"Underling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lacking confidence of character, to advance as a bolder young man might have done. The all-ruling head gardener had inspired him with awe. He had watched him reverently, accumulating knowledge, but being given, as an underling, no opportunity to do more than obey orders. He had spent his life in obeying, and congratulated himself that obedience secured ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... celebrated for its wine, he had the amusing adventure with the hostler which gave occasion for his vivid portrait of an Italian uffiziale, and also to that irresistible impulse to cane the insolent hostler, from the ill consequences of which he was only saved by the underling's precipitate flight. The night was spent at Radicofani, five and twenty miles farther on. A clever postilion diversified the route to Viterbo, another forty-three miles. The party was now within sixteen leagues, or ten hours, of Rome. The road ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... least all I wanted. He said he explained everything to the Big Boss down there and that after they had spent hours together and had gotten Dean Erskine on the long distance, he got the money. It was the mistake of some underling, turning me down, after Austin's death. The head of the Institution had supposed I had been taken ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... first an underling and then a partner of the famous Morrissy-McGrath racing combination at Saratoga and Long Branch. There was a time when he was literally rolling in wealth. Then he went broke—dead broke. Black Friday began it and the panic of '73 finished it. He came over to ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... planned for another year. It became clear that Zoraida was the sole owner of several thousand fair acres here and that Ruiz Rios stood in the position of general manager to his cousin. That he envied her her possessions, that it galled him to be her underling over these acres, was a fact which lay naked on top of many mere surmises. Once, with simulated carelessness, ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... underling of the theatre found us out and brought us, "by Mrs. Siddons' desire," to the best places the house ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... regal best, with the kind of noblesse oblige that would bring worshipful gratitude to the heart of any underling. "Oh, just a quick run-through on whatever you think would be interesting, Mr. Midguard; I don't want to take up too much of ...
— A Spaceship Named McGuire • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the chairman do now? The situation was distinctly awkward—seeing his helplessness and the lukewarmness of the Board behind him. And the secretary felt more strongly than ever the absurdity of his being an underling, he who in a few well-chosen words could so easily have twisted the meeting round his thumb. Suddenly he heard the long, rumbling sigh ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... protest when Velasquez appeared at the palace. They worked all the wires they knew to bring about his downfall, and then dwindled away into chronic Artistic Jealousy, which finally struck in; and they were buried. That the plots, challenges and constant knockings of these underling court painters ever affected Velasquez, we can not see. He swung right along at prodigious strides, living his own life—a life outside and beyond all the pretense and vanity of place ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... to "rush" the wire, because it came home to him with stunning force that, if the money was not recovered, Jean Jacques would be a beggar. It was better to jail the father-in-law, than for the little money-master to take to the road a pauper, or stay on at St. Saviour's as an underling where ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... almost impossible to deflect his conversation into any other channel. Twenty years' intimacy with the eccentric nobleman had largely obliterated that sense of deference with which an English servant usually approaches his master. An English underling's idea of nobility is the man who never by any possibility works with his hands. The fact that Lord Chizelrigg had toiled at the carpenter's bench; had mixed cement in the drawing-room; had caused the anvil to ring out till midnight, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... she feared you, my Lord. These years back tales of your valour in the Holy Land have come to the Rhine, and now you return to find your house at war with hers. What was she to do? The chances stood even with only your underling in command; judge then what her fate must be with your strong sword thrown in the balance against her. All's fair in war, said those who counselled her. What would you have done in such an extremity, ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... notwithstanding the smallness of which, his words always seemed to come from a throat much too big for them. He had greatly the look of a hen, proud of her maternal experiences, and silent from conceit of what she could say if she would. So much better would he have done as an underling than as a ruler—as a journeyman even, than a master, that to know him was almost to disbelieve in the good of what is generally called education. His learning seemed to have taken the wrong fermentation, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... satisfaction in his position, which asks no leave to be of mine, or any man's good opinion. But any deference to some eminent man or woman of the world, forfeits all privilege of nobility. He is an underling: I have nothing to do with him; I will speak with his master. A man should not go where he cannot carry his whole sphere or society with him,—not bodily, the whole circle of his friends, but atmospherically. He should preserve ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... possibly look on while religion perished, and as an Englishman he would not stand aloof while his fatherland was being ruined.[288] He had never wished to be anything else than a subject—but 'only of his Queen, not the underling of an unworthy and low vassal.' So far as men saw, he stood in connexion with both the parties opposed to the prevailing system. He was prayed for in the churches of the Puritans: Cartwright was one of his ...
— A History of England Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Volume I (of 6) • Leopold von Ranke
... general cry of the underling writers against Mr. Pope; and wrote many letters in the Flying Post, with an intention to reduce his reputation, with as little success as his other antagonists had done. In his prose Essay on Criticism, and in the Arts of Logic and Rhetoric, ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... arrangement was to prevent the possibility of error on the part of the Judges, who, otherwise, would never know whether a horse belonged to a General or a Subaltern, to a Member of Council or an Assistant Collector, to a Head of a Department or a wretched underling—in short to a ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... however, that he remained an underling. Before he was eighteen years of age he had got his own flocks, and in the course of a few years was the richest sheep-master in the whole island of Bergen. At last he was able to buy a knight's estate for himself, and that estate was Grabitz, close by Rambin, which now belongs to ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... the road, and if he thought he had secured a good contract already, he would never dream of applying for another. Then, Wilson's malice was gratified by the thought that Gourlay, who hated him, should have to serve, as helper and underling, in a scheme for his aggrandizement. That would take down his pride for him! And the commercial imagination, so strong in Wilson, was inflamed by the vision of himself as a wealthy houseowner which Gibson put before him. Cunning Johnny knew ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... concerning the yellow fever germ. The consul knew that not one in fifty of his acquaintances in the States had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that two men, at any rate, would have to read his report—some underling in the State Department and a compositor in the Public Printing Office. Perhaps the typesticker would note the increase of commerce in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Retters, there was a little, sleek, fat clerk of the name of Chaucer, who was so apt at rondel, sirvente, or tonson, that no man dare give back a foot from the walls, lest he find it all set down in his rhymes and sung by every underling and varlet in the camp. But, my soul's bird, you hear me prate as though all were decided, when I have not yet taken counsel either with you or with my lady mother. Let us to the chamber, while these strangers find such fare as pantry and ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Stuart's opinion of the plot of which Cecil was the head. Here, in Vellano, was an underling—or another conspirator, as it might be—favorable to England, resentful of the United States, and probably in a spirit of revolt against existing conditions in his own country. The boy decided to test this out by ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... receipt for the deposit, once delivered to the Viceroy of India—and the Baronetcy which is to be your life crown is lost for ever." The old man's hands knotted themselves in anger. "The lying story that the deposit was stolen by an underling will bring you, Hugh Johnstone, to the felon's cell! You shall live to wear the convict's chain! The Government is partly aware of the facts. It rests for me to give the Viceroy the receipt for your private deposit. The private bank vault in Calcutta has hidden your shame for twenty years. You ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... "and, by the eternal, you shall pay for this. I'll make an example of you that the North country will not forget in years. Already, you deserve punishment for breaking out of Fort Severn; this is the last straw. We'll see whether the Company can be set at naught by every underling in its employ." ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... long study into a certain science represented as arduous, which they call the science of public affairs and which they (like physicians with medical science) alone have the right to practise. They are not willing that an underling, a journalist for instance, or lower than that, an artist, a cutter of images, should presume to slip into their domain and speak out beside them. A poet, an artist, a writer may be endowed with eminent faculties, ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... And what could he ever be? What was the use of his studies in farming practise, if he was always to be an underling whose sole duty was to carry out the crude ideas of his employers? And what chance was there for a farm-hand to become a farm owner, or even a farm renter, especially if he had a mother to support out of the twenty-five or thirty dollars ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... first refused him entrance, and Roland, not wishing to make himself known, declared he had an appointment with his Lordship. Trusting that the underling could not read, he presented his parchment safe-conduct, asking him to give that to his Lordship, with a message that the bearer awaited his pleasure. The suspicious servant, seeing the Grand Seal of the Empire ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... where countless thousands of pounds' worth of foodstuffs lie rotting in the warehouses, bound up and tied down with red tape bandages. Ask—yes, ask; but don't stop at asking—damn somebody high up in power. Don't let some wretched underling be made the scapegoat of this criminal state of affairs, for the taint of this shameful thing rests upon you, upon every Briton whose homes, privileges, and prosperity are being safeguarded by these famishing men. The folk in authority will probably tell ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... helper, servitor, attendant, retainer; domestic, maid, menial, drudge, valet, flunky, groom, coistril, lackey, underling, fag, coolie, butler, factotum, orderly, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... did, sir," said she. She looked furtively round, and saw Leicester and his underling on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... written: 'Even leprosy may be cured, but the enmity of an official underling can never be dispelled,' and the malice of the persistent Ming-shu certainly points to the wisdom of the verse. Is the person of Kai-moo known to you, and where is the ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... out of all proportion to our merit, which may indeed delight a fool, but rouses the indignation rather than the gratitude of a wise man. It struck him too that Cleopatra intended to make use of him, in the first place as a toy to amuse herself, and then as a useful instrument or underling, and this so gravely incensed and discomfited the serious and sensitive young man that he would willingly have quitted Memphis and Egypt at once and without any leave-taking. However, it was not quite easy for him to get away, for all his thoughts ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... Indeed mountain folk long looked down on their own who sought employment at public works, mines, lumber camps, steel mills. They decried any employment away from the hillside farm, because it meant to them being an underling. No mountaineer ever wanted to be company-owned. Leastwise none of the Wellfords of Laurel Creek. But Clate, youngest of Mark Wellford's family, lured by the promise of big cash money, decided to quit the farm and take his wife and little family ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... unavoidably flow therefrom. 1. By this means, grace, and justification by grace, would be rejected; and that would be a foul business; it would not be reckoned of grace. 2. By this, God would become the debtor, and so the underling; and so we ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan |
