"Serf" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o'-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... enter on a realm where all— Use, custom, morals—are untried and strange, In Poland here reigns freedom absolute; The king himself, although in pomp supreme, Must ofttime be the serf of his noblesse; But there the father's sacred power prevails, And in the subject finds a ...
— Demetrius - A Play • Frederich Schiller
... dogmas of mediaeval Supernaturalism. From Wicliff to Socinus, or even to Muenzer, Rothmann, and John of Leyden, I fail to find a trace of any desire to set reason free. The most that can be discovered is a proposal to change masters. From being the slave of the Papacy the intellect was to become the serf of the Bible; or, to speak more accurately, of somebody's interpretation of the Bible, which, rapidly shifting its attitude from the humility of a private judgment to the arrogant Caesaro-papistry of a state-enforced creed, had no more hesitation about forcibly extinguishing ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... man bears about with him, and he forgets poor bleeding, groaning, down-trodden, long-suffering Russia. It is the common way of Englishmen. They do not realise Siberia and Poland and the Third Section, and all the rest of it; they think only of Alexander as of the benevolent despot who freed the serf and befriended the Bulgarian. They never remember that they have all the freedom and privileges themselves which you poor Russians ask for in vain; they do not bear in mind that he has only to sign his name to a constitution, a very little constitution, and he might walk abroad as light-hearted ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... him for conduct which at any other season might have been punished with stripes, imprisonment, or death. Nay, more, masters actually changed places with their slaves and waited on them at table; and not till the serf had done eating and drinking was the board cleared and dinner set for his master. So far was this inversion of ranks carried, that each household became for a time a mimic republic in which the high offices of state were discharged by the slaves, who gave their orders ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... once, long years agone, on Colchis' strand Trod, free and happy, 'neath these very stars, As pure, as mild, as free from any sin As new-born child upon its mother's breast?" Where goes she, then? She seeks the peasant's hut To comfort the poor serf, whose little crops Were trampled by her father's huntsmen late, And brings him gold to ease his bitter heart. Why trips she down the forest-path? She hastes To meet her brother who is waiting there In some green copse. Together then they wend Homeward their way along the well-known path, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... and priest, noble and burgher, just as much as the meanest tasked serf, perhaps more even than he, for they were so willingly, ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... in something of a pet, "Par Dex, lord Duke—plague take it, how I sweat, By Cock, messire, ye know I have small lust Like hind or serf to tramp it i' the dust! Per De, my lord, a parch-ed pea am I— I'm all athirst! Athirst? I am so dry My very bones do rattle to and fro And jig about within me as I go! Why tramp we thus, bereft of state and rank? Why go ye, lord, like ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... loved, realizing that it could never occur to her that he, a Mid-Middle, would presume to think in terms of wooing her. That even in her supposed scorn of rank, privilege and status, she was still, subconsciously perhaps, a noble and he a serf. Evolution there was in society, and the terms were different, but it was still a world of class distinction and she was of the ruling class, and he the ruled, she a ...
— Frigid Fracas • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... appropriate to his position, with special gifts whenever he or they were marrying, and with all the pretty girls on whom his eye had rested. Therefore the [vc]if[vc]ija would lose the last shadow of freedom, he would become a serf. His sowing and his reaping would now be for another, and as it did not profit him at all to make the land more fruitful, he was content with any prehistoric implement, with little wooden ploughs and with a total absence of manure. And yet this pitiable serf would often be ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein
... this custom in fair Naples town; They never mourn a man when he is dead: The mother weeps when she has reared a son To be a serf and slave by love misled; The mother weeps when she a son hath born To be the serf and slave of galley scorn; The mother weeps when she a son gives suck To be the serf and slave of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... Ivan was a serf who spoke no word of any language but his own. Although of a brutal, almost idiotic type, he was loudly eulogized by his master as the model of fidelity and usefulness. Bourgonef treated him with ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... the high chamber of prince and ruler, memories that shall blossom into deeds, awaken souls, rouse powers that shall never die, that shall scatter blessings over lands afar, strike the fetters from slave and serf. ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... existence would be possible, an artist who would never again in his life ask for a shilling, and would only do his work bravely and gladly. Dear Liszt, with this money you will buy me out of slavery! Do you think I am worth that sum as a serf? Let that be known ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 1 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... Leg!—what fancies it fired! What golden wishes and hopes inspired! To give but a mere abridgment— What a leg to leg-bail Embarrassment's serf! What a leg for a Leg to take on the turf! What a leg for a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... cataclysm such as it would be blasphemy to predict could change the divinely established order whereby the territorial lord took tithes from his peasantry and pastured his game on their crops. The hierarchy which rested on the bowed back of the toiling serf and culminated in the figure of the heaven-sent King seemed to him as immutable as the everlasting hills. The men of his generation had not learned that it was built on a human foundation and that a sudden movement of the underlying mass might shake the structure to its pinnacle. ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... life, go to the “wald,” or wood, for our sticks. Was not the liberty to gather “kindling,” as we now call it, a valued privilege, even like the parallel right of “turbage”—to cut peat—for the domestic hearth? The “sticks-wood” would be the resort of many a serf and villain, for purposes lawful, or the reverse. But, unfortunately, the most apparently obvious explanation is not necessarily the correct one. Whether the first part of this name has a reference to a staked-out ford on the Witham, corresponding ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... the boy Bartolommeo might as soon be a Pico as an Orsini. Suppose she know that she must strike or be struck? Why, she strikes, or gets some one to strike for her. At what price? A promise of love, of love to a groom, the son of a serf! Why, the dog must be mad or drunk to believe such a thing possible; his very belief in anything so monstrous makes him worthy of death. And then he dares to blab! This is much worse than Pico. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... record of days, until three weeks or thereabout passed, and then she lost track of time. It dragged along, yet looked at as the past, it seemed to have sped swiftly. The change in her, the growing old, the revelation and responsibility of serf, as a woman, made this experience appear ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... private grounds. Free now to the poorest serf. Well, there's something century-gained. Some people say the world's growing worse ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... an Equilateral from the ranks of his serf-born ancestors is welcomed, not only by the poor serfs themselves, as a gleam of light and hope shed upon the monotonous squalor of their existence, but also by the Aristocracy at large; for all the higher classes are well aware ...
— Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Illustrated) • Edwin A. Abbott
... me, for from that fatal moment, I have been the slave, the serf, of a stronger will—a will that has withered and crushed out, by slow degrees, the last trace of moral courage that might have beautified and strengthened my character; crushed it out, and left me a cowardly, miserable, helpless girl! ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... beasts slain in the hunt. And what reader had not been exercis'd over the traces of that feudal custom, by which seigneurs warm'd their feet in the bowels of serfs, the abdomen being open'd for the purpose? It now is made to appear that the serf was only required to submit his unharm'd abdomen as a foot cushion while his lord supp' d, and was required to chafe the legs of the seigneur with ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... first quarter of the seventeenth, the villein, who in the Middle Ages had formed the bulk of the population, had disappeared.[239] It is probable that even at the beginning of the Tudor period the great majority of the bondmen had become free, and that the serf then only formed one per cent. of the population, and many of those had left the country and become artizans in the towns, for personal serfdom had outlasted demesne farming; though even there the heavy hand of the lord was upon them and enforced ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... feudal castles of the Middle Ages it was not deemed safe for women to venture forth alone, even in the daytime, and so those engaged in housework were naturally compelled to live under their Master's roof, eating at his table and sitting "below the salt." But the Master and the Serf of feudal times disappeared long ago, only the Mistress ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... sentence or two In the journals; then dignified freedom for you. When love, truth and loyalty vanish, the tie Which binds man to woman is only a lie. Undo it! remember at all times I stand As a friend to rely on—a serf to command. ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... tints of the feudal life! How the fine womanly nature of the man rose exulting in the free picturesque glow of the day of crusader and heroic deed! How he crowded in traits of perfected manhood in the conqueror, simple trust in the serf, to colour and weaken his argument, not seeing that he weakened it! How, when he thought he had cornered the Doctor, he would colour and laugh like a boy, then suddenly check himself, lest he might wound him! A curious laugh, genial, cheery,—bubbling out of his weak voice in a way that put you ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... the poor-law is sufficiently familiar.[76] The mediaeval statutes take us to a period at which the labourer was still regarded as a serf; and a man who had left his village was treated like a fugitive slave. A long series of statutes regulated the treatment of the 'vagabond.' The vagabond, however, had become differentiated from the pauper. The decay of the ancient order of society and its corresponding ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... including, of course, claims in the nature of choses in action. Congress may, therefore, take and cancel claims to service owned by Rebel slave-owners without any compensation whatever. Under the feudal law, a serf, owing service to a noble guilty of treason, became, because of his master's guilt, released ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... half-dollar cigars and being very fussy about what he had for lunch. It may have been an optical illusion, but he appeared to Sally to put on at least six pounds in weight on the first day of the new regime. As a serf looking after paper-knives and other properties, he had been—for him—almost slim. As a manager he blossomed out into soft billowy curves, and when he stood on the sidewalk in front of the theatre, gloating over the new posters ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... plains, By vassals shed, in a crimson flood, Without reserve, and without reward, At the slightest summons of their lord! But thine is precious, the fore-appointed Blood of kings, of God's anointed! Moreover, what has the world in store For one like her, but tears and toil? Daughter of sorrow, serf of the soil, A peasant's child and a peasant's wife, And her soul within her sick and sore With the roughness and barrenness of life! I marvel not at the heart's recoil From a fate like this, in one ...
— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... factions two great existences have been blotted out of the history of England—the Monarch and the Multitude; as the power of the Crown has diminished, the privileges of the People have disappeared; till at length the sceptre has become a pageant, and its subject has degenerated again into a serf. ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... Vilna. They incessantly found fault with her; and, ultimately, she was not only sent to the kitchen under the control of the cook, but, on the census of the population being taken, in 1816, her name was inscribed on the books as that of a serf. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... the request: the maids, with the simple familiarity of the Russian serf, taking their dismissal reluctantly. But Madame Dravikine held them all in awe, and before her they did not dare the protest that their Princess might have listened to. When the sisters were alone, they crossed the room together and seated themselves on a great sofa ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... sideboards, and now what do they say to us? That Magdalene weeping amid her hair, who once spoke comfort to the soul of the fallen sinner,—that Sebastian, arrow-pierced, whose upward ardent glance, spoke of courage and hope to the tyrant-ridden serf—that poor tortured slave to whose aid St. Mark comes sweeping down from above—can they speak to us of nothing save flowing lines, and correct drawing, and gorgeous colour? Must we be told that one is a Titian, the other a Guido, the third a ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... true serf among our animals; he belongs to the soil, and savors of it. He is of the earth, earthy. There is generally a decided odor about his dens and lurking-places, but it is not at all disagreeable in the clover-scented air, and his shrill ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... world, from which quarter he looked for the regeneration of humanity, because the Slavs had been less enervated by civilisation. His hopes in this respect were centred in the more strongly pronounced Slav type characteristic of the Russian peasant class. In the natural detestation of the Russian serf for his cruel oppressor the nobleman, he believed he could trace a substratum of simple- minded brotherly love, and that instinct which leads animals to hate the men who hunt them. In support of this idea he cited the childish, almost demoniac delight of the Russian people in fire, a quality on ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all. By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike dethroned, and placed on a common level, politically, with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with women. By the practice of those declarations all class and caste distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, bound from their subject ...
— An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony • Anonymous
... pursuit of happiness? Feuerbach set this statement out as absolute, as applicable to all times and circumstances. But since when has it been true? Was there in the olden time between slave and master or in the Middle Ages between serf and baron any talk about equal rights to the pursuit of happiness? Was not the right to the pursuit of happiness of the subject class sacrificed to the dominant class regardlessly and by means of law?—nay, that ...
— Feuerbach: The roots of the socialist philosophy • Frederick Engels
... Shandon is, ought to be driven by such a vulgar slave-driver, as yonder Mr. Bungay, whom we have just left, who fattens on the profits of the other's brains, and enriches himself out of his journeyman's labour. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf of such a creature as that, of a man who can't speak the language that he lives by, who is not fit to ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be outcasts, thrown upon the world either by the breaking up of other clans or by their own misdoings. A man of this class was generally what was known as a "Fuidhar" or "broken man," and answered in some respects to the slave or the serf of the early English village community. Like him he seems to have been his lord's or chief's chattel, and if killed or injured the fine or "eric" was paid not to his own family, but to his master. Such men were usually settled by the chief upon the unappropriated tribal lands over ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... endeavouring to defend these from the hostile inroads of the Turks, and to put down intestine rebellion. In this quarter destructive wars were succeeded but by brief truces, which were scarcely less hurtful: far and wide the land lay waste, while the injured serf had to complain equally of his enemy and his protector. Into these countries also the Reformation had penetrated; and protected by the freedom of the States, and under the cover of the internal disorders, had made a noticeable progress. Here too it was incautiously attacked, and party spirit ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... break-up of this rigid system came in England the emancipation of the serf, the rise of the artisan class, and the beginnings of peasant agriculture. That personal gravitation which always draws together men of similar ambitions and tasks now began to work significant changes in the economic order. The peasantry, more or less scattered ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... overlooked what was inherently believed the patriotic duty of combining a display of loyalty to their sovereign with a proportionate degree of disloyalty to the captain and owner who were responsible for supplying them with food that even a Russian serf might have felt justified in complaining about. So a doggerel verse was composed and sung fervently to a modified form of the National Anthem by way of intimating their grievance forcefully to the notice of their commander. Relevancy did not come ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... real and personal estate in the Territory being vested in the Church and its directors, between whom and the mass of the population there exists a difference in social welfare as wide as between the Russian nobleman and his serf. In brief, the Mormons no longer claim to be a Christian sect, but assert, and truly, that their religion is as distinct from Christianity as that is from Mahometanism. Many of the doctrines whispered in 1847 only to those who had been admitted to the penetralia ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... background. It was a kind of foundry work of the highest order, all the details and processes requiring the greatest care. To my surprise every one engaged in this gigantic and refined metal work was a serf. The full-sized plaster models which they used in moulding were executed by a resident French sculptor. He was a true artist, and of the highest order. But to see the skilful manner in which these native workmen, drawn from the staff of the Bairds' ordinary foundry workers, performed ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... rather than a creation of the Romans; but the ruin caused in this district by the Second Punic War, the annexation to the State of large tracts of rebel land,[195] and the reduction of large portions of the population to the miserable serf-like condition of dediticii,[196] must have offered the capitalists opportunities which they could not otherwise have secured; and both here and in Apulia the tendency to extend the grazing system to its utmost limits must have advanced with terrible rapidity since the close of the Hannibalic ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... marriage that already exists among the better sort of men. The woman of true discretion, I am convinced, would much rather marry a superior man, even on unfavourable terms, than make John Smith her husband, serf and ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... apart, you two, my friend. Somehow there yawns between you a great, impassable gulf. You are as far apart in your lives as prince and pauper, lord and serf, king and peasant ever were in the world's history. It is wonderful, this chasm that yawns between you. As ...
— The Common Sense of Socialism - A Series of Letters Addressed to Jonathan Edwards, of Pittsburg • John Spargo
... rendered. The tonic and the dominant are the prevalent intervals, and the intermediate notes are slurred or slightly sounded. Rochlitz found it impossible to convey this peculiarity by notation, but gives the following melody as a favorite accompaniment to the serf-songs ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... westward carried in their blood to Europe, and retained for a thousand years, the sentiment of caste. The idea that all men are equal, really equal here upon earth, would have remained as much beyond the grasp of the German noble and the German serf as it has remained beyond the grasp of the Indian Pariah or Sudra and the Brahman or Kshatriya. This conception had first to be condensed and permanently fixed by the genius of the strongly democratic little Semitic race on the banks ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka
... White Man's burden— No tawdry rule of kings, But toil of serf and sweeper— The tale of common things. The ports ye shall not enter, The roads ye shall not tread, Go make them with your living, And ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... try to get your property back. No—no, it won't be so easy to return. Unless you'd care to be a serf on ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... describe bad or disagreeable things were used quite differently originally. The word villain is, perhaps, the most expressive we can use to show our opinion of the depths of a person's wickedness. Yet in the Middle Ages a villain, or "villein," was merely a serf or labourer bound to work on the land of a particular lord. The word in Saxon times would have been churl. As time went on both these words became terms of contempt. The lords in the Middle Ages were certainly often more wicked than the serfs, as we see in the stories of the days ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... thee, blest weed, whose sovereign wiles, O'er cankered care bring radiant smiles, Best gift of Love to mortals given! At once the bud and bliss of Heaven! Crownless are kings uncrowned by thee; Content the serf in thy sweet liberty, O charm of ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... of Calabria to the tormented Norwegian fiords, there was in every European heart capable of interests other than egoistical and personal one word, one hope, ardent and unconquerable. That word was "Freedom"—freedom to the serf from the fury of the boyard, to the thralls who toiled and suffered throughout the network of principalities, kingdoms, and duchies, named "Germany"; freedom to the negro slave; freedom to the newer slaves whom factories were ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... maintain a "distance." But Denton's first idea of a dignified isolation from his new surroundings was soon rudely dispelled. He had imagined that his fall to the position of a Labour Serf was the end of his lesson, that when their little daughter had died he had plumbed the deeps of life; but indeed these things were only the beginning. Life demands something more from us than acquiescence. And ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... go before and show him the way he would be the first to follow. The soldiers and courtiers hesitated at this suggestion, and looked at one another with doubt and dread. But standing among the crowd was one Brithmar, a churl or serf, who was nicknamed Budde, or Pudding, from his stoutness. He was a native of the island of Ely and doubtless familiar with its waters, and when the courtiers held back he stepped forward and said he would go ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 9 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. Scandinavian. • Charles Morris
... is an old-fashioned house, built under the serf regime, that house is repaired and embellished; if there is none, then a new one is erected, of two or three stories. The rooms, of which there are from twelve to twenty, and even more, are all six arshins in ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... say much about this tailor; but, as it is the custom to have the character of each personage in a novel clearly defined, there is no help for it, so here is Petrovitch the tailor. At first he was called only Grigoriy, and was some gentleman's serf; he commenced calling himself Petrovitch from the time when he received his free papers, and further began to drink heavily on all holidays, at first on the great ones, and then on all church festivities without discrimination, wherever a cross ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... There are predicaments when the shrewd brute and cunning brigand has his superior at a disadvantage. Let the South prolong this contest till its military social system acquires sufficient strength, and it will drag us down to its own wretched lord-and-serf level. 'To its level!' rather let us say beneath it; yes, beneath its iron heel, to endless ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to have his daughter to wife. But when Prester John heard that Chinghis Kaan demanded his daughter in marriage he waxed very wroth, and said to the Envoys, "What impudence is this, to ask my daughter to wife! Wist he not well that he was my liegeman and serf? Get ye back to him and tell him that I had liever set my daughter in the fire than give her in marriage to him, and that he deserves death at my hand, rebel and traitor that he is!" So he bade the Envoys begone at once, and never ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... peasant and of peasant family," sighed the tramp. "My mamma was a house serf. I don't look like a peasant, that's true, for such has been my lot, good man. My mamma was a nurse with the gentry, and had every comfort, and as I was of her flesh and blood, I lived with her in the master's house. She petted and spoiled me, and did her best to take me out of my ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... little below. Your social position, therefore, has remained the same, for this social position is reckoned not by its relation to the position of the beast in primeval forests, or negroes in Africa, or of the serf in the Middle Ages, or the workingmen of eighty years ago, but only by the relation of this position to the position of your fellowmen—to the position of other ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke |
