destines Bonaparte to pack him back Across the Rhine ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... being too cowardly to admit his fault, and having so much at stake, he took care to make detection impossible. It may have been that, but my idea is rather that probably it was neither quite pure accident nor pure design. I can imagine Mead meanly pluming himself over the fact that the life of this man who stands in his way, and whom he must cordially dislike, lies in his power. I can imagine the idea becoming an obsession as he dwells on it. A dozen times with his hand on the lever he lets his mind explore the possibilities of a moment's ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... worst slavery of our sex, which, by the selfish will of man, the stronger, still binds us to a bed grown hateful, and enforces a service that love mayhap no longer hallows! Of what use, then, to be a Queen, if thereby I may not escape the evil of the meanly born? Mark thou, Harmachis: Woman being grown hath two ills to fear—Death and Marriage; and of these twain is Marriage the more vile; for in Death we may find rest, but in Marriage, should it fail us, we must find hell. Nay, being ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... organization, he added very little; his genius being far unequal to this high task, and his judgment still more so. And his efforts were probably rendered fitful and unsteady by vicious habits; which may explain why it was that he who could do so well sometimes did so meanly. Often, no doubt, when reduced to extreme shifts, he patched up his matter loosely and trundled it off in haste, to replenish his wasted means, and start him on a fresh course ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... nation on earth, Christian or pagan, treats its defenders, its soldiery, so meanly, so shabbily, as does this, her black defenders; but whether the nation is more to blame, than we, who so long have submitted without a murmur, is a question. 'The trouble' shouted Cassius to Brutus, 'is not in our stars, that we are ...
— History of the American Negro in the Great World War • W. Allison Sweeney
... for the faggots which she gave away on her return. Her relations, her friends, and even her servants, were annoyed at her employing herself in such labour, and bitterly complained of the humiliation it occasioned them to meet her so meanly dressed and so meanly occupied. Lorenzo did not share those feelings; on the contrary, he used to look upon her on these occasions with an increase of affection and veneration; and supported by his approval, by the approbation of her director, and the dictates of her own conscience, she cared ...
— The Life of St. Frances of Rome, and Others • Georgiana Fullerton
... share of the glory gained by this brave defence, were also divided in their opinions with respect to the conduct of General Oglethorpe. While one party acknowledged his signal services, and poured out the highest encomiums on his wisdom and courage; another shamefully censured his conduct, and meanly detracted from his merit. None took any notice of his services, except the inhabitants in and about Port-Royal, who addressed him in the following manner: "We the inhabitants of the southern parts of Carolina beg leave to ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 2 • Alexander Hewatt
... whom he should strive, will persecute him with inexpiable war, whilst with the commons in whose behalf he may have contended he will not be one whit the more honoured, was a thing neither to be expected nor required. That by great honours minds became great. That no plebeian would think meanly of himself, when they ceased to be despised by others. That the experiment should be at length made in the case of one or two, whether there were any plebeian capable of sustaining a high dignity, or whether it were next to a miracle and a prodigy that any one sprung ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... burst up and run a-muck. No, no, Miles Milton, don't you think of that! What good would it do to kill half-a-dozen Arabs to accompany you into the next world? The poor wretches are only defending their country after all. (Another pause.) Besides, you deserve what you've got for so meanly forsaking your poor mother; think o' that, Miles, when you feel tempted to stick your lance into the Mahdi's gizzard, as Molloy would have said. Ah! poor Molloy! I fear that I shall never see you again in this life. After giving the Mahdi and his steed such a tremendous ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne |
