"Downtrodden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a deep political thinker, Burke holds a foremost place among those of all time who distinguished themselves in the British parliament. His keen intellect, his powerful imagination, his sympathy with the fallen, the downtrodden, and the oppressed, and his matchless power of utterance of the thoughts that were in him have made an impression that can never be effaced. His wise and statesman-like views on questions affecting the colonies ought ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... chains of death clank in solemn music as the midnight revelry sports with the very agony of their sorrows. Oh! who has made their lives a wanton jest?-can it be the will of heaven, or is it the birthright of a downtrodden race? They look for to-morrow, hope reverberates one happy thought, it may bring some tidings of joy; but again they sink, as that endless gloom rises before them. Hope fades from their feelings, from the bleeding heart for which compassion is dead. The tyrant's heart is of stone; what cares he ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... he is," the Russian went on, getting his breath. "He's one of the last of a race of tyrants and oppressors, the worst the world has ever known—in Russia the downtrodden. He fled to America to hide until the storm had blown over, hoping to return and take his place again at the head of a new government of the Democrats and the ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... not do to offer a wise critic pay for his services; but the accepting of presents he regards in the light of exchanges of love between a friend served and a friend admired. He has numerous affairs of ceremony with gifted widows, who write very excellent sensation books in behalf of downtrodden humanity, and who never fail to express their admiration of his great learning; and this high consideration he repays with ponderous eulogies on their books. His carping he reserves for the devil, and such authors as Prescott, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... dogs there were several groups whose members always consorted together. Thus, George and Lassie were friends and, when the latter was killed, George, who was naturally a miserable, downtrodden creature, became a kind of pariah, morose and solitary and at war with all except Peary and Fix, with whom he and Lassie had been associated in fights against the rest. The other dogs lived together in some kind of harmony, Jack and Amundsen standing out ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of misery where he drew your pity so fully that ...
— Options • O. Henry
... had carried her, and the rose tree; and suddenly the thought started into my head, might not my dark friends at Magnolia, so quick to see and enjoy anything of beauty that came in their way—so fond of bright colour and grace and elegance—a luxurious race, even in their downtrodden condition; might not they also feel the sweetness of a rose, or delight in the petals of a tulip? It was a great idea; it grew into a full-formed purpose before I was called to follow Aunt Gary out of the greenhouse. The next day I went there on my ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... for her; said that she would lie down for just a minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and passed on into another world—with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile smile upon her lips. Isaiah Savvich—her faithful comrade on the path of life, a trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary, subordinate role—survived ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... talked in their tea rooms and joss houses about the American President's plan to abolish war. In the villages of far away India, in the homes of the Sea Islanders and in fact wherever human beings have congregated they have talked of a world peace. But it was the peoples of the downtrodden, war-stricken nations especially who looked to our president as the great champion of liberty and freedom. They believed that he was the "Big Brother" and that the country that he represented would see that they were ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... 'em all right," Dick made answer. "This isn't an age of serfdom. You won't be downtrodden to that extent. You stick to your guns and have a little patience! Things are not standing still. State your grievances—if they're bad enough—and then give the owners a chance! But don't forget that there's got to be give and take between you! If you want fair ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... bother about what he was saying. It was very strange, but I could not believe that my sister was in love, that she had just been walking with her hand on the arm of a stranger and gazing at him tenderly. My sister, poor, frightened, timid, downtrodden creature as she was, loved a man who was already married and had children! I was full of pity without knowing why; the doctor's presence was distasteful to me and I could not make out what was to come of ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Gorky, and being of a consumptive tendency, he lives in the Crimea. He began as a journalist. His photograph reveals him as a young man of a fine, sensitive type, truly an apostle of pity and pain. He passionately espouses the cause of the poor and downtrodden, as his extraordinary revolutionary short stories—The Millionaire among the rest—show. Since Turgenieff's Fathers and Sons, no tale like Metal Worker Schevyrjow has appeared in European literature. In it the bedrock of Slavic fatalism, ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... hopes were limited to pecuniary aid for himself and his family and friends, and to expressions of sympathy for his downtrodden country by individuals, by voluntary associations, and by municipalities. All his speeches after his visit to Washington were laden with one thought, viz., the duty of all free countries to resist the spread of absolutism. Pre-eminently this duty was upon America. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... Mrs. Marvin, promptly. "The principles of Christianity oppose success at every turn. To be Christ-like one must always be poor, always weak and, consequently, always downtrodden." ...
— For Gold or Soul? - The Story of a Great Department Store • Lurana W. Sheldon
... The downtrodden McNulty disappears, with his traducers. But Bobby Little's eyebrows have not been altogether thrown away upon his ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... found a receptive audience for his Spartacus scheme of organizing this band of downtrodden victims into a fighting force. He gathered them into the dining-hall of the Home and addressed ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... grounds for social intercourse there would be between an American farmer's wife with either grammar-school or high-school education and some European peasant's wife, illiterate, impossibly shy, and downtrodden. ...
— A Stake in the Land • Peter Alexander Speek
... familiarized to the idea of women speaking in public, and the way was gradually being cleared for the advance-guard of that noble army which has brought about so many changes favorable to the weak and downtrodden of its ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... hears behind one only the sweep of many feet upon the grass. It is like Fate, or, say, Time with his scythe held steady; the thing comes and passes and is gone; but ride backward and you shall see the traces of its passage. Grass downtrodden that shall rise again, little flowers bruised that shall renew their blossoms; and still the birds singing peacefully, the hares leaping, the manifold petty life of the veldt resuming its routine and circumstance. One passes on through the quaking air as ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... be a misunderstood man. So you think, among other bad qualities, I have the habit of shirking work? Let me tell you, Miss Bartlett, that the reason I am here is because I have worked too hard. Now, confess that you are sorry for what you said—trampling on an already downtrodden man." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... were written, actual war has broken out in the Balkans. The Powers, anxious each as to the effect upon its own ambitions of any disturbance in European Turkey, have steadily abstained from efficient interference in behalf of the downtrodden Christians of Macedonia, surrounded by sympathetic kinsfolk. Consequently, in thirty years past this underbrush has grown drier and drier, fit kindling for fuel. In the Treaty of Berlin, in 1877, stipulation was ...
— The Major Operations of the Navies in the War of American Independence • A. T. Mahan
... of your words. But here are young men who will find the fire if their elders bring the brains. This is Captain Micah Clarke, and Captain Lockarby, and Captain the Honourable Sir Gervas Jerome, who have all come far to draw their swords for the downtrodden faith.' ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... situation; yet it is not on that account that I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious revelation, indeed, of the depth to which this people ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain |
