"Plebeian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was nothing exciting or heroic in being carried off in such a way! Never had he read anywhere of so ridiculously slow and tame a proceeding. And on an ox-cart! However, times had changed, and he realized that until he had established the new era of knight-errantry, the most plebeian ways of being captured by enchantment would have to serve. Yet, he did not consider it beneath his dignity to ask Sancho what he ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... less stimulus for the more showy and striking kinds of ambition, if the rewards of a public career have been less brilliant than in other countries, yet we have shown, (and this is a legitimate result of democracy,) perhaps beyond the measure of other nations, that plebeian genius for the useful which has been chiefly demanded by our circumstances, and which does more than war or state-craft to increase the well-being and therefore the true glory of nations. Few great soldiers or great ministers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... distinction before he distinguished himself; whilst on the other hand the tramp and the street-walker may have as "royal" blood in their veins as any lineal princely personage. It is records, therefore, that differentiate "civilized" from uncivilized people, blue blood from plebeian; and as we see millions of people living without records to-day in various parts of the world, notwithstanding that for centuries, or even for millenniums, they have been surrounded by or in immediate contact with neighbours possessing ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... person, her eyes, whose glance could be so cold, so disdainful; and, on the other hand, I saw my father with his robust, workingman's frame, his hearty laugh when he allowed himself to be merry, the professional, utilitarian, in fact, plebeian, aspect of him, in his ideas and ways, his gestures and his discourse. But the plebeian was so noble, so lofty in his generosity, in his deep feeling. He did not know how to show that feeling; therein lay his crime. On ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... greater facilities for intercommunication, and, as we have seen, a diversity of social and political forces interrelated, and acting and reacting upon each other in a manner quite unprecedented. The inquiry and criticism of plebeian minds were becoming more daring, and there was a stir and a restlessness in society, which made bad subjects for an absolute monarch. The religious Reformation, which began in Germany and spread to the westward, was but the legitimate result ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... old man, both devoted to a mistress whose character they well understood, and to whom they had every motive to be faithful. Here it was, then, that the lady hastened to await the arrival of the new object of her plebeian inclinations. Young Moireau (for such was the shopman's name) was not long ere he arrived with his parcel. Madame d'Egmont was ready to receive him: she had had sufficient time to exchange her shabby walking dress for one which bespoke ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... of the old school, which this lady retained, were the following: First, that of never mixing in the society of those of plebeian descent, such as Ganguernet: and secondly; that of always being carried in a sedan-chair by porters, when she went abroad. One evening she went to a ball, given by the first president of the court of assizes, a ball at which Ganguernet was ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... mere consciousness of kid gloves brought uneasiness, redness of the face, and a general impression of being all made of hands. They met the four white horses of an ex-harness-maker, and the superb harnesses of an ex-horse-dealer. Behind these came the gayest and most plebeian equipage of all, a party of journeymen carpenters returning from their work in a four-horse wagon. Their only fit compeers were an Italian opera-troupe, who were chatting and gesticulating on the piazza of the great hotel, and planning, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... inclosure, resting one hand on the cross-bar and waving the other as he spoke. His voice was full of passion, his eyes flashed fire, and his brow was bathed in sweat. There seemed to be some weird power in his words as in those of the prophets of old. The more than plebeian simplicity of his dress still further increased the pride of his gestures and the impressiveness of his voice. The French Revolution has shown since that in the ranks of the people there was no lack of eloquence or of pitiless logic; but what ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... part heard without envy, because they are not supposed to imply any intellectual qualities above the common rate. To be acquainted with facts not yet echoed by plebeian mouths, may happen to one man as well as to another; and to relate them when they are known, has in appearance so little difficulty, that every one concludes himself equal to ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... dissatisfied. And what renders them more deserving of admiration than Alexander, or any king, is, that some of these acted in the office of dictator, which lasted only ten, or it might be twenty days, none, in a charge of longer duration than the consulship of a year; their levies obstructed by plebeian tribunes; often late in taking the field; recalled, before the time, on account of elections; amidst the very busiest efforts of the campaign, their year of office expired; sometimes the rashness, sometimes the perverseness ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... and there was a butler whose majestic dignity and importance made even Edwards seem plebeian ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... come the aristocrat," answered Mikhalevich good-humoredly; "but rather thank God that in your veins also there flows simple plebeian blood. But I see you are now in need of some pure, unearthly being, who might rouse you ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... traditions to look back on and live up to, have they not a greater right to being self-centred than the plebeian with nothing to look back on or forward to? And, all things considered, is not selfishness a thoroughly human and entirely natural feeling? What right had she to condemn people wholesale ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... insurrection, his reformation of the coin could furnish only a faint pretence to a party already powerful and discontented. Rome, though deprived of freedom, was distracted by faction. The people, towards whom the emperor, himself a plebeian, always expressed a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual dissension with the senate, the equestrian order, and the Praetorian guards. [91] Nothing less than the firm though secret conspiracy of those orders, of the authority of the first, the wealth of the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... also the beginning of colonial empire. Virginia was a cavalier settlement, proceeding from the epoch of exploration and the search for gold; and New England was a plebeian and sectarian establishment, planted by men who fled from oppression. They did not carry with them very clear notions of human right; but these ripened under their oppressive rule among those whom they persecuted. There were local self-government and federation in Connecticut, and spiritual ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... to make another soup, so we consoled ourselves with the thought that a king approved of it, and we would show a plebeian taste if we did not also appreciate it. However, some wry faces were made over the unlucky soup at the table, and the King of Sweden's taste was the subject ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... character, enjoyed wide esteem, especially in the fourteenth century. What were performed under the title of Carnival Games were generally nothing but fables in dialogue, domestic scenes, incidents in the market, interludes at the cross-roads. Here was the vulgar plebeian joy allowing itself full licence. The literary activity of Germany in the Middle Ages was at least equal to that of the three ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... 1634, and proved thoroughly unsuitable and undurable; but probably no china—not even Delft ware—came over on the Mayflower. For when the Pilgrims made their night trip through the Delft-producing cities, no such wares were seen on the tables of plebeian persons. Early mentions of china are in the estate of President John Davenport in 1648—"Cheney L5," and of Martha ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... flowers of all nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River island—I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner, why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent, too—quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!' always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too, combining a filial ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... address, so fraught with the pathetick, John remain'd dumb, as a Pythagorean; Seeming to hint, "Roger, you're a plebeian Peripatetick." ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... of the oldest and wealthiest families in the county, for a strictly modern house, without a vestige of antiqueness lingering in its halls and with no faint aroma of bygone days pervading its atmosphere, would have been entirely too plebeian to suit the tastes of ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... impetuosity of her own nature. "At first," she said, "the trouble was anything but deep-rooted, for I fancied God would send many more, but it was not so; and now the title I so desired must go to the child of a woman—Oh, Rose, how I do hate her!—a woman who publicly thanks God that no plebeian blood will disgrace my husband's title and her family. I would peril my soul to cause her the pain ...
— Turns of Fortune - And Other Tales • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Baldy was unmistakably ill at ease in his new quarters, and did not feel at home; for he was accustomed neither to the luxuries nor to the restrictions that surrounded him. His early experiences had been distinctly plebeian and uninteresting, but they had been quite free ...
— Baldy of Nome • Esther Birdsall Darling
... wanted the boy called William after his late father, but Mrs. Wilkie would not have what she was pleased to term a plebeian designation, and insisted on calling him Alexander. The dowager opposed this with all her might, but "her usefulness was gone," and her feeble remonstrances were of little or no avail. This slight sank deep into her heart, and she waited, calmly and patiently, ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... American is absolutely incapable of comprehending the sense of difference between a lord and a plebeian that is forced on the most philosophical among ourselves by the mere pressure of the social atmosphere. It is for him a fourth dimension of space; it may be talked about, but practically it has no existence. It is entirely ...
— The Land of Contrasts - A Briton's View of His American Kin • James Fullarton Muirhead
... satisfaction of getting quietly along, while in pursuit of bread, comfort and knowledge, has sufficed to engross my individual attention; but I've often "had my joke" by observing the various grand dashes made by cords of folks, from snob to nob, patrician to plebeian, in their gyrations to form a circle, in which they might be the centre pin! This desire, or feeling, is a part and parcel of human nature; you will observe it every where—among the dusky and man-eating citizens of the Fejee Islands—the dog-eating population of China—the ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... despised on account of his high-class mediocrity. He did his best, according to his lights. He endeavored to improve the shining hour, and admired the busy little bee, as he had been taught to do in the nursery. If he had not the air of a thoroughbred, he had none of the plebeian clumsiness of the cart-horse. Though he was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, he was no coward; and though he had not invented gunpowder, he had the requisite intelligence to make use of already existing inventions under the direction of others. He had a way ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... the representative of high caste feeling all the world over, either reading or absorbed, never taking any notice of the crowds and glitter which I find so fascinating. More men in red, and then the crowd closes up again, to be again divided by a plebeian chair like mine, or by pariahs running with a coffin fifteen feet long, shaped like the trunk of a tree, or by coolies carrying burdens slung on bamboo poles, uttering deafening cries, or by a marriage procession with songs and music, or ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... that Mrs. Clinch once more brought the plebeian aroma of heated tram-cars and muddy street-crossings into the violet-scented ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... in bulk. Nothing is known of sacks or bags. To any spectator at Buffalo this becomes immediately a matter of course; but this should be explained, as we in England are not accustomed to see wheat traveling in this open, unguarded, and plebeian manner. Wheat with us is aristocratic, and travels always ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope
... bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte—if there are still any vicomtes—to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a profound ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... Park in conversation, while another ran off with his fowling-piece, and on his attempting to pursue him, the first took the opportunity of seizing his great coat. Orders were now given to fire on all depredators, royal or plebeian; and after a few shots had been discharged without producing any fatal effects, the thieves hid themselves amongst the rocks, and were merely seen ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... inclined. Of course the defendants were accused of this heinous sin; this brilliant passage concluded with a direct allusion to the "very aristocratic trio before him." Mr. Stanley was declared to be no aristocrat; he was pronounced thoroughly plebeian in all his actions and habits. "Like the individual who has now the honour of addressing you, gentlemen, Mr. Stanley is entirely free, in all his habits and opinions, from the hateful stain of aristocracy." He continued, following his client's steps down to the present ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... gloating over the packet, which lay a dirty scrap of paper, where every cab might pass over it. What I call the street is more strictly a square, for my windows were at the back of the inn, and their view was somewhat plebeian. The square is the meeting-place of five streets, and at the corner of each the paper was caught up in a draught that bore ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... good-looking face among the portraits, nothing but broad cheekbones and astonished-looking eyes. Lyalikov, Liza's father, had a low forehead and a self-satisfied expression; his uniform sat like a sack on his bulky plebeian figure; on his breast was a medal and a Red Cross Badge. There was little sign of culture, and the luxury was senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The floors irritated him with ...
— The Lady with the Dog and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... rapidity that is quite inconceivable to an English dancer, the music changes to a slower movement, and then follows a succession of zig-zag minuets, performed by old and young, straight and crooked, noble and plebeian, all at once, from one end of the room to the other. Tallow candles snuffing and stinking, dishes changing, heads scratching, and all sorts of performances going forward at the same moment; the flutes, oboes, and bassoons snorting and grunting with ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... Malthe, of ancient noblesse, but in low circumstances, was in a coffee-house at Paris, where was Julien, the great manufacturer at the Gobelins, of the fine tapestry, so much distinguished both for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. Says Julien, with a plebeian insolence, 'I think, Sir, you had better have your carriage new painted.' The chevalier looked at him with indignant contempt, and answered, 'Well, Sir, you may take it home and dye it!' All the coffee-house rejoiced ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... have grown richer and richer. But what has happened to those who have invested in them? Oh! let us drop the subject, it is unpleasant. For myself it doesn't matter, because although it isn't under my control, I have money of my own. You know we are a plebeian lot on the male side, my grandfather was a draper in a large way of business, my father was a coal-merchant who made a great fortune. His brother, my uncle, in whom my father always believed implicitly, took to what is called Finance, and when my father died he left me, his only ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... Freeman says in his Federal Government, the citizen "looked down upon the vulgar herd of slaves, the freedmen and unqualified residents, as his own plebeian fathers had been looked down upon by the old Eupatrides in the days of Cleisthenes and Solon." Whatever phase of this Greek society we discuss, we must not forget that there was a large class excluded ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... shell-fish or a half-dozen; the element of uncertainty appealed to his sporting instincts. But fishing he had stricken utterly from his list. It was too hard and too dirty. Slogging at the heavy trawls and afterward dressing the catch was too plebeian a business for the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... more, and for a long time to come must be regarded as more—namely, as an explanation. It has eyes and fingers of its own, it has ocular evidence and palpableness of its own: this operates fascinatingly, persuasively, and CONVINCINGLY upon an age with fundamentally plebeian tastes—in fact, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternal popular sensualism. What is clear, what is "explained"? Only that which can be seen and felt—one must pursue every problem thus far. ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... object to the rent in chickens? Is it because our republican farmers have got to be so aristocratic themselves, that they do not like to be thought poulterers? This is being aristocratic on the other side. These dignitaries should remember that if it be plebeian to furnish fowls, it is plebeian to receive them; and if the tenant has to find an individual who has to submit to the degradation of tendering a pair of fat fowls, the landlord has to find an individual who has to submit to the degradation of taking them, and of putting them ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... and more or less of a strong bias, for a thorough exposition of their profound penetralia. It may be, too, that their assumed patrician sensitiveness shrank from entering into competition with the plebeian fellows who had to study hard and write voluminously for a few pennies to keep soul and body together. And your Southern grandees, before the war, were not compelled to drudge for a subsistence; they had to take little thought for the morrow. Their vast landed ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune
... married, we micht as weel mak' a wedding o't. I, however, thought it prudent to agree to their wish, which I did the mair readily, as I had nae particular acquaintance in Edinburgh. The only point that I wad not concede was being conveyed to the chapel in a coach. That my plebeian blood, notwithstanding my royal name o' Stuart, could not overcome. 'Save us a'!' said I, 'if I wadna walk to be married, what in the three kingdoms ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... one of the most amusing of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Virgilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety: and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is, perhaps, too much bustle in the first act, and ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... that in the time of the one-o'clock court they used to receive a full share of the attention which I could only so scantily and fleetingly bestow. They were often halted, as that night I saw them halting, in their progress, and this favored the plebeian witnesses, who ranged along their course and invited themselves and one another to a study of the looks and dresses of the titles, and to open comment on both. The study and the comment must have had their limits; the observed knew how much to bear if the observers ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... name of the jackal (Canis aureus) means simply 'yellow dog,' and not a few of that animal's characteristics are seen in his domesticated representative. For the plebeian cur is shrewd, active, and hardy, and far better equipped for the real struggle of life than any of his ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... wake of Lady Driffield, when the moment at last arrived for showing the guests to their rooms, had passed off safely, Lucy throwing out an agitated 'Thank you!' when Lady Driffield had even gone so far as to open a door with her own bediamonded hand, which had Mrs. Grieve's plebeian appellations written in full upon the ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the association of men and women in refined circles shall be frank without freedom, friendly without familiarity. "Flirting" is a plebeian diversion. Every well-bred woman is a queen, for whose sake every well-bred man will hold a lance ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... both masked and, stepping into an adjoining shop, as they were unknown, the queen ordered one of the footmen to call a common hackney-coach, and they, both entering, drove to the opera-house, with very much the same sense of the ludicrous in being found in so plebeian a vehicle, as a New York lady would feel on passing through Broadway in a hand-cart or on a wheel-barrow. The fun-loving queen was so entertained with the whimsical adventure, that she could not refrain ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... length imitated by the republics of Tuscany. [1421] In the Italian cities a municipal government had never been totally abolished; and their first privileges were granted by the favor and policy of the emperors, who were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of the nobles. But their rapid progress, the daily extension of their power and pretensions, were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising communities. [143] Each city ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... because of family, to positions for which they had no fitness. But, then, in the moment of action they were obliged, in their ignorance and trepidation, to intrust every movement, even the most simple, to some subaltern, some despised plebeian. ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... justice in the county, and repeated his challenge of the wager, which our adventurer now accepted, protesting, at the same time, that it was not a step taken from any motive of pride, but entirely with a view to punish an insolent plebeian, who could not otherwise be chastised without a breach of the peace. Twenty guineas being deposited on each side in the hands of Mr. Elmy, Prickle, with equal confidence and despatch, produced a canvas bag, containing two hundred and ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... Guillaume! well met, O Godree the debonnair! Thou rememberest Mallet de Graville, and in this unseemly guise, on foot, and with villeins, sweating under the eyes of plebeian Phoebus, thou beholdest that ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... that a princess, who (according to her knowledge) was sincerely pious, should decline to place such a man upon an Episcopal throne? This argues, beyond a doubt, that Swift was in that state of constitutional irreligion, irreligion from a vulgar temperament, which imputes to everybody else its own plebeian feelings. People differed, he fancied, not by more and less religion, but by more and less dissimulations. And, therefore, it seemed to him scandalous that a princess, who must, of course, in her heart regard (in common with himself) all mysteries ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... first, unconquerable Lord! Led off two captive trumps, and swept the board. 50 As many more Manillio forc'd to yield, And march'd a victor from the verdant field. Him Basto follow'd, but his fate more hard Gain'd but one trump and one Plebeian card. With his broad sabre next, a chief in years, 55 The hoary Majesty of Spades appears, Puts forth one manly leg, to sight reveal'd, The rest, his many-colour'd robe conceal'd. The rebel Knave, ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... and the brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in order to save ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... nephew of the doge, and Filippo Calendaro, a seaman of great repute, were summoned to conference immediately. It was agreed to communicate the design to six other associates; and, during many nights successively, these plebeian assassins arranged with the doge, under the roof of his own palace, the massacre of the entire aristocracy, and the dissolution of the existing government. "It was concerted that sixteen or seventeen leaders should ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 482, March 26, 1831 • Various
... return thanks for this wedding, seeing how it will purge of coarseness the picture-sheets of that artistic nation, which will hardly be able to caricature the new wife as it did poor plebeian Josephine. Such starched and ironed monarchists cannot sneer at a woman of such a divinely dry and crusted ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... his hopes lay irretrievably buried. He walked on—majestic as he had never been before, in the brilliant throne-room of the Tuileries or the mystic vastness of Notre Dame when the Imperial crown sat so ill upon his plebeian head. . . . He walked on—silent, exalted and great—great through the magnitude ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... guardian? As she thought of his fastidious overweening pride, his haughty scorn of everything plebeian, his detestation of all that appertained to the ranks of the ill-bred, a keen pang of almost intolerable shame darted through her heart, and a burning tide surged over her cheeks, painting them fiery scarlet. Would he accord her the shelter ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... ballium; but the original owners of Kildrummie, less rich and powerful suzerains than their equals in South Britain, were probably contented with merely a stout wall to divide their own sovereign residence from their more plebeian followers. The keep itself, constructed like all other similar buildings of the age, was a massive tower, covering but a small square, and four or five stories high. There were attempts at luxury in the chambers within, but to modern taste the Norman luxury ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... of the community said of them and their offspring is really not worth while. Envy has a sharp tongue, and when has not the aristocrat been the target for the plebeian's sneers? ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... Helene Churchill laughed. She did not often laugh. Just for an instant her eyes and Zillah Forsyth's clashed together in the irremediable antagonism of caste,—the Plebeian's scornful impatience with the Aristocrat, equaled only by the Aristocrat's condescending patience with ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... received the citizen with distant politeness, expressing that sort of reserve by which those of the higher ranks are sometimes willing to make a plebeian sensible that he is an intruder. But Master George seemed neither displeased nor disconcerted. He assumed the chair, which, in deference to his respectable appearance, Lord Nigel offered to him, and said, after a moment's pause, during which he had looked attentively ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... and its adornments. It was the first theater in the United States which boasted a tier composed exclusively of boxes. This was the second balcony. The parterre was entered from the first balcony, a circumstance which redeemed it from its old plebeian association as "the pit," in which it would have been indecorous for ladies to sit. The seats in the parterre were mahogany chairs upholstered in blue damask. The seats in the first balcony were mahogany sofas similarly upholstered. The box fronts had ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... your father Gov. Kockney? I did not know that governor was an English title; it sounds very plebeian ...
— Elinor Wyllys - Vol. I • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... plebeian rabble Dare assail my name at Rome, Where my noble spouse, Octavia, Weeps within her widowed home, Seek her; say the gods bear witness— Altars, augurs, circling wings— That her blood, with mine commingled, Yet shall mount the throne ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... four spacious halls for the meetings of the senate or courts of justice, fourteen churches, fourteen palaces, and four thousand three hundred and eighty-eight houses, which, for their size or beauty, deserved to be distinguished from the multitude of plebeian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... audacious an opinion?" exclaimed Nicephorus; "is it for such as thou to suppose for a moment that the music which the wife and daughter of the Emperor might condescend to make, was intended to afford either matter of pleasure or of criticism to every plebeian barbarian who might hear them? Begone from this place! nor dare, on any pretext, again to appear before mine eyes— under allowance always of ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... apparent effect upon her; her step never faltered, her eye never quailed. What a partial thing is fame," he continued, "and how poor a motive to duty! The names of Palafox and Zaragoza are forever wedded. How few remember the old plebeian, Tio Jorge, who counseled and spurred on both governor and populace ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... harmony and bring discord and confusion into the luxuriance of the furnishings, yet will nonchalantly tolerate the incongruity of a miserable fragment of a library made up of the cheapest and meanest editions to be found in the market, such as would be scorned by those of the most limited means and plebeian tastes. These will be found inappropriately housed amid the most sumptuous surroundings. A single rug to adorn the floor, or a single vase resting on a mantle, will often be found to have cost ten times as much ...
— Book-Lovers, Bibliomaniacs and Book Clubs • Henry H. Harper
... crown being restrained from making any new lords, but upon the extinction of families. This gave a great alarm to the nation, and many papers were wrote with spirit against it; amongst the rest, one called the Plebeian, now known to have been Sir Richard Steele's. In answer to this came out the Old Whig N deg.. 1. on the State of the Peerage, with some Remarks on the Plebeian. This controversy was carried on between the two friends, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber
... same ceremony he had employed since my arrival into the family, though with hostility bristling psychologically for my plebeian intrusion into his traditions of the Craddock ladies, Rufus appalled me by offering me for the third time since my arrival at Elmnest roasted ribs of the hog, muffins and coffee. Only my training in the ...
— The Golden Bird • Maria Thompson Daviess
... picture, sir—a genuine portrait by the Spaniard, and doubtless, of some Spanish nobleman. "Then," said he, "I won't have it; I'll have no Spanish blood contaminate my family, sir." "Spanish blood," rejected by the plebeian! I have known better men than you, Eusebius—excuse the comparison—vamped up and engraved upon the spur of the moment, for celebrated highwaymen or bloody murderers. But this digression won't help you out in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... which, in the middle ages, had been fostered by the municipal liberties of the south of France, were the harbingers of modern freedom, and had therefore been sacrificed to the inexorable feudalism of the north. After a bloody conflict, the plebeian reformers, crushed by the merciless leaders of the military aristocracy, escaped to the highlands that divide France and Italy. Preserving the discipline of a benevolent, ascetic morality, with the simplicity of a ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... Roman decemvir and patrician in 451 B.C.; outraged Virginia, a beautiful plebeian damsel, whom her father, on discovering of the crime, killed with a knife snatched from a butcher's stall, rousing thereby the popular rage against the decemvir, who was cast into prison, where he put an end to himself, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... perhaps vacancy of mind, that gave to his idea, when once the seed of it had lodged in his mind, so much vigour in growth and room for expansion. Think of him, then, at the age of twenty-five as a typical plebeian Genoese, bearing all the characteristic traits of his century and people—the spirit of adventure, the love of gold and of power, a spirit of mysticism, and more than a touch of crafty and elaborate dissimulation, when that ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... warmth as if he had been baptized already; "there are thousands and tens of thousands of them in Rome, in the cities of Italy, in Greece and Asia. There are Christians among the legions and among the pretorians; they are in the palace of Caesar itself. Slaves and citizens, poor and rich, plebeian and patrician, confess that faith. Dost thou know that the Cornelii are Christians, that Pomponia Graecina is a Christian, that likely Octavia was, and Acte is? Yes, that teaching will embrace the world, and it alone is able to renew it. Do not ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... who was examining the pictures through a tortoise-shell eye-glass adorned with diamonds and hanging from a long pearl chain. Undine was instantly struck by the opportunities which this toy presented for graceful wrist movements and supercilious turns of the head. It seemed suddenly plebeian and promiscuous to look at the world with a naked eye, and all her floating desires were merged in the wish for a jewelled eye-glass and chain. So violent was this wish that, drawn on in the wake of the owner of the eye-glass, she found herself inadvertently bumping against a stout tight-coated ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... pardon," he cried, "That is all the humble plebeian can say. That I may be more completely under this fairy spell, pray cast about yourself the robe of rank and take up the sceptre. Perhaps I may ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... infallibly be lost in allusion and authority; but, in point of fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old; only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... the Opposition, Addison with the Ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, vehemently attacked the bill. Sunderland called for help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a paper called the Old Whig, he answered, and indeed refuted, Steele's arguments. It seems to us that the premises of both the controversialists ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and crossed the room towards the window. He was, it appeared, an eminently practical man, and desired to see the exact spot where Mogente had fallen before the story went any farther. Perro went so far as to push his plebeian head through the bars and look down into the street. It was his misfortune to fall into the fault of excess as it is the misfortune ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... in his hatred of Clay. In proportion as Clay rose in the estimation of his countrymen, did Randolph's hate increase. Clay sprang from the plebeian stock of his native Virginia. He had come as the representative of the rustics of Kentucky. He was not sanctified by a college diploma. He boasted no long line of ancestry, and yet he had met, and triumphed over, the scions of a boasted ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... Moses family were at present interested, a man of fashionable exterior—a baronet at the very least. He had a martial air and bushy whiskers—his movements all the ease of nature added to the grace of art. The plebeian Moses felt an involuntary respect for the august presence, and, in the full gladness of his heart, took off his hat in humble reverence. We promised the reader one glimpse of the incomparable Warren de Fitzalbert. He has obtained it. That mysterious individual acknowledges the salutation of ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... kindly, plebeian sheep-dog proved an admirable foster-mother, diligent, thorough, and forgetful of nothing, not even of her own needs and well-being, though it was evident that these were served from quite unselfish motives, ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... is Beckendorff, is it?" exclaimed the young Count of Eberstein; "and his daughter, of course! Well; there is nothing like being a plebeian and a Prime Minister! I suppose Beckendorff will bring an anonymous friend to ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Film Plot," which appeared in a recent issue of Punch, has quoted an "authority" (anonymous) for the approval of his scenario. It is quite evident that this "authority" (so-styled) must belong to the plebeian ranks of the film-world. It cannot reside in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... broken-nosed pitcher on the kitchen window-sill, different from that of the same carefully disposed in an elegant receptacle on the drawing-room table? The nosegay is bright and fragrant in either place. Why then do not the plebeian and patrician bouquets equally please? In the one case, you say, the charms are inharmoniously dispersed, and nearly neutralized by meaner surroundings, while in the other they are enhanced by every advantage of position and appropriate accessories. Should you not be ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... however, is doubted; but there is an air of probability about it, which makes me fancy that it has its foundation in truth, and I can no more speak of Madeira without thinking of the unfortunate, high-born, and lovely Anna D'Abret, and the bold plebeian, Robert Machin, than I can of the Mauritius, and forget Paul and Virginia, or of Juan Fernandez, without believing that Robinson Crusoe ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... anti-natural, out of Nature's oneness drawing distinctions of castes, of priestly orders. Not only do they count the spirit noble, and the body ignoble; but even parts of the body are called noble, while others are not, being evidently plebeian. In like manner heaven is noble, and hell is not; but why?—"Because heaven is high up." But in truth it is neither high nor low, being above and beneath alike. And what is hell? Nothing at all. Equally foolish are they about the ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... thing!" Emily exclaimed. She resented the application of such a substance to the inside of her person. Her plebeian mind was too narrow to conceive a second legitimate use for soap, and from that day Beth's influence declined. Emily's attendance became irregular, then gradually ceased altogether; not, however, before ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... friction between the Albemarle or Carteret and the Charleston set, the former being from Virginia, while the latter was, as we have seen, a little given to kindergarten aristocracy and ofttimes tripped up on their parade swords while at the plough. Of course outside of this were the plebeian people, or copperas-culottes, who did the work; but Lord Shaftesbury for some time, as we have seen, lived in a baronial shed and had his arms worked on the left breast ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... an objective existence in a graduated hierarchy. And it would appear that the "royal laws" are by no means to be regarded as constitutional royalties: at any moment, they may, like Eastern despots, descend in wrath among the middle-class and plebeian laws, which have hitherto done the drudgery of the world's work, and, to use phraseology not unknown in our seats of learning—"make hay" of their belongings. Or perhaps a still more familiar analogy has suggested this singular theory; ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... at Chigwell on the borders of Epping Forest. It was here that Mr. Willet sat in his accustomed place, "his eyes on the eternal boiler." "Before he had got his ideas into focus, he had stared at the plebeian utensil quite twenty minutes,"—all of which indicates the minutiae and precision of Dickens' observations. This actual copper, vouched for by several documents of attestation, with an old chair which formerly ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... nick of time as the heir of the ancient gentry, justifying the dignities which he enjoys in the state by the uses which he fulfils. In Norway there is no nobility; and Lie, therefore, had to make his able and industrious plebeian, Morten Jonsen (the equivalent of Anton Wohlfahrt in Soll und Haben) the inheritor of the future. He accordingly awards to him the hand of Miss Edele Heggelund; but not until he has put Jacob to shame by the amount and character ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... is the absence of truth, sensibility, and reflection. The vulgar in manner, is the result of vulgarity of character; it is grossness, hardness, or affectation.—If you would see how Shakspeare has discriminated, not only different degrees, but different kinds of plebeian vulgarity in women, you have only to compare the nurse in Romeo and Juliet with Mrs. Quickly. On the whole, if there are people who, taking the strong and essential distinction of sex into consideration, still maintain that Shakspeare's female characters ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... won her instant fame and a small fortune. It was gloomy, pessimistic, excoriating, merciless, drab, sordid, and hideously realistic. Its people hailed from that plebeian end of the vegetable garden devoted to turnips and cabbages. They possessed all the mean vices and weaknesses that detestable humanity has so far begotten. They were all failures and their pitiful aspirations were treated with ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... the individual. Even yet the word "Eugenics," the name of this science, and this art, sometimes arouses a smile. It seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superior person, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pass by on the other side with his nose raised towards the sky. Modern the science and art of Eugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the Greeks of classic days, as well as their successors ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... to be afflicted by the disease of timidity, and was doubtless a leading cause of the cordial reception which in England the idea of women's political emancipation has long received among politicians. Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished the plebeian ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... father, laying down the newspaper at which he had been glancing carelessly, and throwing himself back in the window-seat, 'I believe you know how very much I dislike what are called family affairs, which are only fit for plebeian Christmas days, and have no manner of business with people of our condition. But as you are proceeding upon a mistake, Ned—altogether upon a mistake—I will conquer my repugnance to entering on such matters, and give you a perfectly plain and candid answer, if you will ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... shops of a very superior description. There are grades in pawning as in everything else, and distinctions must be observed even in poverty. The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the plebeian calico shirt, the silver fork and the flat iron, the muslin cravat and the Belcher neckerchief, would but ill assort together; so, the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself a silver-smith, and decorates his shop with handsome trinkets and expensive ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... city-lots that have risen in the market, and names written in all the stock-books of all the dividend-paying companies. His narrow study expands into a stately library, his books are counted by thousands instead of hundreds, and his favorites are dressed in gilded calf in place of plebeian sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... allusion to that peculiar phase of Australian life—nobblerising; but, if I am not mistaken, the impression left on your mind will be that the nobbler is either of aristocratic champagne or plebeian beer. But there are two other liquids—whisky and brandy—which play an important part in nobblerising. The quantity of spirits drunk in Australia is appalling. Whisky is the favourite spirit, then brandy, and rarely Schiedam, schnapps, or gin. And what about drunkenness? ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... crowded. Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of every description, glide smoothly on. The promenades are filled with loungers on foot, and the road is thronged with loungers on horseback. Persons of every class are crowded together, here, in one dense mass. The plebeian, who takes his pleasure on no day but Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his, from year's end to year's end. You look in vain for any outward signs of profligacy or debauchery. You see nothing before you but a vast number of people, the denizens of ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... she deifies by refining and cultivating them. I need not tell you of her wit and audacity; you know them but too well. No one could be more dangerous to us than this creature, a patrician in blood, a plebeian in heart, a poet in imagination. Then, too, there would be Prince Djalma, chivalrous, bold, ready for adventure, knowing nothing of civilized life, implacable in his hate as in his affection, a terrible instrument for whoever can make use ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... for a moment upon the fair Catalina. With all his gold-lace and gallant strut, Catalina displays no great taste in her choice;—but is he her choice? Maybe not—maybe he is the choice of Don Ambrosio; who, himself of plebeian origin, is ambitious that his blood should be mingled with that of the military hidalgo. The soldier has no money—beyond his pay; and that is mortgaged for months in advance; but he is a true Gachupino, of "blue blood," a genuine "hijo de algo." Not a singular ambition ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carry your name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side of which the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palest and poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity brings the good news that you may receive from the throne of God life from God, as directly as did Adam when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you may be recreated morally and spiritually, and have ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... having, what to his unhappy victims must have been the ironical name of "Friend Haskall." The mother and child were now separated. The boy was levied to a Virginian named Freeland, who bore the military title of Major, and carried on the plebeian business of a publican. This man was of an extremely brutal disposition, and treated his slaves with most refined cruelty. His favourite punishment, which he facetiously called "Virginian play," was ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown |
