"Humbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... have been the blood-polluted line of the imperial successions. Prudence, therefore, it was, and state policy, not the power of Christianity, which gave the final shock (of the original shock we shall speak elsewhere) to the grander functions of the Delphic Oracle. But, in the mean time, the humbler and more domestic offices of this oracle, though naturally making no noise at a distance, seem long to have survived its state relations. And, apart from the sort of galvanism notoriously applied by Hadrian, surely the fathers could not have seen Plutarch's account of its condition, already a ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... personal traditions are of interest in the unravelling of the meaning of historical events, and the forces at the back of them, and I will add a note of one or two examples of those humbler traditions which confirm or enhance the value of the historical record. They are of the greatest importance if correctly understood. They include such examples, for instance, as Mr. Kemble notes when ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... Humbler dwellings rose for Brahmans, priests of learning and of fame, Come to view Yudhishthir's yajna ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... immortality from a purely historical point of view. My intention is not to discuss the truth of the belief or to criticise the grounds on which it has been maintained. To do so would be to trench on the province of the theologian and the philosopher. I limit myself to the far humbler task of describing, first, the belief as it has been held by some savage races, and, second, some of the practical consequences which these primitive peoples have deduced from it for the conduct of life, whether these consequences take the shape of religious ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... not read the works of our great poets, or reading them miss the lesson! And even in prose fiction the character whom the fervid imagination of the writer has lifted somewhat into the clouds, will hardly give so plain an example to the hasty normal reader as the humbler personage whom that reader unconsciously feels to resemble himself or herself. I do think that a girl would more probably dress her own mind after Lucy Robarts than after ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... serious attack of illness that had resulted from the abuse of himself during that period, Wilmer felt compelled to give up his fondly-cherished ideas of rising with Constance to the position from which he had dragged her down, and to be content with a humbler lot. He, therefore, sought, and obtained a situation as a clerk at a salary of eight hundred dollars per annum. Already he had been compelled to move into a smaller house than the one at first taken, and in this he was now able ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... resembling the Roman "Power of the Father," except only the Asiatic Galatae. There are reasons, indeed, as it seems to me, why the direct authority of the ancestor should, in the greater number of progressive societies, very shortly assume humbler proportions than belonged to it in their earliest state. The implicit obedience of rude men to their parent is doubtless a primary fact, which it would be absurd to explain away altogether by attributing to them any calculation of its advantages; but, ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine
... and were at one moment bathed in the light emanating from Lady Waldegrave, of which interview my father, in his private note-book, speaks thus: "Lady Waldegrave appeared; whereupon Mr. Speirs (the mayor) instantly was transfigured and transformed—like the English snob he is, worthy man—and looked humbler than he does in the presence of his Maker, and so respectful and so blest that it was pleasant to behold him. Nevertheless, she is but a brummagem kind of countess, after all, being the daughter of ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... notorious Stede Bonnet, and a very quiet and respectful man he was. As has been seen before, Bonnet was a man able to adapt himself to circumstances. There never was a more demure counting-house clerk than was Bonnet at Belize; there never was an humbler dependent than the almost unnoticed Bonnet after he had joined Blackbeard's fleet before Charles Town, and there never was a more deferential and respectful prisoner than Stede Bonnet on board the Henry. It was really touching to ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... these long blocks of brick and stone, These huge mill-monsters overgrown; Blot out the humbler piles as well, Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell The weaving genii of the bell; Tear from the wild Cocheco's track The dams that hold its torrents back; And let the loud-rejoicing fall Plunge, roaring, ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... humbler, maybe. It was hard learning. But," trying to speak lightly, "when I found I was not fit to be an officer, I tried to be as good a private as I could. Your uncle will tell you ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... humbler victims had perished, the lot fell upon the fairest of my sisters, Hesione, my father's best-loved daughter. In sorrow we arrayed her in garments befitting one doomed to an untimely death; and when we had bidden her a last ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... behold improvement. When you enter the kingdom and find, by the very skirts of its admirable roads, a raised footpath for the passengers and travellers from town to town, you become suddenly aware that you are in a land where close attention to the humbler classes is within the duties of a government. As you pass on from the more purely Italian part of the population,—from the Genoese country into that of Piedmont,—the difference between a new people and an old, on which I have dwelt, ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... predominated; the Maoris could be kept at work only by constant supervision; the deacon schoolmasters, to whom the duty of superintendence was committed, were more eager to begin preaching than to perform thoroughly the humbler duties of the kitchen and the field. Those who were willing to do the humble work found that they had little time or energy left for intellectual pursuits. The ideal was not practical. More and more it became evident that the very continuance of the scheme depended upon the bishop himself. "Everything ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... watched the temple day and night, that no rude hand might do violence to the sanctity of the place, and no profaner mortal, with sacrilegious foot might enter the mysterious edifice. It was surrounded with a wall of oaks. The humbler shrubs filled up their interstices, and there was no avenue to the sacred shade, except by two narrow paths on either side ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... achieved on a much humbler scale. It will suffice for our present purpose to concentrate our attention on a remarkable fact which seems to underlie all our experience. And we will approach the statement of this fact by first recalling ...
— Gloria Crucis - addresses delivered in Lichfield Cathedral Holy Week and Good Friday, 1907 • J. H. Beibitz
... won the admiration of the really great, as well as of the humbler millions. It is only a supposedly cultured class in between that is not thoroughly acquainted with what he ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... in London, of humbler pretensions than Featley, was a certain EPHRAIM PAGET (or PAGIT), commonly called "Old Father Ephraim," who had been parson of the church of St. Edmund in Lombard Street since 1601, and might therefore have seen, and been seen by, Shakespeare. Besides other ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... alteration for hundreds of years, and there is an air of gaiety and bustling activity which, with the graceful costume of the men and women, make it a most delightful picture. Genoa appears to be a city of palaces, and although many of the largest are now converted to humbler uses, and many fallen to decay, there are ample remains to show the former grandeur of the princely merchants who were once the lords of the ocean. Everything bespeaks solidity, durability, and magnificence. There ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... "acquires new vigor, enlarges its powers and faculties, and by an assiduity in honest industry both satisfies its own appetites and prevents growth of unnatural ones"; though, like his predecessor, Francis Hutcheson, he overemphasizes the delights opened by civilization to the humbler class of men. He gives large space in his discussion to the power of will; and, indeed, one of the main advantages he ascribed to government was the compulsion it puts upon us to allow the categories of time and space a part in our calculations. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... with faltering feet 210 Shrink from the gazer's eye: enfeebled hearts Whom Fancy chills with visionary fears, Or bends to servile tameness with conceits Of shame, of evil, or of base defect, Fantastic and delusive. Here the slave Who droops abash'd when sullen Pomp surveys His humbler habit; here the trembling wretch Unnerved and struck with Terror's icy bolts, Spent in weak wailings, drown'd in shameful tears, At every dream of danger: here, subdued 220 By frontless laughter and the hardy scorn Of old, unfeeling vice, the ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... very proud of its antiquities, and even the humbler classes descant with much erudition on the subject. Most, if not all of them, have studied the guide-books, and like to display the extent of their savoir ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... the unconditional surrender of Brigadier Wadsworth and nine hundred and fifty officers and privates as prisoners of war. But this victory, brilliant as it was, was dearly bought with the death of the loved and honored Brock, the brave young Macdonnell, and those of humbler rank, whose fall brought sorrow to many a ...
— Neville Trueman the Pioneer Preacher • William Henry Withrow
... reveal the humbler immigrant parents to their own children lay at the base of what has come to be called the Hull-House Labor Museum. This was first suggested to my mind one early spring day when I saw an old Italian ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... of increased and gradually increasing civilization, we shall hope to find few, if indeed any, among the higher classes who are eager or willing to obstruct the moral instruction and mental improvement of their fellow creatures in the humbler walks of life. If such there are, let them at length remember that the poor are endowed with the same reason, though not blessed with the same temporal advantages. Let them but admit, what I think no one can deny, that they ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... the occupants of the humbler stations—servants and subjects—grumble: "Why should I vex myself with unpleasant household tasks, with farm work or heavy labor? This life is not my home anyway, and I may as well have it better. Therefore, I will abandon my station and enjoy myself; the monks and ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. II - Epiphany, Easter and Pentecost • Martin Luther
... explain it, to the fact that, in the middle of his stay at Roville, a disastrous evening at the Casino had so diminished his funds that he had been obliged to make a hurried shift from the Hotel Splendide to the humbler Normandie. His late appearance to-night was caused by the fact that he had been attending a dance at the Splendide, principally in the hope of finding there some kind-hearted friend of his prosperity from ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... this John Mark ever tried to do any work in the way of preaching the gospel. His business was a very much humbler one. He had to attend to Paul's comfort. He had to be his factotum, man of all work; looking after material things, the commissariat, the thousand and one trifles that some one had to see to if the Apostle's great work was to get ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fanciful houses of the rich, the Chinese woman is regarded with even more sympathy by foreigners generally than is accorded to her humbler fellow-countrywoman. She is represented as a mere ornament, or a soulless, listless machine—something on which the sensual eye of her opium-smoking lord may rest with pleasure while she prepares the fumes which ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... his mode of raising cash seem strange, Although he fleeced the flags of every nation, For into a Prime Minister but change His title, and 't is nothing but taxation; But he, more modest, took an humbler range Of Life, and in an honester vocation Pursued o'er the high seas his watery journey,[cj] And merely ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... his return he bought back the ancestral home of the Hymens, a fine house dating from the reign of Queen Anne. (His great-grandfather had built it on the site of a humbler abode, on the eve of the South Sea collapse.) It stood at the foot of Custom House Hill and looked down the length of Fore Street—a perspective view of which the Major never wearied—no, not even on hot afternoons when the population took its ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the poor man was fully in his power, and he determined to punish him, even to his ruin. He hated him because he was an honest, good man; because his life, even in his humbler sphere, was a constant reproach to him. The note would be due on the first of May, and he had determined to take possession in virtue of ...
— All Aboard; or, Life on the Lake - A Sequel to "The Boat Club" • Oliver Optic
... their minds had not been vulgarized by trash and sensationalism. Hamilton's sole bait was a lucid and engaging style, which would not puzzle the commonest intelligence, which he hoped might instruct without weighing heavily on the capacity of his humbler readers. That he was addressing the general voter, as well as the men of a higher grade as yet unconvinced, there can be no doubt, for as New York State was still seven-tenths Clintonian, conversion of a large portion of this scowling element ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... window, of attics and tent-bedsteads. Now, the Italian cottage assumes, with the simplicity, l'air noble of buildings of a higher order; and, though it avoids all ridiculous miniature mimicry of the palace, it discards the humbler attributes of the cottage. The ornament it assumes is dignified; no grinning faces, or unmeaning notched planks, but well-proportioned arches, or tastefully sculptured columns. While there is nothing about it unsuited to the humility of ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... that morning. It was possible that the perfect understanding of a higher life was only reached from a height still greater, and that to those half-way up the mountain the summit was never as truthfully revealed as to the humbler dwellers ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... some strange fortuity. Hope whispered he should be blessed with a smile; perhaps a word even. So another minute and he was running up the road to Beaurepaire. But his good heart was doomed to be diverted to a much humbler object than his idol; as he came near the fallen tree he heard loud cries for help, followed by groans of pain. He bounded over the hedge, and there was Dard hanging over his axe, moaning. "What is the matter? what is the matter?" cried Edouard, ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... tall lilac bushes were filled with large red and white blossoms, and as they slightly nodded their graceful heads before the passing zephyr, might have been fancied to be giving a cold greeting to some humbler flower that ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... barefooted girl tumbles melons on the pavement with news that the king has been shot at; art and politics asserting their place beside Nature in the heart of Italy's "old lover." And in the actual life of the Brownings "Nature" had to be content, as a rule, with the humbler share. Their chosen abode was not a castle in the Apennines or an old crumbling house by the southern sea, but an apartment commanding the crowded streets of Florence; and their principal absences from it ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... Ages, and by a spirit of trade born of present opportunities; for every official in Canada hoped to make a profit, if not a fortune, out of beaver-skins. Kindred impulses, in ruder forms, possessed the humbler colonists, drove them into the forest, and made them hardy woodsmen and skilful bush-fighters, though turbulent and lawless members ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... them for sale. He began with the most beautiful. When she was sold for no small sum of money, he offered for sale the one who came next to her in beauty. All of them were sold to be wives. The richest of the Babylonians who wished to wed bid against each other for the loveliest maidens, while the humbler wife-seekers, who were indifferent about beauty, took the more homely damsels with marriage portions. For the custom was that when the herald had gone through the whole number of the beautiful damsels, he should then call up the ugliest—a cripple, if there chanced to be one—and ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... kinswoman saluted the new powers in this way; but some good fortune at last occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by the advancement of these famous personages who benefited humbler people that had the luck of being in their favor. Before Mr. Esmond left England in the month of August, and being then at Portsmouth, where he had joined his regiment, and was busy at drill, learning the practice ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... not be supposed that in this representation of society, I chiefly refer to the humbler classes. I refer to those who are considered as [gentlemen], and who, if wealth, and public employment may be said to constitute gentility, are the gentlemen of the States bordering on the Mississippi. ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... offices of mutual friends from assaulting another lady. She, however, though she excelled in violence, did not equal in persistence the injured gentleman who for a long, long hour threatened an invisible bicyclist under our windows in that humbler quarter already described as a poor relation of Belgravia. He had apparently been almost run down by the hapless wheelman, who, in a moment of fatuous truth, seemed to have owned that he had not sounded the warning bell. In making this confession he had evidently apologized with his ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... cities and larger towns, the same tendency appears to be in full swing among the shop-girls, stenographers, and daughters in the humbler walks of life. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... in regard to their dimensions. The minor house is governed by the same laws, is conducted upon the same system, as the major one. It is as a humbler and cheaper edition, but it repeats down to minute particulars the example of its costly original. The orchestra, or some form of orchestra, is always indispensable. Even that street-corner tragedy which ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... their hours in wonderful work of this kind, carefully illuminating the texts of works with marvelous design and color. Now and then some special genius arose and became a great fresco painter. Fra Angelico painted pictures for the world to marvel over, while some humbler brother pored over his illuminating. You will find some of this work in the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... submissive, obedient slave; betray no disappointment, discontent, or impatience at your lot. The harsher he is, the humbler must you be; the more despotic he becomes, the more subservient you must seem. Make yourself so perfectly complying in all his moods that he shall believe you to be the very 'perfect rose of womanhood,' more excellent even than he thought when he married you, and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... numerous estates shows. But these estates are all conducted economically, while, on the other hand, reckless extravagance was the rule in the palmy days of the olden time, and has remained, even in humbler circumstances, an inborn trait ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... other in vain who the old swell waiting for the four o'clock "up" from Liverpool could be. The four o'clock was, moreover, not the first express which Sir John had met that day. His stately carriage-and-pair had pushed its way into the crowd of smaller and humbler vehicular fry earlier in the afternoon, and on that occasion also the old gentleman had indulged in a grave promenade upon ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... do with the little baggage?' continued my mother; 'she conquers every thing so fast, and has such a thirst after knowledge, and the more she knows, I verily think, the humbler she is, that I cannot help letting go, as my son, when a little boy, used to do to his kite, as fast as she pulls; and to what height she'll soar, I ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Mallorings of this life concerning the moral welfare of their humbler neighbors are inclined to march in front of events. The behavior in Tryst's cottage was more correct than it would have been in nine out of ten middle or upper class demesnes under similar conditions. Between the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... exercised, and a mind thus instructed, will bring the art to a higher degree of excellence than, perhaps, it has hitherto attained in this country. Such a student will disdain the humbler walks of painting, which, however profitable, can never assure him a permanent reputation. He will leave the meaner artist servilely to suppose that those are the best pictures which are most likely to deceive ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... elevated portions of the mounds which mark the sites of cities, where it was likely that remains of the greatest interest would be found. Palaces, temples, and the great gates which gave entrance to towns, have in this way seen the light; but the humbler buildings, the ordinary dwellings of the people, remain buried beneath the soil, unexplored and even unsought for. In this entire default of any actual specimen of an ordinary Assyrian house, we naturally turn to the sculptured representations which are so abundant and ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... selfishness, which grasps the elements of life and happiness, the wealth of a nation, to squander and destroy it in that OSTENTATION which has no other purpose than to uplift the man of wealth and humiliate his humbler brother. That purpose is a crime; a crime incompatible with genuine Christianity; a crime which was once checked by the religious fervor of Wesley, but checked only for a time. Its criminality is not so much in the heartless motive as in its wanton ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... foreign states; and to restore in great measure the ancient religion, which it had been the grand object of the former reign finally and totally to overthrow. It is the business of the historian to record the series of public measures by which this calamitous revolution was accomplished: the humbler but not uninteresting task, of tracing its effects on the fortunes of eminent individuals, belongs to the compiler of memoirs, and forms an appropriate accompaniment to the relation of the perils, sufferings ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... womanly attributes were a bride's best dowry, Laura gave herself to their attainment, that she might become to another household the blessing Nan had been to her own; and turning from the worship of the goddess Beauty, she gave her hand to that humbler and more human teacher, Duty,—learning her lessons with a willing ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... takes cognizance of the humbler office of sexton, the duties of which are usually combined in country places with those of the parish clerk. The sexton is, of course, the sacristan, the keeper of the holy things relating to divine worship, and seems to correspond with the ostarius in the Roman Church. His duties ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... my own valuation. And they invariably did so. They always gave way to me. They recognised that I must be a traveller of importance, despite the smallness of my retinue and the homeliness of my attire; and they acknowledged my superiority. Had I been content with a humbler place, it would quickly have been reported along the road, and, little by little, my complacence would have been tested. I am perfectly sure that, by never verging from my position of superiority, I gained the respect of the Chinese, and it is largely to this I attribute the universal respect ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... progress of each conquering race. —Thus, Tennyson and Barrett, Browning, Horne, Blend their opposing faculties, and speak For that fresh nature, which in daily things Beholds the immortal, and from common forms Extorts the Eternal still! So Baily sings In Festus; so, upon a humbler rank, Testing the worth of social policies, As working through a single human will, The Muse of Taylor argues—Artevelde, Being the man who marks a popular growth, And notes the transit of a thought through time, Growing ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... myself, I confess that, after the brief experience I have had of the little satisfaction wealth and splendour can afford, I would rather live in a quiet home in England, devoting myself to doing all the good in my power to my humbler neighbours, than be compelled again to play the part ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... pointed out to Miriam, who listened eagerly till he wearied of the task. Then they looked downwards through the overhanging platforms of stone to the large market-place beneath and to the front, and upon the roofs of the houses, mostly of the humbler sort, that were built behind almost up to the walls of the Old Tower, whereon many people were gathered as though for safety, eating their morning meal, talking anxiously together, and ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... objects which they have they have, they fancy themselves qualified to paint the ideas which they have not seen. But it is possible to fail in this latter and more difficult style of imitation, as well as in the former humbler one. The detection, it is true, is not so easy, because the objects are not so nigh at hand to compare, and therefore there is more room both for false pretension and for self-deceit. They take an epic motto or subject, and conclude that the spirit is implied as a thing of course. ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... from the toy-shop, carrying an immense kite on his arm, like a shield, while Dora frisked round in admiration, and a train of humbler admirers ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... woods by noon, and we saw before us the long, scattering village, a mile or two distant, across the river. To our left, on a gentle slope, stood a red, two-story building, surrounded by out-houses, with a few humbler habitations in its vicinity. This was Muoniovara, on the Swedish side—the ...
— Northern Travel - Summer and Winter Pictures of Sweden, Denmark and Lapland • Bayard Taylor
... dreadful people, you English!" sighed one lady, looking, not without admiration, towards the youthful General, who was entertaining them at his own table, and who had given the strictest orders that the humbler of the prisoners should be equally well treated elsewhere: "you seem to fly from point to point, to divide your army as you will, and conquer wherever you appear. It is wonderful, but it is terrible, too! And yet with all this, how are you to get into Quebec? For it seems to me you are no nearer ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... fifteen minutes, the palaces, the temples, the splendid dwellings vanished, and were replaced by humbler houses; granite, sandstone, and limestone were replaced by unbaked bricks and by clay worked with straw. Architectural design disappeared; low huts showed around like blisters or warts upon lonely places, ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... himself high sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was executed in 1583 for alleged complicity in a Roman Catholic plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth. {6} John Shakespeare's wife belonged to a humbler branch of the family, and there is no trustworthy evidence to determine the exact degree of kinship between the two branches. Her grandfather, Thomas Arden, purchased in 1501 an estate at Snitterfield, which passed, with other property, to her father Robert; John Shakespeare's ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... 'has grown humbler than this. It keeps now a more modest mien in the presence of the Eternal Mystery; but is it in truth less real, less sustaining? Let Grey's trust answer ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... guest to Firbank Chapel, where the Seekers' service was to be held, high up on the hill opposite Drawwell. Yet he seems to have had some misgivings that his guest might be too full of his own powerful message to remember to behave courteously to others, who, although in a humbler way, were still trying to declare the Truth as far as they had a knowledge of it. Fox writes in ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... flower-scapes many feet higher. Their chief difficulty is the spongy nature of the soil, in which they sink at times ankle-deep. But farther up it is drier and firmer, the lofty tussac giving place to grass of humbler stature; in fact, a sward so short, that the ground appears as though freshly mown. Here the climbers catch sight of a number of moving creatures, which they might easily mistake for quadrupeds. Hundreds of them are running to and fro like rabbits in a warren, and quite as ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... born in 1265, in the small room of a small house in Florence, still pointed out as the Casa di Dante. His father, Aldighieri, was a lawyer, and belonged to the humbler class of burgher-nobles. The family seems to have changed its name into Alighieri, "the wing-bearers," at a later time, in accordance with the beautiful coat of arms which they adopted—a wing in an azure ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... pensioned family, which never can possibly feel well affected towards our Government or any Government but their own, would alone send out men enough to fill all the civil offices open to the natives of the country, to the exclusion of the members of the humbler but better affected families of Muhammadans and Hindoos. If they obtained the offices they would be educated for, the evil to Government and to society would be very great; and if they did not get them, the evil would be great to themselves, since they would be encouraged ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... people appear on this train. Occasional haughty revellers, in evening dress and opera capes, appear among the humbler voyagers. For a time they stay on their dignity: sit bravely upright and talk with apparent intelligence. Then the drowsy poison of that stifled atmosphere overcomes them, too, and they fall into the weakness of their brethren. They turn over the opposing seat, elevate their nobler shins, ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... may Godhead deign Help me!) nowise in humbler way Art fair, nor Venus shall disdain Thy charms, but look! how wanes the day: ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... seem neither to clothe themselves nor to feed themselves, nor to talk, pray, or swear like ordinary mortals. The "Vows of the Heron," a poem of the earlier part of King Edward III's reign, contains a choice collection of strenuous knightly oaths; and in a humbler way the rest of the population very naturally imitated the parlance of their rulers, and in the words of the "Parson's Tale," "dismembered Christ by soul, heart, bones, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... other people sore about it—hundreds of people much poorer and humbler than any of us, people to whom the miscarriage of justice is not a mere matter of exasperation and annoyance, but a real matter of life and death. They want care and attention—as the doctors say; they need a law-dispensary—that's about it. There are institutions that ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... such plants, there are opportunities for the exercise of the nicest taste. A gross feeder, as the ricinus, in the midst of a bed of delicate annuals, is quite out of place; and a stately, royal-looking plant among humbler kinds often makes the latter look common, when if headed with a chief of their own rank all would appear to ...
— Manual of Gardening (Second Edition) • L. H. Bailey
... undoubtedly she was, yet who shall say that the motives that actuated her were other than pure and womanly? A heart more loyal and true never beat in a human breast. She gave her life to protect her husband, her children and the humbler dependents that followed their fortunes from the hands of ...
— Glimpses of the Past - History of the River St. John, A.D. 1604-1784 • W. O. Raymond
... all these months. I agreed, and I have kept my word. All the while has been the fear bothering me beyond endurance that you did it to be rid of me. I said some bold words to you—to make you remember me. Roberta, I am humbler to-day than I was then. I shouldn't dare say them to you now. I was madly in love with you then; I dared say anything. I am not less in love now—great heavens! not less—but I have grown to worship you so that I have become afraid. When I saw you in my room before my mother's portrait I ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... the vast bulk of dramatic invention as well as of artistic observation and skill, there is in even the small and smallest among his followers, an extraordinary happiness of individual invention of detail. I may quote a few instances at random. It would be difficult to find a humbler piece of work than the so-called Tree of the Cross, in the Florentine Academy: a thing like a huge fern, with medallion histories in each frond, it can scarcely be considered a work of art, and stands halfway between a picture and ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... intelligent company that gathered in the appointed place on Monday, July twentieth, all eager to be fed with the Bread of Life. There were two clergymen, one physician, two lawyers, several teachers, business men and women, and others from humbler walks of life. Miss Reynolds had come on to "review"; Jennie and Sadie were ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Rosny, Schlegel, Legge, Hervey-Saint-Denys, Williams, Biot, Giles, Wylie, Beal, and many other Sinologists. To such great explorers, indeed, the realm of Cathayan story belongs by right of discovery and conquest; yet the humbler traveller who follows wonderingly after them into the vast and mysterious pleasure-grounds of Chinese fancy may surely be permitted to cull a few of the marvellous flowers there growing,—a self-luminous hwa-wang, a black lily, a phosphoric rose or two,—as ...
— Some Chinese Ghosts • Lafcadio Hearn
... the Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a spiritual swindler: as MAITRE Macaire in the courts of law, as avocat, avoue—in a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he distinguishes himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate detenu—no other person, in fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... examinations that tested memory rather than intelligence, and character least of all. The unfortunate youths who could not stand even that test were left hopelessly stranded on the road, equally disqualified for a humbler sphere of life which they had learnt to despise and for the higher walks to which they had vainly aspired. Soured by defeat, and easily persuaded to impute it solely to the alien rulers responsible for ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... lower orders are assign'd The humbler ranks of human-kind, The rustic bard, the lab'ring hind, The artisan; All choose, as various ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... grouped the humbler osiered graves; over which, in lieu of tomb stones, are placed large black iron crosses, ornamented with brass, and bearing the simple ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... saint whom I know is St. Antonino. He is the patron saint of the good town of Sorrento; he is the good genius of all sailors and fishermen; and he has a humbler office,—that of protector of the pigs. On his day the pigs are brought into the public square to be blessed; and this is one reason why the pork of Sorrento is reputed so sweet and wholesome. The saint is the friend, and, so to say, companion of the common people. They seem ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... The homes of humbler friends were foreign thresholds to Leslie; the reserved, engrossed, dignified master of Otter crossed them with a freer step. Leslie could but address her servants, and venture to intermeddle bashfully with their most obvious concerns. She had neither ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... pen! what humbler memories cling about Its golden curves! what shapes and laughing graces Slipped from its point, when his full heart went out In smiles ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... she somewhat suspected that, in casting his slough, young Eachin had not entirely surmounted the habits which he had acquired in his humbler state, and that, though he might use bold words, he would not be rash enough to brave the odds of numbers, to which a descent into the vicinity of the city would be likely to expose him. It appeared that she judged correctly; ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... the whole population of Windyhill. The paper which contained it, and which, I believe, belonged originally to Miss Dale, passed from hand to hand through almost the entire community; the servants getting it at last, and handing it round among the humbler friends, who read it, half a dozen women together round a cottage door, wiping their hands upon their aprons before they would touch the paper, with many an exclamation and admiring outcry. And then her name appeared among the lists of smart people who were going to the North—now ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... majority of our song-birds the male is most conspicuous both by his color and manners and by his song, and is to that extent a shield to the female. It is thought that the female is humbler clad for her better concealment during incubation. But this is not satisfactory, as in some cases she is relieved from time to time by the male. In the case of the domestic dove, for instance, promptly at midday the cock is found upon ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... often wondered about him now in Sicily. In England she never had. She had thought there that she knew him as he, perhaps, could never know her. It seemed to her that she had been almost arrogant, filled with a pride of intellect. She was beginning to be humbler here, face to ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... place with pleasure to the all-important, all-necessary Gwen Gascoyne!" retorted Netta. "We humbler members of the Fifth don't get a look-in nowadays. But just let me give you one word of good advice, my lofty Pharaoh—pride occasionally ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil
... was also on the best terms with many of the neighbouring gentry,—among others, with Sir Walter Scott, who had not then attained that high place among his contemporaries which he afterwards held. He had also formed many acquaintances in a humbler rank of life,—men of shrewdness and sagacity, in whose homely conversation Park felt much pleasure. He enrolled himself a member of a volunteer corps raised in the district, and proved a great acquisition to the mess-table. One thing was remarkable about Park, that, go where he would, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... ages have failed to solve, perhaps because they have not troubled themselves to inquire very seriously about it; and again, perhaps it has baffled them as it has me, and tens of thousands of others of the humbler portion of humanity. And so I fell ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... triple-bodied Geryon![3] O may your vastness deign t' excuse The praises of a puny Muse, Unable, in her utmost flight, To reach thy huge colossian height! T' attempt to write like thee were frantic, Whose lines are, like thyself, gigantic. Yet let me bless, in humbler strain, Thy vast, thy bold Cambysian[4] vein, Pour'd out t' enrich thy native isle, As Egypt wont to be with Nile. O, how I joy to see thee wander, In many a winding loose meander, In circling mazes, smooth and supple, And ending in a clink quadruple; Loud, yet agreeable withal, Like ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... admirer of France, I must honestly confess that my share in such a celebration constituted probably the hardest day's work I ever performed. Here I will explain that the bride's father was head forester of my host and hostess, the great folks of the place, and adored by their humbler neighbours. Chateau and cottage were thus closely, nay affectionately, interested in the important event I am about to describe, and this aspect of it is fully as noteworthy as the truly Gallic character of the long ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... school kept by one of his father's tenants, named Hobby, an honest, poor old man, who acted in the double capacity of sexton and schoolmaster. Of his skill as a gravedigger tradition is silent; but for a teacher of youth his qualifications were certainly of the humbler sort, making what is generally called an A, B, C schoolmaster. While at school under Mr. Hobby he used to divide his playmates into parties and armies. One of them was called the French and the other American. A big boy named William Bustle commanded ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... influence is to depend simply on our popularity? Is it not our very office to oppose the world? Can we then allow ourselves to court it? to preach smooth things and prophesy deceits? to make the way of life easy to the rich and indolent, and to bribe the humbler classes by excitements and strong intoxicating doctrine? Surely it must not be so;—and the question recurs, on what are we to rest our authority when the ...
— The Oxford Movement - Twelve Years, 1833-1845 • R.W. Church
... I sing,—not as of old The Mantuan bard his mighty verse unrolled, But in such humbler strains as may beseem Light changes rung on a fantastic theme. My tale is ancient, but the sense is new,— Replete with monstrous fictions, yet half true;— And, if you'll follow till the story's done, I promise much instruction, ...
— Gawayne And The Green Knight - A Fairy Tale • Charlton Miner Lewis
... resplendent sun shone more brightly on her marble palaces, her gorgeous temples, her lovely groves and gardens. The scented air stole in through open windows, where sat secluded lovely damsels and noble matrons; and it wantoned, too, over humbler homes, where little children played and sung and shouted joyously. It fanned the cheek of the pale student, as he paced the lonely grove in silent meditation, and lightly touched the troubled brow of the orator as he took his way to the forum. It wooed the captive, in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree." (Luke 1:46-52) Her words draw the contrast between the once favored family of Solomon and the humbler family of Nathan, Solomon's family being abased and Nathan's now exalted. Thus the proof is brought forth that the Lord did raise up unto ...
— The Harp of God • J. F. Rutherford
... capable of accommodating nine hundred and eighty patients, were commenced at Armagh, Ballinasloe, Carlow, Clonmel, Limerick, Londonderry, Maryborough, and Waterford, for their respective districts, some being composed of no less than five counties. It is stated that such was the dislike of the humbler classes to the name of mad-houses, that they were not fully occupied until 1835. The eight Commissioners retired, and the Board of Works took their duties upon them, and acted until 1861, when the 18 and 19 Vict., c. 109, enacted that two members of the Board, ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... have avoided impoverishing mulcts and taxes. But I have lost all my patrimony, and I will accept nothing. That is why I refused thy father's kind offices, the place in the Seal-office, or even the humbler position of mace-bearer to his Holiness. When my brethren see, moreover, that I force from them no pension nor moneys, not even a white farthing, that I even preach to them without wage, verily for the love of Heaven, as your idiom hath it, ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a humbler need to slake, Nelson waiting his turn for the surgeon's hand, Lucas crushed with chains for a comrade's sake, ...
— Poems: New and Old • Henry Newbolt
... I ne'er was form'd to sing, And so must soar on humbler wing, Since nature saw it fitter; But yet my feeble powers I'll try, And sound my chatt'ring notes on high, For I am sure you'll not deny ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 388 - Vol. 14, No. 388, Saturday, September 5, 1829. • Various
... Another humbler mode of progress, again, was a familiar sight in our boyhood, when the farmer's wife jogged contentedly to market, seated on a pillion, behind her husband, and carrying her butter, eggs, or chickens, in roomy market baskets by her side. Even the gig, to carry ...
— A History of Horncastle - from the earliest period to the present time • James Conway Walter
... the tribute of one friend; let me add my own. I do not presume to say what I think about him as a spiritual guide and example; I confine myself to humbler topics. Whatever else he is, Henry Scott Holland is, beyond doubt, one of the most delightful people in the world. In fun and geniality and warm-hearted, hospitality, he is a worthy successor of Sydney Smith, whose official house he inhabits; and to those elements ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... remonstrated, "it is not an unusual thing for our friends to visit the poor and sick on the Mill Road, as well as in the other humbler districts." ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... came—the blessed day of deliverance, the sad day of bereavement; and in the second week of March they carried him to the grave. He was buried as he had desired: there was no hearse, no mourning-coach; his coffin was borne by twelve of his humbler hearers, who relieved each other by turns. But he was followed by a long procession of mourning friends, women as ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... interests; it always seems to me that a sister ought to dwell in the heart of a brother and keep it warm for that other and sacred love that must come by-and-by; not that the wife need drive the sister into outer darkness, but that there must be a humbler abiding in the outer court, perchance a little guest-chamber on the wall; the nearer and more royal abode must be for the ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... vanished; and thinly there stood in his place The new shape of Sword, with an humbler face,[D] Rebuking his brother, and preaching for right, Yet aye when it came, standing proud on his might, And squaring its claims with his old small sight; Then struck up his drums, with ensign furl'd, And said, "I will walk through a subject world: Earth, just as it ...
— Captain Sword and Captain Pen - A Poem • Leigh Hunt
... have twice the chance at the Star and Garter. They will want a show of gold at a humbler place, and at the Star we may carry matters with a high hand. Pick out the biggest frigate," he cried, for the tenth time, at least, "or the most beautiful lady, and it will surprise you, my lad, to find out how ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Collins to the Admiral, "it cannot be denied that a special Providence appears to attend the great. Had Miss Darcy been a humbler female, had she not been possessed of relatives willing and able to defend her, what might not have been dreaded! This leads us to devout admiration of the discriminating bounties of heaven, so well bestowed where most needed and deserved. For ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... time, my dear," said I, "I flattered myself on being an artist in life. I am humbler now and acknowledge myself a wretched bungling amateur. But I still recognise the ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... of my enemies; and, grounding their suspicions on my acknowledged attachment to Bruce, the king might have been persuaded to believe me unfaithful to his interests. The result would be my disgrace, and a broken heart to her who has raised me by her generous love from the humbler ranks of nobility to that of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter |
