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More "Abject" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... moon shone down in full brilliancy. But, at the appointed time, the predicted phenomenon took place, and the wild howls of the savages proclaimed their abject terror. They came in a body to Columbus, and implored his intercession. They promised to let him want for nothing if only he would avert this judgment: as all earnest of their sincerity they collected hastily ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... produced, for instance, by beautiful leafage, the dawn, a delicate landscape, a touching moon. These are all things in which qualities at once fleeting and permanent isolate the human heart from all preoccupations which lead us in these times either to despairing anxiety, or to abject materialism, or again to a cheap optimism, which I wish to replace by the high hope that is common to us all, and which does ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... this child, that was not equally his duty in respect of every little wanderer in the streets of his parish. That a child's ancestors had been favoured above others, and had so misused their advantages that their last representative was left in abject poverty, could hardly be a reason why that child, born, in more than probability, with the same evil propensities which had ruined them, should be made an elect object of favour. Who was he, Clement Sclater, to intrude upon the divine prerogative, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... out the promise of great blessings to mankind. And some of these blessings it is actually capable of furnishing, even if in the end it should prove to be a failure. Above all it could completely abolish poverty—that is, anything like abject poverty. The productive power of mankind, thanks to the progress of science and invention, is now so great that, even if Socialism were to bring about a very great decline of productiveness—not, to be sure, such utter blasting of productiveness as has been caused by ...
— What Prohibition Has Done to America • Fabian Franklin
... heaven's portal; The son of heaven and earth is new, And misses not, since become immortal, The narrow homestead, whence he withdrew. It ceased existing, It ceased attracting— But faith persisting, But virtue acting! You have, before you, the lot prepared, By abject ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... left the water, but a few seconds had elapsed and the saurian was not two yards from me. The abject horror and hopelessness of that moment was something I can never forget. Suddenly Lekas came floundering through the mud; a second more, and he perceived my enemy when almost within ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... presence, and caught at a post for support. His self-possession was gone; he trembled like the most abject coward. Only for a moment—and then, when he looked again, the apparition ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... Faithful[FN119] and come abroad at this hour?" quoth one of the youths, "I am the son of him to whom all necks[FN120] abase themselves, alike the nose- pierced of them and the breaker; they come to him in their own despite, abject and submissive, and he taketh of their wealth and of their blood." The Master of Police held his hand from him,, saying, "Belike he is of the kinsman of the Prince of True Believers," and said to the second, "Who art thou?" Quoth he, "I am the son of ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... call. She sat bolt upright in the snow and adjusted her lorgnette to see if by any chance her grandniece could be one of those rowdy children. When she discovered that it was not only Hinpoha, but her mother as well, frolicking so indecorously, she was speechless. Mrs. Bradford started to make an abject apology, but the sight of Aunt Phoebe sitting in the snowdrift with her lorgnette was too much for her and she went off into a peal of laughter, in which Hinpoha joined gleefully. It was weeks before Aunt Phoebe could be coaxed to make another visit. And this ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... of Venice, now laboring under the greatest anxiety and fear on account of Bonaparte's anger at her perfidy and enmity, had descended from the height of her proud attitude to the most abject humility. Her solicitude for mere existence made her so far forget her dignity, that she humbly invited Bonaparte, whose loud voice of anger pronounced only vengeance and destruction, to come and receive in person their homage and ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... must be low, to avoid being abject, and despicable, you must borrow some light from the Expression; not such as is dazling, but pure, and lambent, such as may shine thro the whole matter, but never flash, and blind. {58} The words of such a Stile ...
— De Carmine Pastorali (1684) • Rene Rapin
... as yet contains only one forty-second part of the population of France; and one half of its inhabitants, being in the most abject indigence, consume but little. Its revenue is nearly equal to that of the Republic of Columbia, and it exceeds the revenue of all the custom-houses of the United States* before the year 1795, when that confederation had 4,500,000 inhabitants, ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America V3 • Alexander von Humboldt
... positively reach, are so frequently near to reaching the normal poor, are, no doubt, the severest of the trials to which humanity is subjected. They threaten life,—or, if not life, then liberty,—reducing the abject one to a choice between captivity and starvation. By hook or crook, the poor gentleman or poor lady,—let the one or the other be ever so poor,—does not often come to the last extremity of the workhouse. ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Champlain was oppressed by the suffering and death that were at all times present in their abode, his sympathies were still further taxed by the condition of the savages, who gathered in great numbers about the settlement, in the most abject misery and in the last stages of starvation. As Champlain could only furnish them, from his limited stores, temporary and partial relief, it was the more painful to see them slowly dragging their feeble frames about in the snow, gathering up ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... use to express their gladness. Then the strange, three-legged beast went further. Down he threw himself full length upon the floor and grovelled effusively, whining and scraping the boards in a perfect fervour of abject delight. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... spiritual light, what exalted virtues, what lofty heroism they harbored! In those gloomy, tumbledown Jew houses, intellectual endeavor was at white heat. The torch of faith blazed clear in them, and on the pure domestic hearth played a gentle flame. In the abject, dishonored son of the Ghetto was hidden an intellectual giant. In his nerveless body, bent double by suffering, and enveloped in the shabby old cloak still further disfigured by the yellow wheel, dwelt the ...
— Jewish History • S. M. Dubnow
... certain that I should be a hero at the Equator, but I am fully convinced that I should be an abject coward at the North Pole. Three mornings ago I stood for two hours by the Ambulances de la Presse, and my teeth have not ceased to chatter ever since. I pity the unfortunate fellows who had to keep watch all night on the plateau of Villiers more than those ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the capital Peter, in order to see what progress his son had made in mechanics and mathematics, asked him to draw something of a technical nature for his inspection. Alexius, in order to escape such an ordeal, resorted to the abject expedient of disabling his right hand by a pistol-shot. In no other way could the tsarevich have offended his father so deeply. He had behaved like a cowardly recruit who mutilates himself to escape military service. After this, Peter seemed for a time to take no further interest ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... the pangs of hunger; who sacrifice pride and affection at its miserable altar. There are others, fewer in number, it is true, but scarcely less to be pitied, who exceed this enforced servility in the most abject fashion of voluntary adulation; who flatter, persuade, and bring rich tribute to this smiling Moloch, only waiting his own time to turn upon and destroy his idolaters. For the pampered stomach, like all other spoiled potentates, is treacherous and ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... town of Farani, and begged some provisions from the dooty, who readily supplied my wants, and desired me to come to his house every day during my stay in the neighbourhood.—These hospitable people are looked upon by the Moors as an abject race of ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... people, having no longer cause to fear him, began to deplore his death" And elsewhere, when speaking of what took place in Syracuse after the murder of Hieronymus, grandson of Hiero, he says, "It is the nature of the multitude to be an abject slave, ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... people was, for either bread or work; and to still, if possible, this woeful clamor, local committees, by large subscriptions, aided, in some cases, by loans from government, contrived to find them employment on useful public works. Previous to this, nothing could surpass the prostration and abject subserviency with which the miserable crowds solicited food or labor. Only give them labor at any rate—say sixpence a day—and they did not wish to beg or violate the laws. No, no; only give them peaceable employment, and they would rest not ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... rights, behold the Baronet stopped short, and turning sharp round, declared that he would not go with us; and that he would only support the right of liberty for householders, leaving all the rest of the community in a state of abject slavery and bondage! Up to this period—till this fatal decision, with the exception of one or two little obliquities of conduct, Sir F. Burdett had enjoyed the confidence, and received the support of every wise, good, and disinterested man in the nation; because every one believed that ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... views of Members in all parts of the House, anxious only to do his duty to his QUEEN and Country. Whereas it is clear he is a martinet of the severest type, a ruthless tyrant, a man who rules with a rod of iron, and keeps his followers in a condition of abject personal terror." ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 6, 1891 • Various
... Twisting, struggling, writhing, cursing, two men lay upon the ground held in a fierce embrace, much in the manner of two wildcats. Beyond them, huddled upon the ground, her face covered with her hands, a picture of abject terror, crouched her younger ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... profoundly moved. The utter helplessness of the man; his abject and complete surrender to the demon which possessed him—all this appalled him. He had seen many drunken men in his time—roysterers and brawlers, most of them—but never one like Poe. The poet seemed to have lost his identity—nothing of the man ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... It was during the time he was stopping in Paris—incognito to all but a trusted few. He—he met the woman there, became fascinated with her, bound to her, an abject slave to her." ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... career. These pretty little creatures took the leading parts in Bombastes Furioso the first night my boy ever saw a play, and he instantly fell impartially in love with both of them, and tacitly remained their abject slave for a great while after. When the smaller of them came out with a large pair of stage boots in one hand and a drawn sword in the other, ...
— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells
... burst out Kranitski. "Lili and superhumanity, the ideal! Why, she is a little beast that sings abject ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... boy, thrust by mischance into a man's body,—a boy who could complacently pluck a butterfly, wing from wing, or cower in abject terror before a lean, nervy fellow, not half his size. He was a selfish cry-baby, hidden behind a man's mustache and stature, and glossed over with a skin-deep veneer of culture and conventionality. Yes; he was a clubman and a society man, the ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... for I, Naya of Mo, tell thee that thy downfall is at hand, and thine enemies the English will press their way from the great sea, bridge the Prah, and cut a road across the great forest to this thy capital, where thou shalt make abject submission to their head-man and shall be carried into degrading captivity by them. Thy treasures shall be seized, the tombs of thy fathers shall be opened and desecrated, thy fetish-trees shall ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... never said that they were not really my father and mother. I felt ashamed to admit that I was a foundling,—a child picked up in the streets! I knew how the children from the Foundlings' Hospital had been scorned. It seemed to me that it was the most abject thing in the world to be a foundling. I did not want Mrs. Milligan and Arthur to know. Would they not have turned from me ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... mingled with flashes of desperation, at the remembrance of his rash imprudence. His recollection of extravagant frontier chivalry to womankind, and the swift retribution of the insulted husband or guardian, alternately filled him with abject fear or extravagant recklessness. At times prepared for flight, even to the desperate abandonment of himself in a canoe to the waters of the Pacific: at times he was on the point of inciting his braves to attack the Indian agency and precipitate the war that he felt would be inevitable. ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... Undershaft replies with unnecessary violence that he won't have the Greek professor's love, to which the obvious answer of course would be, "How the deuce can you prevent my loving you if I choose to do so?" Instead of this, as far as I remember, that abject Hellenist says nothing at all. I only mention this unfair dialogue, because it marks, I think, the recent hardening, for good or evil, of Shaw out of a dramatist into a mere philosopher, and whoever hardens into a philosopher may be hardening into ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... with the terrified expression of a mediaeval wrongdoer, writhing under an ecclesiastical curse. He made abject apology. ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... but be d—d careful how you say it," was the reply, with a sneer that would have stung an abject slave into a longing for revenge, and that grated on Mr. Billings's nerves in a way that made him clinch his fists and involuntarily grit his teeth. Could it be that O'Grady detected it? One quick, ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... depths of the fiord; the sea is my steed and I bridle it; I know where the singing flower grows, and the talking light descends, and fragrant colors shine! I wear the seal of Solomon; I am a fairy; I cast my orders to the wind which, like an abject slave, fulfils them; my eyes can pierce the earth and behold its treasures; for lo! am I not the virgin to whom the pearls dart from their ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac
... the population lives in abject poverty. Nearly 70% of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, which consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming and employs about two-thirds of the economically active work force. The country has experienced little or no job creation ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... fancy caught, Mystically changed ye seem, And the bird becomes a thought, And the thought becomes a dream, And the dream, outspread on high, Lords it o'er the abject sky. ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... These poor creatures get the worst of all their food, with the hardest of all their work; and are frequently very severely beaten by their hard and ruthless taskmasters. Degraded as are these aborigines generally, those in the immediate vicinity of Sydney are a more abject race than their more fortunate brethren who inhabit the distant parts of the Colony. This may be partly, if not wholly accounted for, by the facility with which at Sydney they can obtain ardent spirits, ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... uneasiness and obligation and he settled down to his business with an unburdened mind. Not so Patsy. She blinked at the vanishing train and then at her empty hands, with the nearest she had ever come in her life to utter, abject despair. She had left her bag ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... could do with a clear conscience, as it was only a question of priority and did not involve any support of the system, which he deemed far inferior to that of Copernicus. The following year saw friction between the two astronomers, and we learn from Kepler's abject letter of apology that he was entirely in the wrong. It was about money matters, which in one way or another embittered the rest of Kepler's life, and it arose during his absence from Prague. On his return in September, 1601, Tycho ...
— Kepler • Walter W. Bryant
... that we bear in short the burden of our obloquy, our failure, our resignation, our sacrifice of what we should have liked, even if it be a matter we scarce dare to so much as name to each other; and above all of our insufferable reputation for an abject meekness. We're really not meek a bit—we're secretly quite ferocious; but we're held to be ashamed of ourselves not only for our proved business incompetence, but for our lack of first-rate artistic ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... not, I believe, a more abject slave; society produces not a more odious vermin; nor can the devil receive a guest more worthy of him, nor possibly more welcome to him, than a slanderer. The world, I am afraid, regards not this monster with half the abhorrence which he deserves; and I am more afraid to assign ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... sallow, yellowish face, large repulsive lips, and a shapeless nose, and to him belonged the long, black greasy hair which I had already noted amid the folds of the red banner. Large gristly ears emerged from his uncombed mop of hair, and the only redeeming feature about the abject creature was his large, brown, dog-like eyes. He crept forward, grinding his teeth and rubbing his bony hands, and subsided into a waste-paper basket which was the only ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... to carry him in myself? I would wreathe him in the best crape, I would put on black for him; the Curries would hardly consider a taper and a white sheet, or sack-cloth and ashes, an excessive form of atonement, but I could not grovel to quite such an abject extent. ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... of State. In this man the political immorality of his age was personified in the most lively manner. Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His mind had undergone a training by which all his vices had been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into public life, he had passed several years in diplomatic posts abroad, and had been, during ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forehead and glanced at the sun, burning hotly down upon the prairie. They had made a short move that day and it was still early. But the way to Nelson's and back had been hot and tumultuous and he was tired. For the first time since his abject surrender to the waxed smile, Happy Jack chafed a bit under the yoke of voluntary servitude. "Aw, can't yuh cook something that don't take so many eggs?" he asked in something ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... the time was at hand which would probably determine whether Americans were to be freemen or slaves. "The fate of unborn millions," he said, "will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us no choice but a brave resistance or the most abject submission. This is all we can expect. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die. Our country's honor calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail we shall become infamous to the whole world. ...
— The Campaign of 1776 around New York and Brooklyn • Henry P. Johnston
... bodily activity. There came not even so much as the feeblest moan from her lips. The torment was far too racking for such futile fashion of lamentation. She merely sat there in a posture of collapse. To all outward seeming, nerveless, emotionless, an abject creature. Even the eyes, which held so fixedly their gaze on the window, were quite expressionless. Over them lay a film, like that which veils the eyes of some dead thing. Only an occasional languid motion of the lids ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... sent down from London an army of stupid men, who have kept our household in a state of abject terror for eight long weeks, and where ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... kept on in abject silence. Not a word was spoken, and save for the panting of the eager hound and the labored breathing of ...
— With Trapper Jim in the North Woods • Lawrence J. Leslie
... shoulders, where one hand held it, while the other clutched savagely at her throat; with her bare delicate feet beating a tattoo on the white sanded floor, and her thin nostrils dilated in the battle for breath, Iva Le Bougeois moaned in abject terror. The coarse, unbleached "domestic" night-gown that fell to her ankles was streaked across the bosom with some dark brown fluid; and similar marks stained the pillow where her restless head had tossed. The hot eyes and parched red lips seemed to have drained all the ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... triumph into more concrete speech. The essential lesson of experience, then, is that no device, plan, or policy adopted by England for the subjugation of Ireland has ever been anything except an abject failure. And the positive of this negative is that every claim that ever formed part of the national programme of Ireland has won its way against all enmities. No plough to which she ever put her hand has been turned back or stayed eternally ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... hilly districts in the north and east of Attica; and of the PARALI, or mercantile inhabitants of the coasts, who held an intermediate position between the other two. Their disputes were aggravated by the miserable condition of the poorer population. The latter were in a state of abject poverty, They had borrowed money from the wealthy at exorbitant rates of interest upon the security of their property and their persons. If the principal and interest of the debt were not paid, the creditor ...
— A Smaller History of Greece • William Smith
... hand, the peasant is too abject, too wretched, and too fearful of the future to enjoy the beauty of the country and the charms of pastoral life. To him, also, the yellow harvest-fields, the rich meadows, the fine cattle represent bags ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... They were all in rags, ludicrously armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hastily towards the Tuilleries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collection of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of Paris. "Let us follow the mob," said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up our station on the terrace of the banks of the river. It was there that he witnessed the scandalous scenes which took place; and it ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Judaeus); in fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men like Benedict, who set up sounder ideals of holiness, introducing a gleam of sanity even in ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... see him!" interrupted Sir Francis backing to the furthest corner of the room, in what looked very like abject terror, as if he had completely lost his presence of mind. Lady Levison's ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... in high employment at court, and attended by him with the most abject assiduity; and his sister being gone off with child to a private lodging, my lord continued his graces to Corusodes, got him to be a chaplain in ordinary, and in due time a parish in town, and a dignity ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. III.: Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Vol. I. • Jonathan Swift
... the eye looked upon its distorted and overhanging position with a sensation of pain and dread; where the very rats had deserted their loathsome cells from the insecurity of their tenure, and the ragged mothers of the abject neighbourhood forbade their brawling children to wander under the threatening walls, lest they should keep the promise of their mouldering aspect, and, falling, bare to the obstructed and sickly day the secrets of their prison-house. Girt with the foul and reeking ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... abject poverty, a bullying tax-gatherer, with half a dozen louting soldiers, have been up here prowling about, and wresting with violence the means of supporting life from these miserable beings. The scenes which I witness are heart-rending, beyond all I have heard ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... The abject servility of those magnificent savages was terrifying. How could it be? What was the secret of his rule? More and more I puzzled as the days went by, and though I observed perpetual examples of his undisputed sovereignty, never a clew was there ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... What business had this woman, who, in her heart of hearts, despised me as an abject, greedy, dishonourable coward, a base wretch, who had accepted the most degrading position on earth for a money consideration—what business, said I, had she to speak fair of ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Demosthenes to make his fellow citizens accept this proposition.[35] In 1779 Laurens said: "I would advance those who are unjustly deprived of the rights of mankind to a state which would be a proper gradation between abject slavery and perfect liberty, and besides I am persuaded that if I could obtain authority for the purpose, I would have a corps of such men trained, uniformly clad, equipped and ready in every respect to act at the ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... refer Your Lordships to the strong testimony of Major Naylor when he rescued Colonel Hannay from their hands—where you see that this people, born to submission and bent to most abject subjection—that even they, in whose meek hearts injury had never yet begot resentment, nor even despair bred courage—that their hatred, their abhorrence of Colonel Hannay was such that they clung round him by thousands and thousands;—that ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... she learned that it was destroyed, and I imagine that she has intentionally hidden herself and does not wish to be found. I might, after long search, discover her bankers, but she has probably notified them to keep her address a secret. I do not like to confess," he continued, "to so abject a failure, but I really do not know what to ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... to fetch Chu Chu, leaving me and Consuelo alone. I do not think I ever felt so utterly abject and bewildered before in my life. Without knowing why, I was miserably conscious of having in some way offended the girl for whom I believed I would have given my life, and I had made her and myself ridiculous in the eyes of her ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... her abject misery was expressed in the very tones of his deep voice. "If at any time in the future you need me ... for anything, no matter what, will you—will you come to me and tell me? Will you ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... say especially—when you don't understand what he says. But he adds to it other graces which make him an agreeable feature in your life. The price he sets on his services is touchingly small, and he has a happy art of being obsequious without being, or at least without seeming, abject. For occasional liberalities he evinces an almost lyrical gratitude. In short he has delightfully good manners, a merit which he shares for the most part with the Venetians at large. One grows very fond of these people, and the reason of one's fondness is the frankness and ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... astonished and bashful by her excessive beauty. From the moment she came on board with her father, clad in her simple white gown, with a deep crimson hood drawn over her fair hair, and tied under her rounded chin, she had taken them all captive—they were her abject slaves in heart, though they put on very creditable airs of manly independence and nonchalance. Each man in his different way strove to amuse or interest her, except, strange to say, Errington himself, who, though deeply courteous to her, kept somewhat in the background and appeared more ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... irrevocable 'No' to my lips. Do you think that because I am as proud as my mother, and resolute like my father, that I wish for a husband whom I could govern and lead as I would? How little you know me! I will be obeyed by my dogs, my servants, my officers, if the Gods so will it, by my children. Abject beings, who will kiss my feet, I meet on every road, and can buy by the hundred, if I wish it, in the slave market. I may be courted twenty times, and reject twenty suitors, but not because I fear that they might bend my pride and my will; on the contrary, because I feel them increased. The man ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... drank the stuff they gave him, loathed it, paid and staggered on. When he reached his hotel he crept upstairs, dreading to meet any of the harsh-faced people who frowned as he passed them. He had done abject things these last three days to conciliate them—tipped the waiter, ordered food, not that he might eat it but that he might pay for it, bowed to the landlady—all to save the shrinking of his sore and quivering nerves. In vain! It seemed ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the ranch and his parting instructions to "sit tight." I also know that the Happy Family was not at all likely to volunteer information of their lapse. And as for Applehead, the money burned his soul deep with remorse; so deep that he went around with an abject eagerness to serve Luck that touched that young man as a rare example of a bone-deep loyalty that knows no deceit. Which proves once more how fortunate it is that we cannot always see too deeply into the thoughts and motives ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... heavens. The moon shone out with its clear cold light, silvering the broad, hedgeless, poplar-fringed plains, and shining through the window of the carriage upon the crouching figure and her terrible companion. He leaned back now, his arms folded upon his chest, his eyes gloating upon the abject misery of the woman ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... front of me lay the forms of the woman and the children; I could see their dull eyes, unblinking, looking up at me in abject terror. Still the patter of footsteps sounded from without, with now and then an ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... and fantastic fears—of abject superstitions—and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages been laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them—and, without violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear testimony ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... paper were produced by the ship's executive officer and passed around the circle. Hardly a word was spoken during this procedure, the usual debonair Bill Witt slouching against the hull of the Dewey, a picture of abject despair. It took only a few minutes to prepare the slips and they were collected by Officer Cleary, who in turn deposited them in the code box. Captain McClure stirred them around for a moment and then directed Officer Cleary to ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... straits. He was outclassed and outmanned and like to be even dispossessed by a most powerful and determined enemy. He asked their deliberations as to help for the king in his difficulties. Oxford was the king's birthplace and was also in Lincoln diocese.{9} The Court party, who advocated abject submission to the king's becks, at once proposed that the barons of England, among whom were the bishops, should furnish three hundred knights to the king, which knights should serve for a year without furlough. The Bishop of Lincoln's consent was asked, and he made no reply at ...
— Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln - A Short Story of One of the Makers of Mediaeval England • Charles L. Marson
... eleven States of the Union combine together to overthrow and destroy the Union; never before in the history of this Government have we had a four years' civil war; never before in the history of this Government have nearly four million people been emancipated from the most abject and degrading slavery ever imposed upon human beings; never before has the occasion arisen when it was necessary to provide for such large numbers of people thrown upon the bounty of the Government unprotected and unprovided for. ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... proposals to put Madame Elizabeth to death, he was thinking not of mercy or justice, but of the mischievous effect that her execution would have upon the public opinion of Europe, and he was so unmanly as to speak of her as la meprisable soeur de Louis XVI. Such a phrase is the disclosure of an abject stratum in his soul. ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 1 of 3) - Essay 1: Robespierre • John Morley
... things as are tossed to a performing monkey on the town wall. But the distance is immeasurable between Juvenal's scorching truculence and Diderot's half-ironical, half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that Trebius is a base and abject being; he tells him what he is; and in the process blasts him. Diderot knows that Rameau too is base and abject, but he is so little willing to rest in the fat and easy paradise of conventions, that he seems to be all the time vaguely wondering ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... about wagons. The Chinese carry every thing by hand; they seem altogether too meek and timid to have horses; but, as they adapt themselves to every thing, they have looked about, and met the difficulty, in part, by securing quite a number of poor, abject animals, with which they are beginning to appear in the streets. There is no change they are not willing to make; and their patience and perseverance are unconquerable, about staying and going on with ...
— Life at Puget Sound: With Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon and California • Caroline C. Leighton
... is what thou seest! O enviable fate! to be Strong, beautiful, and armed like thee With lyre and sword, with song and steel; A hand to smite, a heart to feel! Thy heart, thy hand, thy lyre, thy sword, Thou givest all unto thy Lord; While I, so mean and abject grown, Am ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... revolver in anger, and against strangers in our land, thou wilt be thrown into prison, and thou wilt receive ten months. I will come and see thee, and listen to the music of thy clanking chains, and we will talk of to-day's doings!" By the time Stephan had finished, abject fear was depicted on the man's face, and his companions showed signs of having heard enough. Murmuring apologies, they sheered off, and with a slow and thoughtful rhythm paddled back the way ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... linger in a living death so cruelly intolerable that often they were driven to entreat and implore the spectators or the executioners, for dear pity's sake, to put an end to anguish too awful for man to bear—conscious to the last, and often, with tears of abject misery, beseeching from their enemies the ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... force from him tears, and sometimes a soft complaint, he would, with a malicious sneer, scornfully reproach him in the following words: 'Little does it avail to whine, to blubber, or complain; for, remember, abject wretch, ...
— The Governess - The Little Female Academy • Sarah Fielding
... the present time, through this slavery, the world would be thrilled with an indescribable horror. Health, comfort, and human life have paid the penalty of a criminal servitude to the modern juggernaut, before whose car millions of our women are bowing in abject servility, knowing full well that at each turn of its wheel new pains or fresh diseases will be inflicted. And what power controls and gives life to this mistress of modern civilization? At whose behest is this crime against reason, life, and posterity perpetrated? The cupidity ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 22, September, 1891 • Various
... campaign of deliberate terrorism. This time they were resolved to win at any cost. Spurning every offer of conciliation, they burned, ravaged, and laid waste, spread desolation along their pathway, and reduced thousands to abject poverty and want. ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... about those who go to London to live by the pen, and they all told the same shuddering tale. London, which she never saw, was to her a monster that licked up country youths as they stepped from the train; there were the garrets in which they sat abject, and the park seats where they passed the night. Those park seats were the monster's glaring eyes to her, and as I go by them now she is nearer to me than when I am in any other part of London. I daresay that when night comes, this Hyde Park which is so gay by day, ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... soon as the tackles were hooked into the jollyboat's ringbolts I ordered the four savages in the canoe to leave her and come on deck to help to hoist in the boat; and this they did in a state of the most abject fear and trembling. Then I sent them for'ard to the windlass to assist in breaking out the anchor; and it was not until the schooner was actually adrift that I permitted them to begin the transfer of their wounded from the Martha's deck to the canoe. They displayed remarkably ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... now My abject fortune, withered fame so low: Seyd is mine enemy; had swept my band From earth with ruthless but with open hand, And therefore came I, in my bark of war, 1530 To smite the smiter with the scimitar; Such is my weapon—not the secret knife; Who spares a Woman's seeks ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... gunners, and a few cavalry might be occasionally found useful. To complete the entire plan, and exclude our enemies from every point, from Cape Blanco to Cape Palmas, the possession of the French establishment at the Isle of Louis in the Senegal, is an abject of serious contemplation, and no doubt might be attained with great facility by even a small force. The unhealthy consequences to a military force attached to this place might be greatly removed by ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry
... lord, to which he required categorical answers, that their lordships might know precisely the points they had to discuss. The questions were submitted, and Lord Mansfield, instead of meeting them, "with most abject soothings," as Horace Walpole gleefully says, "paid the highest compliments to Lord Camden." He had the highest esteem for the noble and learned lord who thus attacked him, and had ever courted his esteem in return. He had not expected this treatment from his candor. ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... povert', *is satisfied with* I hold him rich though he hath not a shirt. He that coveteth is a poore wight For he would have what is not in his might But he that nought hath, nor coveteth to have, Is rich, although ye hold him but a knave.* *slave, abject wretch *Very povert' is sinne,* properly. *the only true poverty is sin* Juvenal saith of povert' merrily: The poore man, when he goes by the way Before the thieves he may sing and play Povert' is hateful good, and, as I guess, A full great *bringer out of business;* *deliver ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... which he inhaled avidly. He looked wretched, pinched with hunger, peaked with cold, but he straightened up when he saw me into a semblance of well-being. Then, in a little, he sagged forward, and his eyes went dull and abject. It was a business of the utmost delicacy to induce him to accept a small loan. I knew it would only plunge him more deeply into the mire; but I could not bear to ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... powerful animal and very fierce as a rule, though in the case of a noted man-eater I have known it exhibit a curious mixture of ferocity and abject cowardice. It is stated to be of a more retiring disposition than the next species, but this I doubt, for I have frequently come across it in the neighbourhood of villages to which it was probably attracted by cattle. It may not have the fearlessness or impudence of the panther, which will ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... indulged. I went to Florence, to Rome, to Naples; thence I passed to Toulon, and at length reached what had long been the bourne of my wishes, Paris. There was wild work in Paris then. The poor king, Charles the Sixth, now sane, now mad, now a monarch, now an abject slave, was the very mockery of humanity. The queen, the dauphin, the Duke of Burgundy, alternately friends and foes—now meeting in prodigal feasts, now shedding blood in rivalry—were blind to the miserable state of their country, and the dangers that ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... contemplating with fascinated wonder an object that floated from his coat pocket. From a brown-paper parcel, imperfectly wrapped, depended a curl of golden hair, and it bobbed about in the breeze in a manner that reduced Mr. Fallows to a state of abject curiosity. ...
— Mr. Opp • Alice Hegan Rice
... breathless. The two culprits turned deadly pale, and began to stammer out what was partially denial, partially excuse. And then in an abject tone implored forgiveness. ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... be in sympathy with it—that I shall always be. I don't know that I shall ever be ill-natured with old people—I hope not; there are certainly some old people I adore. But I shall never be anything but abject with the young; they touch me and appeal to me too much. I give you carte blanche then; you can even be impertinent if you like; I shall let it pass and horribly spoil you. I speak as if I were a hundred years old, you say? Well, I am, ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... overfond and madly foolish father for the son to run through it entirely. A very few years left him an imbecile in body and mind, to become the prey of a parcel of sharks who, dressing in purple and fine linen and faring sumptuously every day, held him in a state of abject slavery and fear. One day, aboard his own yacht, off Naples, they married him to a notorious woman. Under the guardianship of his wife and her villain paramour he wandered like a spectre amid the scene of his ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... people seem! How like a swarm of gregarious insects, in their unity of purpose and of aspect! Above all, how homeless! Cast your eye around the tables of a casino's gambling-room. What an uniform and abject herd, huddled together with one despondent impulse! Here and there, maybe, a person whom we know to be vastly rich; yet we cannot conceive his calm as not the calm of inward desperation; cannot conceive that he has anything to bless himself with except the roll of bank-notes ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... obey when I am convinced that the empress commands. But in this case I am convinced that it is not my mother, the high-spirited Maria Theresa, who intrusts you with such an abject commission." ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... he drank off the cup of suffering to the very extremity of what his peculiar nature allowed. And in no life of so short a duration, have there ever been crowded equal extremities of gorgeous prosperity and abject infamy. It may be added, as another striking illustration of the rapid mutability and revolutionary excesses which belonged to what has been properly called the Roman stratocracy then disposing of the world, that within no very great succession of ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... and flung him against the wall. Mercedes, sinking back, lay still. When Rojas got up the Indian stood between him and escape from the ledge. Rojas backed the other way along the narrowing shelf of lava. His manner was abject, ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... Briggs' weeping snuffle, and her manner of using the handkerchief, were so completely rendered that Miss Crawley became quite cheerful, to the admiration of the doctors when they visited her, who usually found this worthy woman of the world, when the least sickness attacked her, under the most abject depression ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... where his wife usually sat. She was drowned in tears, and lay crouching in the depths of an armchair, as if she were tired of life and longed to die. It was piteous to see her. Before venturing to look at Rastignac, she glanced at her husband in evident and abject terror that spoke of complete prostration of body and mind; she seemed crushed by a tyranny both mental and physical. The Count jerked his head towards her; she construed this as a permission ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... fear was not abject. It was that emotion which counsels caution, which warns of a worthy antagonist, which respects force ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... established among them, that greatly resembles the early state of every nation in Europe under the feudal system, which secured liberty in the most licentious excess to a few, and entailed the most abject ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... ample, and many of them strikingly unique. Few, even at the South, believed that the Southern States could set forth such displays. The fact that this was possible so soon after a devastating war, which had left the section in abject poverty, was a speaking compliment to the land and to the energy of ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... soul of mine, Is it well Thus to waste and wear away The poor, fragile walls of clay Where you dwell? Was I made your slave to be— I the abject, you the free, That you task me ceaselessly?— Tyrant soul, come, answer ...
— Poems of the Heart and Home • Mrs. J.C. Yule (Pamela S. Vining)
... is to be considered the spirit of traditional submissiveness which at all times and in all places marks the attitude of the slave or serf towards his master. One has only to remember the many accounts of abject resignation by the peasants of France and the moujiks of Russia before the revolutions that changed the order of the past in those countries. No such considerations affect the Native where his anger and hatred are directed against one or more of his own colour. The records ...
— The Black Man's Place in South Africa • Peter Nielsen
... bore Washington a special grudge, being quite aware that it was he who was in the habit of removing the famous Canterville blood- stain, by means of Pinkerton's Paragon Detergent. Having reduced the reckless and foolhardy youth to a condition of abject terror, he was then to proceed to the room occupied by the United States Minister and his wife, and there to place a clammy hand on Mrs. Otis's forehead, while he hissed into her trembling husband's ear the awful secrets of the charnel-house. With regard to little ...
— Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories • Oscar Wilde
... there, alone with the horror under the tree. She turned her back on it, but she could see nothing but the abject, strengthless body, the dreadful ignominy of the face. ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... catch our death of cold by sleeping in those draughty tents. Faith, you have descended, sir, like an agreeable meteor, upon two of the most scandalously henpecked husbands in all the universe. In fact, you will not find a gentleman at Ingilby—save Mr. Erwyn, perhaps—but is an abject slave to his wife, and in consequence ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... tea at Belmont—nectar in Olympus—that evening. Was ever lieutenant so devoutly romantic? He had grown more fanatical and abject in his worship. He spoke less, and lisped in very low tones. He sighed often, and sometimes mightily; and ogled unhappily, and smiled lackadaisically. The beautiful damsel was, in her high, cold way, kind to the guest, and employed him about ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... time the third stranger had been standing in the doorway. Finding now that he did not come forward or go on speaking, the guests particularly regarded him. They noticed to their surprise that he stood before them the picture of abject terror—his knees trembling, his hand shaking so violently that the door-latch by which he supported himself rattled audibly: his white lips were parted, and his eyes fixed on the merry officer of justice in the middle of the room. A moment more and ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the Army) was discovered at the hazard table, playing with loaded dice. Before this abject scoundrel could be turned out of his regiment, he was killed in a duel by one of his brother ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... outcry was beyond description lamentable. Never, in the whole universe, had a merchant met with such reverses; never had such a pitiable series of losses befallen an unfortunate man. Regardless of the ridicule which his abject wretchedness excited, he howled on still, and kept up an unending wail; but meanwhile he kept a keen eye upon every article of his property, and amidst universal laughter insisted on having every item registered in an inventory as it was transferred to its appointed place of safety. Servadac ...
— Off on a Comet • Jules Verne
... since that August evening when, terrified by his brother's sudden and violent death, Edward Duke of York had dictated his will in terms of such abject penitence. The effect of that terror was wearing away. The unseen world, which had come very near, receded into the far distance; and the visible world returned to its usual prominence. And York's aim had always been, not "so to pass through things temporal that he lost not the ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... his authority, by humble excuses, and supplications for pardon. He threw his crown in the dust before their feet, as if such humility would induce them to place it again upon his head. He abandoned the minions who had been his pride, his joy, and his defence, and deprecated, with an abject whimper, all responsibility for the unmeasured ambition and the insatiable rapacity of a few private individuals. He conjured the party-leaders, who had hurled defiance in his face, to lay down their arms, and promised that they should find in his wisdom and bounty more than all ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... themselves, to use any arbitrary power whatsoever; that therefore they are not, under a false show of liberty, but in truth to exercise an unnatural, inverted domination, tyrannically to exact from those who officiate in the state, not an entire devotion to their interest, which is their right, but an abject submission to their occasional will: extinguishing thereby, in all those who serve them, all moral principle, all sense of dignity, all use of judgment, and all consistency of character; whilst by the very same process they give themselves up a proper, a suitable, but a most contemptible prey ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... noteworthy figure in The Zincali is the gypsy soldier of Valdepenas, an unholy rascal. 'To lie, to steal, to shed human blood'—these are the most marked characteristics with which Borrow endows the gypsies of Spain. 'Abject and vile as they have ever been, the gitanos have nevertheless found admirers in Spain,' says the author who came to be popularly recognised as the most enthusiastic admirer of the gypsies in Spain and elsewhere. Read ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... course such terms were impossible to Madame du Deffand. She accepted them—what else could she do?—but every line she wrote was a denial of them. Then, periodically, there was an explosion. Walpole stormed, threatened, declared he would write no more; and on her side there were abject apologies, and solemn promises of amendment. Naturally, it was all in vain. A few months later he would be attacked by a fit of the gout, her solicitude would be too exaggerated, and the same fury was repeated, and the same ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... is in town," he said, hastily. "I saw his man at dinner. The train was reported late, but she made up time." Grasping desperately at his dignity, he swallowed an abject apology and ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... David's disappearance. He felt that it was unlikely as no one would think of carrying the news there. As he stood for a few minutes looking upon Betty who was sitting before him the very embodiment of abject misery, he believed that Lois was the only one who could comfort her, and perhaps induce her to reveal the cause of her unusual state of agitation. Telling the girl to be brave, and to keep up hope for David's safe return, he left the Haven and hastened down the road toward the main ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... not lack a shameful representation there—were commingled in utter, distracted confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and entreaties. There ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... enough public virtue still remaining among us to make us deny ourselves everything but the bare necessaries of life in order to obtain justice. This we have a right to do, and no power on earth can force us to a change of conduct short of being reduced to the most abject slavery. . . ." He added, in a spirit of strict justice: "As to the pact of non-exportation, that is another thing; I confess that I have doubts of its being legitimate. We owe considerable sums to Great Britain; we can only pay them with our produce. To ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... of Ulungu makes me believe them to be extremely polite. The mode of salutation among relatives is to place the hands round each other's chests kneeling, they then clap their hands close to the ground. Some more abject individuals kiss the soil before a chief; the generality kneel only, with the fore-arms close to the ground, and the head bowed down to them, saying, "O Ajadla chiusa, Mari a bwino." The Usanga say, "Aje senga." The ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... permitted to lift up his head until the king bade him lift it up. Nimrod gave permission to Terah to rise and state his request. Thereupon Terah related all that had happened with his wife and his son. When Nimrod heard his tale, abject fear seized upon him, and he asked his counsellors and princes what to do with the lad. They answered, and said: "Our king and our god! Wherefore art thou in fear by reason of a little child? There are myriads upon myriads of princes in thy realm,[18] rulers of thousands, ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... in their cruelty to God's commandment-keeping people, are now overwhelmed with consternation, and shuddering in fear. Their wails are heard above the sound of the elements. Demons acknowledge the deity of Christ, and tremble before His power, while men are supplicating for mercy, and groveling in abject terror. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... has been asked ere now—But is there not in this tone of mind something undignified, something even abject? thus to cry for help, instead of helping oneself? thus to depend on another being, instead of bearing stoically with manly independence? I answer—The Psalmist does bear stoically, just because ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... own cost, but on the public revenue,—and all this to do nothing but bestow the eating and drinking of excessive dainties, to set a pompous face upon the superficial actings of State, to pageant himself up and down in progress among the perpetual bowings and cringings of an abject people." ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... placidity of the bullock, but if he once gets frightened and loses his head, he gives way to unmitigated panic. The first appearance of the motor-car, which is now almost as common in parts of India as it is in England, reduced many bullocks to a state of abject terror. Fortunately most mishaps with bullock-carts are not very serious in their results. The cart is not easily broken, and is quickly righted. But having occasion to travel in a public motor-car through a country district where ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... adjust life-belts; but Isobel was in a frenzy of despair, her maid had fainted, de Poincilit and the Spaniards were muttering alternate appeals to the saints and oaths of utter abandonment, and Mrs. Somerville was almost unconscious, while her husband knelt by her side and wrung his hands in abject misery. Anything was better than to go back to that woful assembly, yet she choked down a ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... Rosario!" he began, plucking her by the sleeve and uplifting a pale, boyish face—he was not yet twenty-two—to hers with a look of abject misery. "I want to speak to you. I simply must speak to you. I've been waiting for the chance, and now that it's come—Look here! You're not going back ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... as Clay in the hands of the Potter; but, not to the extent of one tetchy word or froward movement, did he ever show that he thought his imprisonment unjust, or the bearing of those who were set over him cruel. And this was not an abject stupor or dull indifference, such as I have marked in rogues confined for life in the Bagnios of the Levant, who knew that they must needs pull so many strokes and get so many stripes every day, and so gave up battling with the World, and grinned contumely at their ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... frequent and we are thankful to admit that this is so. Yet scarcely a year passes without some part of India suffering severely from partial droughts. Only last year hundreds of poor starving wretches, crowded into Bombay from Kattiyawar, and were for weeks encamped on the Esplanade, an abject multitude, dependent on the charity of the rich. And yet it was "no famine" that had driven them hundreds of miles from their ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... earth, before leaving, was to deliver a concentrated double-kick at the barrier, but the instant it found itself in air its flattened ears sprung up with an air of horrified astonishment, and all its legs hung straight and rigid, the four hoofs coming together as if in abject supplication to any one, or anything, that could deliver. Not the smallest effort did it make; not a trace of self-will did it display, while it shot upwards through the hatchway nearly to the yard-arm, whence it obtained its first ...
— Six Months at the Cape • R.M. Ballantyne
... now is too lamentable a face for a man, Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it, Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig to ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... prisoner did not expect much mercy; for we could see that his face was absolutely livid when, pistol in hand, either of us approached to examine his bonds; and once, in his abject dread, he shrieked aloud to Lilla to come and save him ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... vain tried to obtain a renewal of it from the widow, or even an account of the state of her brother's affairs. Her letters for three years past had remained unanswered, and she would have been exposed to the horrors of the most abject want, but for a pittance quarterly doled out to her ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... make us atrabiliar! Here we see words in their weaknesses and their meannesses, as elsewhere in their glory and beauty. And not so much their meanness and weakness, as that of those who have distorted these innocent servants of truth to become tools of falsehood and the abject instruments of the extinction of all honesty ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... nearly fell, and Nicanor jerked him up again. There was the noise of a door being opened. Nicanor knew it must be the door leading to the passage, since the other was locked. He dropped Hito, who crumpled into an abject heap upon the floor, past speech or motion, and went on dancing by himself. From the tail of his eye he saw Wardo the Saxon and Quartus enter and stand gaping, dumb with amazement. Hito shook his fist at them from the floor and stuttered. When breath enough ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... shall never be arrayed in his gifts. Then was the time for his father to show kindness when a life was demanded: and yet he could stand aloof and let a younger die! He will never believe himself the son of so mean and abject ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... together to overthrow and destroy the Union; never before in the history of this Government have we had a four years' civil war; never before in the history of this Government have nearly four million people been emancipated from the most abject and degrading slavery ever imposed upon human beings; never before has the occasion arisen when it was necessary to provide for such large numbers of people thrown upon the bounty of the Government unprotected and unprovided for. But, sir, wherever the necessity did exist the Government has ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... Middle Ages than that of the hermit, who, musing on the wickedness and tyranny of those whom the inscrutable wisdom of Providence had intrusted with the government of the world, fell asleep and awoke to find himself the very monarch whose abject life and capricious violence had furnished the subject of his moralizing. Endowed with irresponsible power, tempted by passions whose existence in himself he had never suspected, and betrayed by the political necessities of his position, he became gradually guilty of all the crimes and the luxury ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... has restored a comparative tranquility to my thoughts. Yes, my friend, there is a triumph in fortitude, an exultation in heroical resolve, which for a moment at least, sets a man above the most abject and distressing circumstances. Since I have felt my own dignity and strength, the tumultuous hurry of my mind is stilled. I look upon the objects around me with a calm and manly despair. I have not yet disclosed ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin
... Butterworth wants me to do some repairs which I don't feel inclined to do, so I want to have a look at the place for myself," the announcement was so little tinged by any sense of the persons she was addressing that she might as well have held up a printed placard. Ellen thought he was a little abject to answer, "So far as I can remember, Butterworth's rather a rough specimen. Wouldn't you like us to come with you?" and almost deserved that she did not hear. Such deafness argued complete abstraction; ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... highest joy, may also cause the deepest sorrow. But apart from the sorrows of ill-starred love, she caught glimpses of something else—a terrible something which she did not understand. Dark forms would now and then appear to her, gliding through the paradise of love, disgraced and abject. The sacred name of love was linked with the direst shame and the deepest misery. Among people whom she knew, things happened from time to time which she dared not think about; and when, in stern but guarded words, her father chanced to ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... grandees came the smaller landholders, composing the second and more numerous class of the Arabs; then the great mass of the inhabitants, who had sunk into the state of absolute helots. These last were hired peasants or fellahs who cultivated the land, and lived in abject poverty. There was also a class of Arabs, namely, the Bedouins or rovers, who would never attach themselves to the soil, but were the children of the desert. These wandering Arabs, divided into tribes on both sides of ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport
... highly of themselves, while from you, men of Athens, this power is taken away. It can never be, methinks, that your spirit is generous and noble, while you are engaged in petty and mean employments; no more than you can be abject and mean-spirited, while your actions are honorable and glorious. Whatever be the pursuits of men their ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... I saw a man alone, In abject poverty, with hand Uplifted o'er a block of stone That took a shape at his command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... judgment and forethought of Mitchell, the devotion of Austin, seem all to have been lost sight of by writers, who extol Burke in a way that would lead men to believe that every other Australian leader must have been an abject craven. This mistaken laudation has done more to glaringly parade Burke's many failings than more modest and judicious ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... the Life of Cromwell went on slowly, varied by visits to his relatives in Scotland, travels on the Continent, and interviews with distinguished men. His mind at this period (1842) was most occupied with the sad condition of the English people,—everywhere riots, disturbances, physical suffering and abject poverty among the masses, for the Corn Laws had not then been repealed; and to Carlyle's vision there was a most melancholy prospect ahead,—not revolution, but universal degradation, and the reign of injustice. This sad condition of the people was contrasted ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... know how to drive a hard bargain for the painted face she has to sell. But that is the sort of woman who can make that sort of conquest. A good woman now, who would have made him an honoured and good wife, would never have made such a blind, abject slave of him. He is bewitched! He is mad! and ought not to be allowed to carry out so insane a project! Perhaps it may still be possible to induce him to hear reason. It was very odd, that way, that just at last he promised ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... betrayed Evelyn and her father to the most ghastly of possible fates for a bribe offered him by Jacaro. Now he groveled. He was horrible to look at. Where he was not scratched and torn his flesh was reddened as if by fire. He was exhausted, and trembling with an awful terror, and he gasped out abject, placatory ejaculations and suddenly collapsed into a ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... with an expression of wooden-headed, abject innocence on his big, broad face, and looked straight ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... and exceed the age of one-and-twenty before they are deemed worthy of admission into the ranks of these singular hordes. They have no actual sovereign, but merely two traditionary beings, to whom they bow with most abject servility. These imaginary potentates are always alluded to under the fearful names of "John Doe and Richard Roe;" though they are never seen, still their edicts are all-powerful, their commands extending to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... had been rendered astonished and bashful by her excessive beauty. From the moment she came on board with her father, clad in her simple white gown, with a deep crimson hood drawn over her fair hair, and tied under her rounded chin, she had taken them all captive—they were her abject slaves in heart, though they put on very creditable airs of manly independence and nonchalance. Each man in his different way strove to amuse or interest her, except, strange to say, Errington himself, who, though deeply courteous to her, kept somewhat in ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... read how Indra drank himself drunk and committed adulteries with Asura women, and got himself born from the same womb as a bull, and changed himself into a quail or a ram, and suffered from the most abject physical terror, and so forth, then we are among myths no longer readily intelligible; here, we feel, are IRRATIONAL stories, of which the original ideas, in their natural sense, can hardly have been conceived by men in a pure and rational early civilisation. ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... the reply has invariably been, that they dare not. In fact, to keep their station in society, they must be slaves—not merely slaves, for we are all so far slaves, that if we do that which is not right, we must be expelled from it; but abject and cowardly slaves, who dare not do that which is innocent, lest they should be misrepresented. This is the cause by there is such an attention to the outward forms of religion in the United States, ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... have allowed themselves to be entitled brothers of the sun and moon. And, as the title of Augustus is sought for and desired by our emperors, so now the additional dignities first earned by the fortunate auspices of Arsaces are claimed by all the Parthian kings, who were formerly abject ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... conferences with my father. She was always making excuses to consult him about my reading, and to confide in him her sufferings, as I learned, from my contumacy and temper. The fact is, I was altogether quiet and submissive. But I think she had a wish to reduce me to a state of the most abject bondage. She had designs of domination and subversion regarding the entire household, I now believe, worthy of the evil spirit ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... medicine he had a horror, grounded upon scenes of contract surgery upon the fields of battle. The ministry he set aside. From commerce, as he had always seen it in his native town, twelve hours a day of haggling and smirking, he shrank with all the impulses of his soul. The abject country newspaper gave him no inkling of that fourth estate which was later to spring up in the land. Arms he loved, but there was now no field for arms. There were no family resources to tide him over the season of experiment, and, indeed, but for a brother and a sister, who lived in an adjoining ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... best he can to get rid of them. I am safe." Of such materials is the net composed that holds these people in bondage; and who can marvel that such prostration of mind before a fellow-mortal should lead to an abject slavery of the whole man, body, conscience, and understanding? We see the effects, and abhor them; but we do not go to ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... the new favorite, the court was full of archers and police, who came to congratulate him, or to excuse themselves according to whether he should choose to praise or blame. The sentiment of flattery is instinctive with people of abject condition; they have the sense of it, as the wild animal has that of hearing and smell. These people, or their leader, understood that there was a pleasure to offer to M. Colbert, in rendering him an account of the fashion in which ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of the rights of man ought to be presented to the astonished world pure and without stain. It is not by offering strange gods to our neighbours that we shall operate their conversion. We can never raise them from their abject state by erecting one altar in opposition to another. A trifling heresy is infinitely more revolting than having no religion at all. Nature, like the sun, diffuses her light without the assistance of priests and vestals. While we were constitutional heretics, we maintained ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... all the lovely charities of life (nothing else is Christianity), as of old, Plato, who is truly worthy of being counted a great prophet, dreamed of them in his republic; that he would lift us above a state of abject dependence on country, parents, kindred, health, and all the blessings of earth, and convince us that poverty and the other miseries of life are in no wise evil. These doctrines Christ has confirmed by his life, more glorious ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... probably lodged, with Herringman the bookseller, in the New Exchange, for whom he wrote prefaces, and other occasional pieces. But having, as Mr. Malone has observed, a patrimony, though a small one, of his own, it seems impossible that our author was ever in that state of mean and abject dependence, which the malice of his enemies afterwards pretended. The same malice misrepresented, or greatly exaggerated, the nature of Dryden's obligations to Sir Robert Howard, with whom he became acquainted probably about the time of ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... who would never get on in the world; but who would not hurt a worm. Indeed, his chambers were converted into a perfect dog-kennel, by his habit of bringing home stray and benighted curs, who were attracted by his looks in the street, and followed him with abject fondness. ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... few days later a strange doctor bent over the white bed in the Flag Room, and when he had punched and poked to his heart's content and Peace's abject misery, another physician took ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted even the defiant brutality of Scannel, a rascal, but none the less keeping ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... skill, as if in the view of some terrible climax, the poet makes them collapse into utter farce. Disgusted by their intrusion on his privacy, the Priapus adopts a simple but exceedingly vulgar expedient to alarm these appalling hags. In an instant they fall into the most abject terror, suspend their incantations, and, tucking up their skirts, make off for the more comfortable quarters of the city as fast as their trembling limbs can carry them—Canidia, the great enchantress, dropping her false teeth, ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... facts without and moods within. 'The shield is gold.' 'No, it is silver.' Well, shall we fight about that? Probably it is both. A thing may be black in one light, and white in another, for what I know. Of all fools the positive philosophers seem to me the worst; and the most abject kind of conceit is that of alleged consistency. Why will you insist on a definiteness which has so little place in nature? The world is a chameleon, and you and I are smaller ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... in peace and comfort. But if they are lugged in and set up stiffly at a formal dinner they are too much an exhibition. In this circumstance they cannot be natural and at their best. And then I wonder how they endure our abject deference and flabby surrender to their opinions. Would it not destroy all interest in a game of bowling if the wretched pins fell down before the hit were made? It was lately at a dinner that our hostess held in captivity three of these celebrated lions. One of them was a famous ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... sailor handed him a note from Captain Fitz-Roy, full of abject apology for having so forgotten himself. Darwin was then but twenty-two years old, but the poise and patience of the young man won the respect and then the admiration and finally the affection of every man on board that ship. This attitude ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... pursue this Thought further, but only add, That as Annihilation is not to be had with a Wish, so it is the most abject Thing in the World to wish it. What are Honour, Fame, Wealth, or Power when compared with the generous Expectation of a Being without End, and a Happiness adequate ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... Greenwich—in all seven cases. These are amongst the lowest and most wretched classes, chiefly Irish, and a more lamentable exhibition of human misery than that given by the medical men who called at the Council Office yesterday I never heard. They are in the most abject state of poverty, without beds to lie upon. The men live by casual labour, are employed by the hour, and often get no more than four or five hours' employment in the course of the week. They are huddled and crowded ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... the innocent and the guilty. Seventy were put to death. A large number had their eyes plucked out; and for a long time the city resounded with the cries of the victims, suffering under all kinds of punishments from the hands of this implacable monarch. Thus the citizens were speedily brought into abject submission. The Polish king, with his army, remained a long time at Kief, luxuriating in every indulgence at the expense of the inhabitants. He then returned to his ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... culprits; the King gave orders for it, and they were in fact seized, but afterwards liberated by a counter-order of Louvois. Heaven, however, took care of their punishment for the crime which they had committed upon my poor brother; for Langhans died in the most abject wretchedness, and Winkler went mad and beat ...
— The Memoirs of the Louis XIV. and The Regency, Complete • Elizabeth-Charlotte, Duchesse d'Orleans
... contrary winds and bad weather, one half of the passengers must have slept upon the boards, howsoever their health might have suffered from this want of accommodation. Notwithstanding this check, he was so very abject and importunate, that we gave him a crown a-piece, ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... into that region have had the effect of raising the Eskimos from the most abject destitution, lacking every appliance and accessory of civilized life, to a position of relative affluence, with the best material for their weapons, their harpoons and lances, the best of wood for their sledges, the best of cutlery, knives, hatchets, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... hundred young fellows. Things were in bad shape in the nation; about as bad in every way as they could be. This time it was the Midianites who overran the land, and held the leaderless people in most abject slavery. With them were joined two other nations, the Amalekites and the Children of the East. When the crops were almost ready to harvest, these raiders swooped in in great numbers and destroyed all the crops and drove away ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... look of abject terror upon her face as her eyes fell upon the man lying dead upon the carpet ...
— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux
... studio mantelpiece" of No. 7; no young lady author had ever commented on "the unaffected simplicity" with which Mr. Pitman received her in the midst of his "treasures." It is an omission I would gladly supply, but our business is only with the backward parts and "abject ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... population, upon whose daily and yearly labor the great establishments they so much admired were sustained and supported. They failed to perceive that the scantily fed and half-clad operatives were not only in abject poverty, but were bound in chains of oppressive servitude for the benefit of favored classes, who were the exclusive objects of ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Polk - Section 3 (of 3) of Volume 4: James Knox Polk • Compiled by James D. Richardson
... severity and exactness. All that night the work of extermination went on as the slave leader and his followers passed like fate from house to house, and plantation to plantation, leaving a wide swathe of death in their track. Terror filled the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable, horrible. James McDowell, one of the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke out in the Virginia Legislature, during the winter ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... Note.—Schopenhauer is probably here making one of his most virulent attacks upon Hegel; in this case on account of what he thought to be the philosopher's abject servility to the government of his day. Though the Hegelian system has been the fruitful mother of many liberal ideas, there can be no doubt that Hegel's influence, in his own lifetime, was an ...
— The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life • Arthur Schopenhauer
... without their grace and pathos, struggle almost from the first under the crowning unhappiness of unhappiness, that it ceases to be interesting. The five books of the Tristia, written during the earlier years of his banishment, still retain, through the monotony of their subject, and the abject humility of their attitude to Augustus, much of the old dexterity. In the four books of Epistles from Pontus, which continue the lamentation over his calamities, the failure of power is evident. He went on writing profusely, because there was nothing ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail
... such reptiles as myself I might with satisfaction exclaim, Sic, sic juvat: but when I behold one GREAT MAN starving with hunger and freezing with cold, in the midst of fifty thousand who are suffering the same evils for his diversion; when I see another, whose own mind is a more abject slave to his own greatness, and is more tortured and racked by it, than those of all his vassals; lastly, when I consider whole nations rooted out only to bring tears into the eyes of a GREAT MAN, not indeed because he hath extirpated so many, but because he ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... age, though it produced a constellation of poets who shed glory upon the throne before which they prostrated themselves in abject homage, like the courtiers of Louis XIV., still was unfavorable to prose composition,—to history as well as eloquence. Of the historians, Livy is the only one whose writings are known to us, and only fragments of his history. ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... his face. It disappeared as if a blast of the night wind, entering the room, had dried it, crumbled it, and blown it away. In its place I now saw the terrible, eye-widened, and fixed stare which we recognize as the facial sign of some abject, unreasoning terror, or of death, after the clutch of ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... obtain such information from the natives as might assist our further proceedings. This was a tedious task, and called for the exercise of all our patience; for it is impossible to convey in language an adequate idea of the abject ignorance of most of the inhabitants of Central America concerning its geography and topographical features. Those who would naturally be supposed to be best informed, the priests, merchants, and lawyers, are really the most ignorant, and it is only from the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... blowing horns and huge shells, or piping on flageolets or beating tom-toms, accompanied them. The crowd carrying torches or high crates with flaming coco-nuts, walked or rather danced along on each side, elated and excited with the sense of the present divinity, yet pleasantly free from any abject awe. The whole thing indeed reminded one of some bas-relief of a Bacchanalian procession carved on a Greek sarcophagus—and especially so in its hilarity and suggestion of friendly intimacy with the god. There were singing of hymns and ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... burden of misery, suffering, torture, and oppression, enabling it to survive its tormentors. The Jews were the nation of hope. Like hope this people is eternal. The storms of fanaticism and race hatred may rage and roar, the race cannot be destroyed. Precisely in the days of its abject degradation, when its suffering was dire, how marvellous the conduct of this people! The conquered were greater than their conquerors. From their spiritual height they looked down compassionately on their victorious but ignorant adversaries, who, feeling the condescension of the victims, ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... this, that, if I find it impossible to comply, I must lose all. For I must needs tell your Majesty that there are other considerations." "Oh, you must needs," exclaimed the King, with an oath. For a single word of honest and manly sound, escaping in the midst of all this abject supplication, was sufficient to move his anger. "I hope, sir," said poor Rochester, "that I do not offend you. Surely your Majesty could not think well of me if I did not say so." The King recollected himself protested that he was not offended, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... overtures came from the Begam. 'In a manner the most abject and desponding, she addressed Mr. Thomas . . . implored him to come to her assistance, and, finally, offered to pay any sum of money the Marathas should require, on condition they would reinstate her in the Jagir. On receipt of these letters, Mr. Thomas, by an offer of 120,000 ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... of this Meditation is to call to your attention a new method of defence, by which you may reduce the will of your new wife to a condition of utter and abject submission. This is brought about by the reaction upon her moral nature of physical changes, and the wise lowering of her physical condition ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... when with fierce Winds Orion arm'd Hath vext the Red-Sea Coast, whose waves orethrew Busiris and his Memphian Chivalrie, While with perfidious hatred they pursu'd The Sojourners of Goshen, who beheld From the safe shore their floating Carkases 310 And broken Chariot Wheels, so thick bestrown Abject and lost lay these, covering the Flood, Under amazement of their hideous change. He call'd so loud, that all the hollow Deep Of Hell resounded. Princes, Potentates, Warriers, the Flowr of Heav'n, once yours, now ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... our Dutch cousins taught us two hundred years ago; he has neglected to avail himself of those principles of chiaroscuro which they perfected, and which would have enabled him to redeem the grossness, the ugliness, the meanness inherent in his subject. I said that he had gone further, in abject realism, than a photograph. I do not think I have exaggerated. It is not probable that those peasants would look so ugly in a photograph as they do in his picture. For had they been photographed, the chances are that some shadow would have clothed, would have hid, something, ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... Johnny's abject tone—he who had been so high-chested in the past—may have had its effect upon the boss. When Sudden spoke again his voice was almost kind, which is unusual, surely, for a man who has ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... sailors, of whom one was an Italian; and one of the soldiers, were quartered in the glebe barn—the rest in one of Sir Thomas Enville's barns. Two of the soldiers were Pyrenees men, and spoke French. All of them, except the Moor and the Italian, were possessed by abject terror, expecting to be immediately killed, if not eaten. The Italian, who was no stranger to English people, and into whose versatile mind nothing sank deep, was the only blithe and cheerful man in the group. The Moor ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... of Muka live in that abject state of poverty that is almost always found where the sago-tree is abundant. Very few of them take the trouble to plant any vegetables or fruit, but live almost entirely on sago and fish, selling a little tripang ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... transferring, a few days afterwards, the honor and worship due to Him to a calf, which they believed to be the god who had brought them out of Egypt. In truth, it is hardly likely that men accustomed to the superstitions of Egypt, uncultivated and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any sound notions about the Deity, or that Moses should have taught them anything beyond a rule of right living; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the result of freedom, but like a lawgiver compelling them to be moral ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... not wrong, and an idiot, to allow such thoughts to take possession of me, and to poison my deep, absorbing love, which was now my only law and my only object, by odious and foolish suggestions? What an abject and miserable nature I must have, for such a simple, affectionate, natural question to disturb me so, when I ought immediately to have replied to Elaine's question, with all my heart that ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... yesterday I rescued him From abject wretchedness. Let that go by; I never reckon'd yet on gratitude. And wherein doth he wrong in going from me? He follows still the god whom all his life He has worship'd at the gaming-table. With My fortune, and my seeming destiny, He made the bond, and broke it not with me. I am but the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... stuff they gave him, loathed it, paid and staggered on. When he reached his hotel he crept upstairs, dreading to meet any of the harsh-faced people who frowned as he passed them. He had done abject things these last three days to conciliate them—tipped the waiter, ordered food, not that he might eat it but that he might pay for it, bowed to the landlady—all to save the shrinking of his sore and quivering ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Language.—We call ellipse a hidden meaning whose revelation belongs to gesture. A gesture must correspond to every ellipse. For example: "This medley of glory and gain vexes me." If we attribute something ignominious or abject to the word medley, there is an ellipse in the phrase, because the ignominy is implied rather than expressed. Gesture is then necessary here to express the value ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... alluding to the circumstances with her previous customers, but unexpectedly she found herself describing Mr. Simpson, Mrs. Simpson, and the Simpson family; their poverty, their joyless life, and their abject need of a banquet lamp to ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... imitation I decry is that of black, or black-and-gold cases, suitable the exhibition of art treasures, but objectionable for natural history objects, which, usually dreary enough in their abject condition on pegs, are rendered more funereal by their black, or black-and-gold surroundings; yet, with these obvious disadvantages, what do we see in some provincial museums?—a servile adoption of South Kensington "ebonized" cases, without any reference to fitness. It is ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... at the beck and call of bullies that stand between him and his own soul; such a creature gives up the most sacred of all his rights for something more unsubstantial than a mess of pottage—a mental serf too abject even to know that he is being wronged. Wretched emasculator of his own reason, whose jejune timidity and want of vitality are thus omnipresent in the most secret ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... and this lowly condition had such powerful charms for her humble heart, that she actually feared excess in her attachment to it. In proposing this apprehension as a conscientious doubt to her director, her great fear was that he would oblige her to emerge from her abject position, and assume her ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... long kept in an agony of suspense, in order that his family might be induced to pay largely for mercy. His spirit sank under the terrors of death. When brought to the bar of the Old Bailey he not only pleaded guilty, but disgraced the illustrious name which he bore by abject submissions and entreaties. He protested that he had not been privy to the design of assassination; but he owned that he had meditated rebellion, professed deep repentance for his offence, implored ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... think myself of a very nervous turn!" he says, presently, with a smile. "Nancy, you will laugh at me, but I assure you upon my honor that all the way home I have been in the most abject and deadly fright: at every puff of wind I thought we were infallibly going to the bottom: whenever the carriage rocked in the least to-day on the way down, I made up my mind we were going to smash! Little woman, what can a bit of a thing like you have done to me to make me seem so much ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... go with me.' Then, as soon as thou comest to the house, begin by searching the terrace-roofs; then rummage the closets and cabinets; and if thou find naught, humble thyself before the Kazi and be abject and feign thyself subjected, and after stand at the door and look as if thou soughtest a place wherein to make water,[FN35] because there is a dark corner there. Then come forward, with heart harder than syenite-stone, and lay hold upon a jar of the jars ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... meekly. "Do." His tone is of the most abject. There is a perceptible trembling about his knee-joints. "Is this the 'air noble'?" he says to Olga, in an undertone. "Have ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... general happiness of his species, nobly and generously volunteering his services to assist in promoting the cause of humanity, whilst there are thousands here strenuously advocating the giving a legal sanction to the oppression and abject slavery of their fellow-creatures. Such noble, generous, and fervid benevolence as yours, is highly honorable even to a Friend; and is a new and striking proof of that extended philanthropy, and pure and heaven-born spirit of Brotherly love, by which that denomination ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... consistent misfortune? For it is flattering that an evil fate should single one out from the crowd for conspicuous attention, that all the {200} tragedy of existence should centre upon one's devoted head. And a certain interest attaches even to unredeemed misery and abject futility on their own account, if only they can be viewed from the right angle, and with a cultivated sense for such things. Now thus to poetize the tragedy of one's own life is fatuous; it is like enjoying one's dizziness on the brink of a ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... gone? For she would go! Her resolution was irrevocable. All dropped from his side at once. The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest and most loving heart, he had lost under circumstances as abject as their two years of passion had been dishonorable. His wife was about to leave him, and would he succeed in keeping his son? He had returned to be avenged, and he had not even succeeded in meeting his rival. That being so impressionable ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... powers of entertainment. He had read a great deal, chiefly delighting in books which were unusual; and he poured forth his stores of abstruse knowledge with child-like enjoyment of the amazement of his hearers. Three or four years before abject poverty had driven him to take the job of press-representative to a large firm of drapers; and though he felt the work unworthy his abilities, which he rated highly, the firmness of his wife and the needs of his family had ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... leapt forward, as it were, from its stagnatory condition of abject fear. It traveled swiftly, urged by a pursuing dread over plans for the future. The guiding star of his thought was safety. At all costs he must find safety for his property and himself. So long as Retief was at large there could ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... prostrated himself before the king was not permitted to lift up his head until the king bade him lift it up. Nimrod gave permission to Terah to rise and state his request. Thereupon Terah related all that had happened with his wife and his son. When Nimrod heard his tale, abject fear seized upon him, and he asked his counsellors and princes what to do with the lad. They answered, and said: "Our king and our god! Wherefore art thou in fear by reason of a little child? There are myriads upon myriads of princes ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... men not being met by a corresponding advance in women, the latter lost their equilibrium in the social balance. Honour, glory, were no longer attached to the smile of beauty. The dethroned sovereigns, from being imperious, became abject, and sought, by paltry arts, to perpetuate the empire which was no longer conceded as a right. Influence they still possessed, but an influence debased in its character, and changed in its mode of operation. Instead of being the objects ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... time we had. The elephants got down off that pyramid so quick it would make your head swim, and old Bolivar trumpeted in abject fear, and tried to break away, but pa came along with a tent stake and hit Bolivar over the head, and told the trainer to put the elephants back into the pyramid and hold them there till the bell rung for them to cease their stunt. The trainer couldn't ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... crime in modern Europe. To lose his caste is to lose everything at one blow, parents, relations, and fortune. Every one turns his back upon the culprit and refuses to have any dealings with him. He must enter the casteless category, which is employed only for the most abject functions. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... undesirable factor in experience. Caution, circumspection, prudence, desire to foresee future events so as to avert what is harmful, these desirable traits are as much a product of calling the impulse of fear into play as is cowardice and abject submission. The real difficulty is that the appeal to fear is isolated. In evoking dread and hope of specific tangible reward—say comfort and ease—many other capacities are left untouched. Or rather, they are affected, but ...
— Democracy and Education • John Dewey
... crimes of the French Revolution and of Bonaparte may be set two compensating benefactions: the Revolution broke the chains of the ANCIEN REGIME and of the Church, and made of a nation of abject slaves a nation of freemen; and Bonaparte instituted the setting of merit above birth, and also so completely stripped the divinity from royalty, that whereas crowned heads in Europe were gods before, they are only men, since, and can never be gods again, but only ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... days were occupied in getting together a crew, for the natives had an abject fear of entering the country of the cannibal Fans. Mr. Goodenough promised that they should not be obliged to proceed unless a safe conduct for their return was obtained from the King of the Fans. A large canoe was procured, sufficient to convey the whole party. Twelve ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... Mr. Sweesey," replied the girl, somewhat softened by his abject demeanor. "Here is the paper father wanted me to take to you. I think I'd better be going back to town after this. And I promise you I'll never again ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... He sat in abject mental and physical suffering, his eyes on his plate, tasting nothing of what went into ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... on hearing of it, returned to Peking, having sent word to Feyanku to pursue Galdan with unrelenting vigor, there being no security while he remained at large. The recent powerful chief was now at the end of his resources. He fled for safety from camp to camp. He sent an envoy to Peking with an abject offer to surrender. He made new overtures to the Russians, and sought in a dozen ways to escape from his implacable enemies. But Feyanku kept up the pursuit, ceasing only when word came to him that the fugitive was dead. Anxiety, hardships, chagrin, or, as some say, the act of his own hand, had carried ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... adding that no laws, human or divine, no institutions, no supremacy whatever, could authorize a parent to stain his hands in the blood of his children. These anecdotes are sufficient both to elucidate the inveteracy of the favourite, the abject state of the heir to the throne, and the incomprehensible infatuation of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... footboy," and the Duke of Suffolk, when he is about to be killed by his pirate captor at Dover, calls him "obscure and lowly swain," "jaded groom," and "base slave," dubs his crew "paltry, servile, abject drudges," and declares that his ...
— Tolstoy on Shakespeare - A Critical Essay on Shakespeare • Leo Tolstoy
... convict Dr Pendle of murdering Jentham, and could show him the links in the chain of circumstances by which he arrived at such a conclusion, he had little doubt but that the bishop, to induce him to hide the crime, would become his abject slave. To gain such an immense power, and use it for the furtherance of his own interests, Cargrim was quite prepared to compound a possible felony; so the last case of the bishop would be worse than ...
— The Bishop's Secret • Fergus Hume
... you was mean enough to kill the mother bird just for fun." Ham's hat had long since come off, and he stood with downcast eyes, not knowing what to say. The old lady looked him up and down with a look of abject pity and ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... having the witch so near, but by no means neglected her duty to her. One night she woke, and had for some time lain listening whether she stirred or not, when suddenly quavered through the dark the most horrible cat-cry she had ever heard. In abject terror she covered her head, and lay shuddering. The cry came again, and kept coming at regular intervals, but drawing nearer and nearer. Its expression was of intense and increasing pain. The creature whence ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... drop the character that carried with it the least show of truth or gracefulness,' and under the patronage of a monarch with whom it was not sufficient 'for persons of superior gifts and endowments to act the deformity of obsequiousness, unless they really changed themselves and became abject and contemptible ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... illustrious D.K.T. had written Miss Angelina an abject apology, most witty and poetic, taking all the blame to himself and more than exonerating his ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... sitting up on the lounge when Owen returned. She was pale, and a haunting fear, cringing, abject, ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... every object around you. It shapes the carriage in which you ride, and the ship in which you sail. Its knowledge modifies the nature of your soul, and decides whether you shall be a slave or a freeman. It even extends to the form of your body, giving it the abject attitude and gloomy aspect of slavery and guilt, or the bold, upright carriage and joyous look of virtue, which God gave to the first man when He made ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... one desperate and final effort to escape, but ceases all struggling as you come up, and behaves in a manner that stamps him a very timid warrior,—cowering to the earth with a mingled look of shame, guilt, and abject fear. A young farmer told me of tracing one with his trap to the border of a wood, where he discovered the cunning rogue trying to hide by embracing a small tree. Most animals, when taken in a trap, show fight; but Reynard has more ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... from the dangers and hysteric strivings of his fellows. Once when Theriere happened to glance in his direction the Frenchman mentally ascribed the mucker's seeming lethargy to the paralysis of abject cowardice. "The fellow is in a blue funk," thought the second mate; "I did not misjudge him—like all his kind he is a ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Spanish; the two sailors, of whom one was an Italian; and one of the soldiers, were quartered in the glebe barn—the rest in one of Sir Thomas Enville's barns. Two of the soldiers were Pyrenees men, and spoke French. All of them, except the Moor and the Italian, were possessed by abject terror, expecting to be immediately killed, if not eaten. The Italian, who was no stranger to English people, and into whose versatile mind nothing sank deep, was the only blithe and cheerful man in ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... it,—when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression? Wherefore should I continue in an order of things, where intrigue eternally triumphs over truth; where justice is mocked; where passions the most abject, or fears the most absurd, over-ride the sacred interests of humanity? In witnessing the multitude of vices which the torrent of the Revolution has rolled in turbid communion with its civic virtues, ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... every fool can understand, tore off the masks of education, art, science and religion from our ignorance and barbarism, and left us glorying grotesquely in the licence suddenly accorded to our vilest passions and most abject terrors. Ever since Thucydides wrote his history, it has been on record that when the angel of death sounds his trumpet the pretences of civilization are blown from men's heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind. ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... was still open, and a faint light gleamed through the soiled red curtains. Over the frontage appeared the shop-keeper's name, Vantrasson, while on either side, in smaller letters, were the words: "Groceries and Provisions—Foreign and French Wines." Everything about this den denoted abject ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... Wager, for registering all seamen, watermen, fishermen, and lightermen, throughout his majesty's dominions. Had this bill passed into a law, a British sailor would have been reduced to the most abject degree of slavery; had he removed from a certain district allotted for the place of his residence, he would have been deemed a deserter, and punished accordingly; he must have appeared when summoned, at all hazards, whatever might have been the circumstances of his family, or the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... was treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a tree that it was no longer ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... I am convinced that if we should be contented for the present with damming up prostitution and suppressing the causes which render prostitutes more and more abject, without yet being able to abolish the whole evil, a transformation of our social life, and especially the suppression of the reign of capital as a means of exploitation of the work of others, and suppression of the ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... a moment of indecision before the plain, old-fashioned, brick house in which Senator Winter lived on the Capitol Hill. It was a confession of abject weakness to decline her invitation to dinner with his brother and jump at the first chance to butt in before the ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... found it very intelligible. He begged to propose four questions to the noble and learned lord, to which he required categorical answers, that their lordships might know precisely the points they had to discuss. The questions were submitted, and Lord Mansfield, instead of meeting them, "with most abject soothings," as Horace Walpole gleefully says, "paid the highest compliments to Lord Camden." He had the highest esteem for the noble and learned lord who thus attacked him, and had ever courted his esteem in return. He had not expected this treatment from ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... overview: Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80% of the population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, mainly small-scale subsistence farming, and remain vulnerable to damage from frequent natural disasters, exacerbated by the country's widespread deforestation. A macroeconomic program developed in 2005 with the help of the International ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... brethren'—in the original Hebrew means exactly this—'Cursed be Canaan, a slave of slaves shall he be.' The Hebrew, word is 'ebed' which means a bond slave, and the words 'ebed ebadim' translated 'slave of slaves,' means strictly the most abject of slaves. ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume II • Samuel F. B. Morse
... after the collapse of the Confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious States was that of abject submission. Having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly their property, might be preserved. Unfortunately the general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... the men had been quiet, if furious. But now they fell into abject terror, imploring Tish, whom they easily recognized as the leader, to take ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... he must do the best he can to get rid of them. I am safe." Of such materials is the net composed that holds these people in bondage; and who can marvel that such prostration of mind before a fellow-mortal should lead to an abject slavery of the whole man, body, conscience, and understanding? We see the effects, and abhor them; but we do not go to the ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... out of shadows. Hirondelle stated that he began to think the Crown Prince's army was surrendering to him. At last, when the procession stopped, he—and his mythical sixteen—marched the entire covey, without any objection from them, only abject ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... Society was instituted in September 1788, for the prevention of crimes, by seeking out and training up to virtue and industry the children of the most abject and criminal among the vagrant and profligate poor; by these means more effectually to alleviate human misery, and to ...
— The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 • William Lisle Bowles
... think. Wait till she has been fed a little and freed from fear. That fair type recovers itself very quickly. You won't know her in a week or two, when that abject fear has died out of her eyes. She'll be too happy and ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... saw a man alone, In abject poverty, with hand Uplifted o'er a block of stone That took a shape at his command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep, Nor hair that fell from crown to wrist, ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... becoming respect, but he never gave the smallest encouragement to aristocratical arrogance'; and his son Robert was not less manly and independent. He was too sound in judgment; too conscious of his own worth, to sink into mean and abject servility. But this factor, perhaps more than anyone else, did much to pervert, if he could not kill, the poet's ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... heresies; that it was administered, moreover, out of paternal affection by a spiritual father, whom it did not mis-become, to a son who was not dishonoured by receiving it. The unfortunate elector not only suffered in the ear, but was also obliged to make an abject apology, and to kiss the offender's feet before he was re-admitted to communion. At Maopongo the priests lost favour with the court and the women by whipping the queen, and, by the same process they abated the superhuman pretensions of ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... morning meal was served. At breakfast one of the women, no longer quite young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I think it was in its way the most delightful thing (putting its impropriety aside for a moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I forget the respectable Job's abject terror and disgust. Job, like myself, is a bit of a misogynist—I fancy chiefly owing to the fact of his having been one of a family of seventeen—and the feelings expressed upon his countenance when he realised that he was not only being embraced publicly, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... salmon-pink sunset seen through the lacing of tall black boles of leafless trees, or a flower, happed upon unexpectedly, that reads you a half-forgotten lesson in "country art"—that same man will be reduced to abject misery and real suffering by a dirty tablecloth, a vulgar, uncongenial companion, or even the presence of a bright blue gown in a chamber subdued to utmost harmonies in gold and yellow. The curse with him follows all too swiftly on the blessing of enjoyment—and lasts longer. And ...
— The Idler Magazine, Vol III. May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Charles fell into the snare laid for him, and Henrietta carried most of the points of that disgraceful treaty, which rendered the King of England the pensioned tool of France, and his reign the most abject in the annals ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... the door of his cave. It was Flavius, the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his master had led to seek him out at his wretched dwelling and to offer his services; and the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon, in that abject condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner of a beast among beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so affected this good servant that he stood speechless, wrapped up in horror and confounded. And when he found utterance at last to his words, they were ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... palely. Then she was in bed, full of the sensation that the whole house was inverted and disorganized, hopelessly. And the doctor came into the room. She smiled at the doctor apologetically, foolishly, as if saying: "We all come to it. Here I am." She was calm without. Oh, but what a prey of abject fear within! "I am at the edge of the precipice," her thought ran; "in a moment I shall be over." And then the pains—not the heralds but the shattering army, endless, increasing in terror as they thundered across her. Yet she could think, quite clearly: "Now I'm in the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... made a trip the following morning across the ridge, and found the dissident group huddled together in abject terror. They had seen the ship coming down through the atmosphere and, all together, they had climbed the ridge, where one of their scouts had recently gone, to watch the ship's ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... fascinated, stupefied by the confusion and the mystery of it. She carried him off under Mrs. Viveash's unhappy nose. Wherever she went she called him, and he followed, flushed and shamefaced. He showed himself now pitifully abject, and now in pitiful revolt. Once or twice he was positively rude to her, and Miss Tarrant seemed to enjoy ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... completely missed the point of my remarks, and utterly failed to comprehend the frightfully precarious and perilous character of her position aboard the brig; moreover, her mere presence there served O'Gorman as a lever and a menace powerful enough to constrain me irresistibly to the most abject submission to his will; so long as she remained where she was, in the power of these ruffians, I could do absolutely nothing, for fear of what they might inflict upon her by way of revenge; but with her removed ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... I could see, being close by, having been attracted by the row as most of us were, had altered their expression, now flashing with a peculiar glare as the Chinaman, with a more abject bow than before to the captain, ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... are not to imagine any but the most Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living on the most diluted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... received with great joy by the inhabitants, who had been in a state of abject terror. A runner, who was the bearer of a message to the rajah from the headman, had left on the morning after Harry's party had started; and had returned with the news that he had found the headless bodies of all the escort, but had ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... dogma. The haughtiness and selfishness of the hierarchic spirit, the exclusiveness, cruelty, and cunning tyranny of many of the ancient priesthoods, are well known. Despising, hating, and fearing the people, whom they held in abject spiritual bondage, they sought to devise, diffuse, and organize such opinions as would concentrate power in their own hands and rivet their authority. Accordingly, in the lower immensity they painted and shadowed forth the lurid and dusky image of hell, gathering around ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... animal and very fierce as a rule, though in the case of a noted man-eater I have known it exhibit a curious mixture of ferocity and abject cowardice. It is stated to be of a more retiring disposition than the next species, but this I doubt, for I have frequently come across it in the neighbourhood of villages to which it was probably attracted ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... ground, with here and there a few meagre crops of corn. The natives were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any people we had yet observed in the course of our travels: whenever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds; and, asking for charity, used the most abject gestures....The Polish peasants are cringing and servile in their expressions of respect; they bowed down to the ground; took off their hats or caps and held them in their hands till we were out of sight; stopped their carts on the first glimpse of ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... in abject terror, unable to move. Her fear stricken eyes were wild and staring as the mountain of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... waiting the fray, with whom the grisly one grappled amain. But the man remembered his mighty power, the glorious gift that God had sent him, in his Maker's mercy put his trust for comfort and help: so he conquered the foe, felled the fiend, who fled abject, reft of joy, to the realms of death, mankind's foe. And his mother now, gloomy and grim, would go that quest of sorrow, the death of her son to avenge. To Heorot came she, where helmeted Danes slept in the hall. Too soon came back old ills of the earls, when in she burst, the mother ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... of him that begot, And the travail of her that bore, Behold they are evermore As warp and weft in our lot. We are children of splendour and flame, Of shuddering, also, and tears. Magnificent out of the dust we came, And abject from the Spheres. ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... sincerely crave your pardon, if it isn't too late," I cried, abject once more. (I don't know what gets into me once in ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... no true American, at the thought of one million dollars, can remain covered. His letter to me had said, "for our mutual benefit." I became respectful and polite, I might even say abject. After all, the ties that bind us in those dear old college days are not ...
— My Buried Treasure • Richard Harding Davis
... they were driven to entreat and implore the spectators or the executioners, for dear pity's sake, to put an end to anguish too awful for man to bear—conscious to the last, and often, with tears of abject misery, beseeching from their enemies the priceless ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... from my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an abject terror. He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin, providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works; but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and it was ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... of proof. He had received bribes; he had given false judgments for money; he had perverted justice to secure the smiles of Buckingham, the favorite; and when a commission was appointed to examine these charges he was convicted. With abject humility, he acknowledged his guilt, and implored the pity of his judges. The annals of biography present no sorrier picture than this. "Upon advised consideration of the charges," he wrote, "descending into my own conscience, and calling my memory to account so far ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... are all born to obedience, to depend on and follow some person or thing. There is only a choice of services; and he who boasts himself free is but a more abject slave, as the choice for a nation is either the rule of settled order and the sanctities of an established law, or the usurpation of a mob and the intolerable tyranny of unbridled and ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... what a dupe he had been in the hands of the clever scoundrels, was covered with fear and shame. The outraged crowd might have killed him had not his escape been made under cover of darkness. Shivering and moaning in abject misery, the pride of Tinkletown fled unseeing, unthinking into the forest along the river. He was not to know until afterward that his "detectives" had stripped the rich sojourners of at least ten thousand dollars in money and jewels. It is not necessary to say that the performance of "As You ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... to express, I most readily gave myself up to her seductions, and in a very short time she obtained such an influence over me that everything I possessed was at her disposal. Before long, she had so plundered me, and led me into such extravagance, that I was reduced to the most abject poverty, and had nothing I could call my own but this miserable rag which you now see ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... infected my wife, as soon as she was reassured as to my personal safety. All of them were furious with the sculptor Hanel, who had never ceased insisting upon the expedience of bolting the house to prevent an entry of the revolutionaries. All the women without exception were joking about his abject terror at the sight of some men armed with scythes who had appeared in the street In this way Sunday passed like a sort of ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... SERVILE PRINCIPLE. It leads to practical passive obedience far better than all the doctrines which the pliant accommodation of theology to power has ever produced. It cuts up by the roots, not only all idea of forcible resistance, but even of civil opposition. It disposes men to an abject submission, not by opinion, which may be shaken by argument or altered by passion, but by the strong ties of public and private interest. For if all men who act in a public situation are equally selfish, corrupt, and venal, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... extorting from nations their treasures to extend this ruinous sway, we are ready to ask ourselves, Is not this a dream? and, when the sad reality comes home to us, we blush for a race which can stoop to such an abject lot. At length, indeed, we see the tyrant humbled, stripped of power, but stripped by those who, in the main, are not unwilling to play the despot on a narrower scale, and to break down the spirit of nations under ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... agent, for purposes little less than infernal! I will forgive thee, since thy master and my master will have it so. And indeed thou art beneath the resentment even of such a poor girl as I. I will pity thee, base and abject as thou art. And she who is the object of my pity is ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... Certainly it is morbid when a man allows himself to be insulted, bound and flogged, but it is fairly normal when his passionate admiration is roused by an imperious woman, who passes him by like a queen without even noticing his abject adoration; when he longs to kneel down before her and kiss her feet, which in reward would spurn him. Quite normal, too, is the boyish happiness in serving an admired and adored woman (Kraft-Ebbing calls this pageism) described so beautifully in Dostoievsky's novel, A Young Hero, ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... of this business that I don't understand," mused he as he paced onward; little thinking how soon he is to be enlightened on this and sundry other subjects. "I never felt more sanguine of bringing a crooked operation to a successful termination, and I never yet made such an abject failure. I shall make it my business to find out, and at once, what is this power behind the throne. So, according to Miss Wardour, may Satan fly away with her, I am not to approach the Lamotte's, I am to lose my reward, I am to retire from the field like a whipped cur. Miss Wardour, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... time we have been discovering that vast numbers of our farming population live in a poverty more abject than that of many of the farmers of Europe whom we are wont to call peasants; that the prices of our products of agriculture are too often dependent on speculation by non-farming groups; and that foreign ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... humblest conditions of their race, and carry to their lowly huts and cabins all the resources of science, all the suggestions of domestic, social, and political economies, all the appliances of school and industries in order to raise and elevate the most abject and needy race on American soil. If the scholarly and enlightened colored men and women care not to devote themselves to these lowly but noble duties, to these humble but sacred conditions, what is the use of their schooling ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... trail, and everything seems to conspire toward a pleasant trip. To prove it, Luck found another telegram waiting for him in Albuquerque. This was from Martinson, and might be interpreted as an apology more or less abject. Certainly it was an urgent request that he return immediately to Los Angeles and to his old place at the Acme, and produce Western ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... dead tailor, and reproving him for his impertinence, declared if he ever again looked up at her balcony she would contrive his death. The tailor, perfectly cured of love for his superior in life, made the most abject submission, thanked her for his deliverance, hurried home, prayed heartily for his escape, and the very next day took care to move from so ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... overview: About 80% of the population lives in abject poverty. Nearly 70% of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, which consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming and employs about two-thirds of the economically active work force. The country has experienced little job creation since ...
— The 2001 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... over a mountainous tract; we were out from seven in the morning till eight at night. After sitting a little by the fire I was near fainting from sickness. My depression of spirits led me to the throne of grace as a sinful abject worm. When I thought of myself and my transgressions, I could find no text so cheering as, 'My ways are not as your ways.' From the men who accompanied Sir Wm. Ouseley to Constantinople I learned that the plague was raging at Constantinople and thousands dying every day. ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... By the voice of Episcopal dignitaries the Popish clergy have been extolled, as men of the most eminent piety, while places have been furnished by government, to accommodate them in their mass service; and a branch of the bloody house of Bourbon, whom divine vengeance has reduced to the abject state of a wandering exile, is admitted among us, with all marks of honor, and, with his train, provided for, as if he were a zealous supporter of the Protestant cause, seeking an asylum from the ...
— Act, Declaration, & Testimony for the Whole of our Covenanted Reformation, as Attained to, and Established in Britain and Ireland; Particularly Betwixt the Years 1638 and 1649, Inclusive • The Reformed Presbytery
... was that a high official of the Criminal Investigation Department reached an outlying police station under the conduct of a young constable whose swelling pride was soon reduced to abject misery as the divisional detective-inspector, who was leaning on a high desk and chatting with a station-sergeant, sprang forward to ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... dances came feasts of unheard of magnificence, during which the pope in the sight of all men completely ignored Lent and did not fast. The abject of all these fetes was to scatter abroad a great deal of money, and so to make the Duke of Valentinois popular, while poor Jacopo d'Appiano ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... profound impression in Germany. Henry's adherents fell away, and it seemed probable that the German nobles would elect another ruler in his stead. Henry then decided on abject submission. He hastened across the Alps and found the pope at the castle of Canossa, on the northern slopes of the Apennines. It was January, and the snow lay deep on the ground. For three days the emperor stood shivering ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... religion as well as policy, faith as well as reason, been absorbed or superseded by some more mastering passion or emotion. This passion or emotion, according to those who deny her attachment to Bothwell, was simply terror—the blind and irrational prostration of an abject spirit before the cruel force of circumstances and the crafty wickedness of men. Hitherto, according to all evidence, she had shown herself on all occasions, as on all subsequent occasions she indisputably showed herself, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... neighbours those Saxons who dwelt far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his habits. When the English condescended to think of him at all,—and it was seldom that they did so,—they considered him as a filthy abject savage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... panic-stricken as the danger from the shells threatened the cottage more and more nearly, Grace threw her arms round the nurse, and clung, in the abject familiarity of terror, to the woman whose hand she had shrunk from touching not five minutes since. "Where is it safest?" she cried. "Where can I ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... night, while the snow was falling in heavy flakes, and Huntsman's manufactory threw its red glare of light over the neighborhood, a person of the most abject appearance presented himself at the entrance, praying for permission to share the warmth and shelter which it afforded. The humane workmen found the appeal irresistible, and the apparent beggar was permitted to take up his quarters in a warm ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... said at last, "that I came away from Middle Street a few minutes too soon. To tell the truth, I was in an abject state of fear. Next time I meet Mr. Frazer the Third I will be ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... a gray donkey came tearing down the beach. Max dressed as a farmer, with blue overalls and straw hat, was making a desperate effort to control the donkey, while Gwen in a chintz frock and pink sunbonnet sat close beside him, clinging to her seat in abject fear. ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks
... one than that offered to him by the old barrister's reception of this news. Mr. Elphick's face not only fell, but changed; his expression of almost sneering contempt was transformed to one clearly resembling abject terror; he dropped his pipe, fell back in his chair, recovered himself, gripped the chair's arms, and stared at Spargo as if the young man had suddenly announced to him that in another minute he must be led to instant execution. And Spargo, quick to see his advantage, ...
— The Middle Temple Murder • J.S. Fletcher
... at him with a face full of abject fear and misery, but he was in that frame of weak-mindedness which made him ready to obey any one who spoke, and ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... often truly embarrassing, for she had as little desire that the besiegers should capitulate as she had intention of surrendering herself. In this respect Miss Wildmere's tactics were easier to carry out. She was not in the least annoyed by any number of abject and committed slaves, and she was approaching the period when she proposed to surrender with great discretion, but to whom was not ...
— A Young Girl's Wooing • E. P. Roe
... advanced sternly to the front doorstep. "'Dolph, come here!" she commanded. 'Dolph barked once again defiantly, then laid himself down on the step in abject contrition, rolling over on his back and ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... quite correct in giving one of the reasons for Le Mierre's departure to Jersey. He told everyone how he was bothered by the spirit of Blaisette; but he did not add that abject terror of small-pox made him decide to spend some months with well-to-do relations in Jersey, which was quite exempt from ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... were produced by the ship's executive officer and passed around the circle. Hardly a word was spoken during this procedure, the usual debonair Bill Witt slouching against the hull of the Dewey, a picture of abject despair. It took only a few minutes to prepare the slips and they were collected by Officer Cleary, who in turn deposited them in the code box. Captain McClure stirred them around for a moment and then directed Officer ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... laughing, singing, talking loudly. Stumbling over a log his burning eyes had not seen, he turned in grotesque humor to offer curtsy and abject apology, then hastened on upward. Later, carroming from a huge tree he had hit head on, he addressed it in grave good humor: "Please keep to the right." His flushed face purple in the green light of the deep woods, he hurried on, again worrying over the nature of his forgotten mission and hysterically ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... The utter helplessness of the man; his abject and complete surrender to the demon which possessed him—all this appalled him. He had seen many drunken men in his time—roysterers and brawlers, most of them—but never one like Poe. The poet seemed to have lost his identity—nothing ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... to many a little boy, I am sure, to feel that he was not, by many miles, so simple as that most abject of all ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... contrast did O'Connor afford as he lay in all the abject helplessness of undisguised terror upon his death-bed, to the proud composure with which he had taken the field that morning. I had always before thought of death as of a quiet sleep stealing gradually upon exhausted nature, made ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... spirit of mischief, called for a rope to hang him; he thought himself lost, and through his tears he begged for mercy, pleaded for compassion, and promised atonement. General Bonham riding up at this juncture of the soldiers' sport, and seeing the abject fear of the old Northern Abolitionist, took pity and showed his sympathy by telling the men to turn him loose, and not to interfere with non-combatants. He was told to run now, and if he kept the gait he started with through the woods, not many hours elapsed before he placed the placid ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... No doubt the abject ignorance and squalor and the repulsive habits of many of these unfortunate castes help to explain and to perpetuate their ostracism, but they do not exculpate a social system which prescribes or tolerates such a state of things. That if a kindly hand is extended to them, even the lowest of these ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... religious revival, but the diplomats had least reason to complain, since they were more sought for there than they would ever be elsewhere. For young men Washington was in one way paradise, since they were few, and greatly in demand. After watching the abject unimportance of the young diplomat in London society, Adams found himself a young duke in Washington. He had ten years of youth to make up, and a ravenous appetite. Washington was the easiest society ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... symptoms of great discontent and dissatisfaction at their claims being so long neglected. The fact was, that the wretched peasantry of Ireland were in the most abject state of want, and as they had been kept in the most complete ignorance, and deprived of all the common forms of law and justice, they were gradually sinking into a state of barbarism; the consequence ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... is such a weather-beaten, sad, abject little town that one might readily experience surprise that the trains even condescend to stop there. It squats in the sand a few miles south of Tehachapi pass, hemmed in by mountain ranges ocher-tinted where near by, mellowed by distance ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... feeling frightened and not knowing what to do. Just then the bundle straightened itself a little and dropped its hands, revealing to her wondering gaze her own father's face, which wore the same awful look of abject fear which she had seen upon it when he passed through the hall beneath her just before Isleworth broke into flame on the night of her marriage. The eyes appeared to be starting from the sockets in an effort to clearly realize ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... not that, my child! It is here! here! here!" He struck his breast at every word, and bowed his head with abject grief. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... listened, Ann Eliza recalled the day when she had come on Mr. Ramy sitting in abject dejection behind his counter. She saw again the blurred unrecognizing eyes he had raised to her, the layer of dust over everything in the shop, and the green bronze clock in the window representing a Newfoundland dog with his paw on a ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... with victory, full of confidence in their strength, marching with their eyes fixed on Paris and London. They sang aloud as they swung through our streets. They sing no more. Instead, as I saw with my own eyes, many of them show in their faces the abject misery which ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... Paint him at his desk. The desk is a throne; interpret it. We are ruled by mobs. Who paints mobs? What is wrong is this, that art is in the bondage of literature—sentimentality. We must record what we experience. Ugliness has its utility, its magnetism; the ugliness of abject misery moves you to think, to readjust ideas. We must be rebels, we young men. Ah, if we could only burn the galleries, we should be forced to ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... perform her duty of a faithful wife and a kind nurse to her distressed partner. The first perception she caught of the meaning of my communication, lighted up her eye, even in the midst of her wringing pains; and, starting up, she cried, that she would be the most abject slave to my will, and obey me in all things, if I could assure her of the blessing of being able to act as nurse and comforter to her husband. Now I saw my opportunity. On the instant I called up and despatched the waiting-maid ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... shall not avail thee, for I, Naya of Mo, tell thee that thy downfall is at hand, and thine enemies the English will press their way from the great sea, bridge the Prah, and cut a road across the great forest to this thy capital, where thou shalt make abject submission to their head-man and shall be carried into degrading captivity by them. Thy treasures shall be seized, the tombs of thy fathers shall be opened and desecrated, thy fetish-trees shall be cut down and thy slaves shall ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... separated from him by the bed she drew away as if from his touch. He saw that she had forgotten the dead man in a sharp realization of the portent of the living. She glanced about the room in the panic of a trapped lark, an abject fright, ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... immortal foes, which either party might violate at pleasure. 'Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject of sycophants.' Even in the most solemn mysteries no such thing as instruction was known—'the priest did not address the people at all.' Hence all moral theories, all doctrinal teaching was utterly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 5, No. 6, June, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... many were reduced to the grade of the people. The ruin of the nobility was so complete, and depressed them so much, that they never afterward ventured to take arms for the recovery of their power, but soon became humbled and abject in the extreme. And thus Florence lost the generosity of her character and ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Britain, having in particular an extensive East India trade. Among its inhabitants were merchants, reckoned remarkably shrewd, and many of them very wealthy; and quite a number of aristocratic families, who were looked up to with the abject toad-eating kind of civility that follows "the nobility." On the whole, Bristol was a very fashionable, rich, cultivated, ...
— The Humbugs of the World • P. T. Barnum
... the scarlet flood sweep over her cheeks and then as swiftly fade. It was abject surrender, and yet he had no thrill ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... that rested on the masses an immovable weight. That narrow Nile Valley, the cradle of the arts and sciences, the scene, perhaps, of the greatest triumphs of the human mind, is also the scene of its most abject enslavement. In the long centuries of its splendor its lord, secure in the possession of irresistible temporal power, and securer still in the awful sanctions of a mystical religion, was as a god on earth, to cover whose poor carcass with a tomb befitting his ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various
... of poverty. He was the eldest in a large family, with the father probably dead, and so likely was the chief breadwinner, earning for Himself and for the others a living by His trade. He was the village carpenter up in Nazareth, an obscure country village. I do not mean abject grinding poverty, of course. That cannot exist with frugality and honest toil. But the pinch of constant management, rigid economy, counting the coins carefully, studying to make both ends meet, and needing to stretch a bit to get them together. ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... swashing, that went nigh to beat in his ribs, and seizing him by the mail gorges tore him from the saddle and cast him to the ground; whereupon the two Marids pounced upon him and binding him fast, dragged him off dejected and abject; whilst Gharib rejoiced in the capture of his enemy and repeated these ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... attempt ends as usual in the repetition—in the circumstances the inevitable repetition—of the old disaster. Not that at times we do not obtain glimpses of the true state of the case. After seasons of much discouragement, with the sore sense upon us of our abject feebleness, we do confer with ourselves, insisting for the thousandth time, "My soul, wait thou only upon God." But the lesson is soon forgotten. The strength supplied we speedily credit to our own achievement; and even the temporary success is mistaken for a symptom ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... government was but nominally representative. No Catholic, Jew, Dissenter or poor man had a vote or could hold a seat in Parliament. Industrially and economically the country was in the condition of France in the year of Arthur Young's journey. The poverty was abject, the relief futile and the hatred of the poor for the rich was inflammatory. George III, slipping into feebleness and insanity, yet jealous of his unconstitutional power, was a vacillating despot, quarrelling with his Commons and his Ministers. ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... in an infinity of guard-houses, at a multitude of town gates, and on every drawbridge, angle, and rampart, of a complete system of fortifications. Fifty times a day, I got down to harangue an infuriated soldiery about the Bottle. Through the filthy degradation of the abject and vile Roman States, I had as much difficulty in working my way with the Bottle, as if it had bottled up a complete system of heretical theology. In the Neapolitan country, where everybody was a spy, a soldier, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... more rapid when de Courtois realized that he was in the hands of those who meant well by him. It was noticeable, too, as his senses returned and the panic glare left his eyes, that his expression changed from one of abject fear to a lowering look of suspicious uncertainty. He peered at Steingall and the hotel clerk many times, but gave Curtis and Devar only a perfunctory glance. Oddly enough, the fact that the two latter were in evening dress seemed to reassure him, and it became evident later that the presence of ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... vixen, whose dresses were never rumpled, and whose temper was never ruffled. She had not blood enough in her veins to drive her to play or to anger. But she seemed to poor Mattie the loveliest creature she had ever seen, and our brown, hard-handed, blowzy tomboy became the pale fairy's abject slave. Her first act of sovereignty was to ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... cabin door—and the door was wide open. He could see no life, but he could SMELL it. And smoke was rising from the chimney. He slunk across the open. In the manner of his going there was an abject humiliation—a plea for mercy if he had done wrong, a prayer to the creatures he worshipped that he might not be ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... mosque of Aya Sofia towering aloft, warmed his fancy and the sheen of Byzantine brocades and the quaint paraphernalia of bygone days inspired his apocalyptic words. His language in those telegrams and letters was highfaluting and bombastic. And I read other communications of his—mostly abject appeals for help—devoid of dignity and manliness, when the gloom of dissipated illusions was made unbearable by fear of dethronement and death. And the figure cut by the Tsarlet, who addressed those humble prayers—mostly to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... she was glad August sent the letter, and it served the schoolmistress right. The teacher went up to the pa once more; an hour later, August in person, accompanied, as usual, by a relation or two, delivered at the cottage an abject apology in writing, the composition of which would have discouraged the most enthusiastic advocate of higher education ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... under the trees of the park—"I'm more sorry still for another person who shall be nameless. But what have I to do with all this? And what on earth is the matter with you?" he resumed, noticing for the first time the abject misery in Mr. Bashwood's manner, the blank despair in Mr. Bashwood's face, which his answer had produced. "Are you ill? Is there something behind the curtain that you're afraid to bring out? I don't understand it. Have you come here—here in my private room, in ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... we perceive between the Spaniard of those times and the abject and degraded vassal of the princes of the Austrian dynasty! Religious sentiment was not less energetic, it was not less profound, in the second epoch than in the first; but it was a sentiment perverted by superstition, ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... them to his dishonour.—Have not some generals, from England, treated us like servants, nay, more like slaves than like Britons?—Have we not been under the most ignominious contribution, the most abject submission, the most supercilious insults of some custom-house officers? Have we not been trifled with, browbeaten, and trampled on, by former governors, in a manner which no King of England since James the Second has dared to indulge towards his subjects? ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... called out. And with a bewildered feeling of abject fear, Anna heard the quick steps of the ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... a remorseless Idol, how abject we were to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... from her with every breath, the wretched woman allowed herself to be helped to the chair, into which she sank with an air of abject despair. ...
— The Masked Bridal • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... upon him and the spell was broken. Jasper remained kneeling mutely there, shy man once more, crimson with blushes, a strange, almost pitiful creature in his abject confusion. A little smile flickered about the delicate corners of her mouth, but she turned and walked swiftly away down ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unless it appear that there might have been some desire of obtaining some of those which we called lower goods, or a fear of losing them. For they are beautiful and comely; although compared with those higher and beatific goods, they be abject and low. A man hath murdered another; why? he loved his wife or his estate; or would rob for his own livelihood; or feared to lose some such things by him; or, wronged, was on fire to be revenged. Would ...
— The Confessions of Saint Augustine • Saint Augustine
... him on my knees, and with floods of tears besought him to release me from this engagement, assuring him that my cowardice was abject, and that in every point of intellect and character I was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... on was the gross libeller of Goldsmith, and the far grosser libeller of Garrick. 'When proceedings were commenced against him in the Court of King's Bench [for the libel on Garrick], he made at once the most abject submission and retractation.' Prior's Goldsmith, i. 294. In the Garrick Carres, (ii. 341) is a letter addressed to Kenrick, in which Garrick says:—'I could have honoured you by giving the satisfaction of a gentleman, if you could (as Shakespeare says) have screwed your courage to ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of a brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have therefore to resolve to conquer or to die. Our own, our country's honour, call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us then rely ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... that which he feels in the general happiness of his species, nobly and generously volunteering his services to assist in promoting the cause of humanity, whilst there are thousands here strenuously advocating the giving a legal sanction to the oppression and abject slavery of their fellow-creatures. Such noble, generous, and fervid benevolence as yours, is highly honorable even to a Friend; and is a new and striking proof of that extended philanthropy, and pure and heaven-born ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... I've done,' said Lake, tranquilly. 'Mark tried to bully, but the cool old heads were too much for him, and he threw himself at last entirely on our mercy—and very abject ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... and no resistance was attempted. For twenty-four hours the Creoles were in abject terror. Then Clark summoned their chief men together and explained that he came as their ally, and not as their foe, and that if they would join with him they should be citizens of the American republic, and ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... their women ill. These poor creatures get the worst of all their food, with the hardest of all their work; and are frequently very severely beaten by their hard and ruthless taskmasters. Degraded as are these aborigines generally, those in the immediate vicinity of Sydney are a more abject race than their more fortunate brethren who inhabit the distant parts of the Colony. This may be partly, if not wholly accounted for, by the facility with which at Sydney they can obtain ardent spirits, to procure ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... of themselves, while from you, men of Athens, this power is taken away. It can never be, methinks, that your spirit is generous and noble, while you are engaged in petty and mean employments; no more than you can be abject and mean-spirited, while your actions are honorable and glorious. Whatever be the pursuits of men their sentiments must necessarily ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... him thereof; and we will surely reward the thankful. How many prophets have encountered those who had many myriads of troops: and yet they desponded not in their mind for what had befallen them in fighting for the religion of God, and were not weakened, neither behaved themselves in an abject manner? God loveth those who persevere patiently. And their speech was no other than that they said, Our Lord forgive us our offences, and our transgressions in our business; and confirm our feet, and help us against the unbelieving people. ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... brother's ranch was their next stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they blindly committed themselves ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... captain in the Army) was discovered at the hazard table, playing with loaded dice. Before this abject scoundrel could be turned out of his regiment, he was killed in a duel by one of his brother officers ...
— The Guilty River • Wilkie Collins
... ain't wanted, my boy. You don't go dropping in on your General in that promiscuous style. You wait till it's convenient to him to send for you, and then you apologize for your existence in the most abject terms at your command. I happen to know—friend at court, you see—that you'll be summoned about sunset, and if you behave very nicely, and answer prettily when you're spoken to, you may even be honoured by ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... for his effect on the impalpable horror of his story. The calm, business-like overture, the accurate description of the position of the house in a street off the north side of Oxford Street, the insistence on the matter-of-fact attitude of the watcher, and on the cool courage of his servant, the abject fear of the dog, who dies in agony, all tend to create an atmosphere of grave conviction. The eerie child's footfall, the moving of the furniture by unseen hands, the wrinkled fingers that clutch the old letters, the faintly outlined wraiths of the man and woman in old-world garb ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... paint the nauseating horror of that moment. Fear—cold, abject, awful fear—ran through my veins like a drug; my face was clammy with the sweat of utter terror; my hands clutched wildly at some drapery, which tore from its fastenings and came down ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... could not persuade her to realise the passionate earnestness of mine. It was still more in vain to remind her that such a concession must entail the dishonour that man fears above all perils; would brand me with that indelible stain of abject personal cowardice which for ever degrades and ruins not only the fame but the nature of manhood, as the stain of wilful unchastity ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... enduring Mr. Murdstone's cruel neglect, Florence Dombey pining for her father's love, the Marchioness starving upon cold potatoes, Tom and Louise Gradgrind, stuffed with facts and allowed no innocent amusement, and the waifs of Tom's-All-Alone dying from abject poverty and disease, are only a few of the sad-eyed children peering from the pages of Dickens and yearning for love and understanding. He wrings the heart; but, happily, his books have improved the conditions of children, not only in public ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... queen, and such an indignity put upon the hostess, caused the greatest agitation to all present; and subsequently afforded subject for scandalous gossip to the town. It moreover showed that the monarch was yet an abject slave of his mistress, whose charms entangled him irresistibly. At least four times a week he supped with her, returning at early morning from her lodgings, in a stealthy way, through the privy gardens, a proceeding of which the sentries took much notice, joked unbecomingly, ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... treated from the first hour of his captivity. Not a rough word was said to him; and his own unbridled outbursts were received with as much indifference as the abject prayers and supplications which were their regular reaction. The ebbing life was ordered on that principle of high humanity which might be the last refinement of calculated cruelty. The prisoner was so tethered to such a tree that it was no longer necessary ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... to destroy, in a manner, their shrewd conjecture that he was in America to purchase large quantities of films. Why, then, should Goldstein have paid such abject ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... same," said he, "Madam. And, albeit I neither be earl, lord, nor baron within it, yet has God made me—how abject that ever I be in your eyes—a profitable member within the same. Yea, Madam, to me it appertains no less to forewarn of such things as may hurt it, if I foresee them, than it does to any of the nobility; for ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... I saw a man, alone, In abject poverty, with hand Uplifted o'er a block of stone That took a shape at his command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep, ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... and good, How unresentful towards my scornful mood. Avaunt, ye tender phantasies, avaunt! I dread the world's disdain—its scoffing taunt. My people shall not see Turandot fall, The slave of one means abject slave to all. ...
— Turandot: The Chinese Sphinx • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... long time, Blassemare met his abject and agonized entreaties with a stoical scorn; at ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... formidable. Our mills are simple affairs. One man can manage them, and the question of the labor on the rubber concession is reduced to the minimum." This answer of the learned attorney shows an ignorance of "labor" conditions in the Congo which is, unless assumed, absolutely abject. ...
— The Congo and Coasts of Africa • Richard Harding Davis
... worthless or ignoble purposes. Especially it is necessary to shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the longing for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever falling, rising, running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and the abject dread of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble brow. The gambler grows old as he watches the chances. Lawful hazard drives Youth away before its time; and this Youth draws heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines, at high pressure, a hundred ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Tibbetts, Managing Director of Schemes Limited, and Miss Marguerite Whitland, his heaven-sent secretary, were strained to the point of breaking that afternoon. She went away that night without saying good-bye, and Bones, in a condition of abject despair, walked home to Devonshire Street, and was within a dozen yards of his flat, when he remembered that he had left his motor-car in the City, and had to take a cab back to ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... be settled in twenty-four hours!" I replied. "That man and his family are the pest of the neighborhood, and everyone lives in a sort of abject dread of them. Now, the neighbors must say 'yes' or 'no' to the question whether we shall have decency, law, and order, or not. Merton, unharness the horse. Junior, come with me; I'm ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... the kitchen she procured a small basket, and into this she packed some old cloths and pieces of biscuit. Then she picked up the terrier, cuffed it on both sides of the head, popped it into the basket, tucked its humbly-agitated tail under its abject ribs, closed the basket, and fastened it with a skewer. She next addressed a label to her cousin's home, tied it to the basket, and despatched a servant with it to the railway-station, instructing her that it should be paid for ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... he said, hastily. "I saw his man at dinner. The train was reported late, but she made up time." Grasping desperately at his dignity, he swallowed an abject apology and retreated ...
— Chip, of the Flying U • B. M. Bower
... had chosen her lot. She would abide by it. No doubt she saw her husband as he was, but as time went on she realised how few chances he had had to be anything different. She was an only child herself. She, too, had adoring parents, but their adoration took a different form from the somewhat abject and wholly blind devotion of Hilary's mother. General and Mrs Grantly saw to it from the very first that they should love their daughter because she was lovable, and not only because she was theirs. They had troops of friends, and exercised a large hospitality ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... get upon our nerves, the king spoke to the headman of our party, addressing to him a few curt words in a decidedly ungracious tone of voice; whereupon the headman, taking the precaution first to conciliate his Majesty by prostrating himself and rubbing his nose in the dust in token of abject submission, rose to his feet and proceeded to spin a long yarn, of which I was evidently the subject, since he repeatedly pointed to me. He must have included in his narrative the incident of the snake-bite, for at one point he seized my right hand and, turning the palm upward, pointed ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... in the East, where it witnessed the extinction of the Princes of the Captivity by the ignominious death of the last sovereign, the downfall of the schools, and the dispersion of the community, which from that period remained an abject and degraded part of the population. During the ninth and tenth centuries the Caliphate fell into weakness and confusion, and split up into several kingdoms under conflicting sovereigns, and at the same time Judaism in the East was distracted by continual disputes ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... was possessed by terror, mingled with flashes of desperation, at the remembrance of his rash imprudence. His recollection of extravagant frontier chivalry to womankind, and the swift retribution of the insulted husband or guardian, alternately filled him with abject fear or extravagant recklessness. At times prepared for flight, even to the desperate abandonment of himself in a canoe to the waters of the Pacific: at times he was on the point of inciting his braves to attack the Indian agency ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... bare floor is a sign of mourning, and so, by association of ideas, of an abject attitude ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... him.' She had already called, but her courage had failed, and no one could have been more courteous and friendly. As a boy, I went to stay at the house of —, whose wife was insane; and the poor creature, as soon as she saw me, was in the most abject state of terror that I ever saw, weeping bitterly and asking me over and over again, 'Is your father coming?' but was soon pacified. On my return home, I asked my father why she was so frightened, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... tired of it. Here is its type and history," touching a county newspaper,—"a fair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight of uncomprehended fact. Bargain and sale,—it taints our religion, our brains, our flags,—yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear of those abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor hell, who were neither faithful to God nor rebellious, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Grosvenor Street inveighing against 'the whole beastly show,' as you called it—the freak fashions, the ugly eccentric dances, the costly pageant balls, the shouldering, the striving, the worship of money, the gambling, the self-advertisement—all the abject vulgarity of it? And my set, the artistic, soulful literary set, you said was the worst of all: you actually described the high-priestess as looking like a 'decomposing cod-fish,' and added by way of a final insult that you thought the woman ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... great joy by the inhabitants, who had been in a state of abject terror. A runner, who was the bearer of a message to the rajah from the headman, had left on the morning after Harry's party had started; and had returned with the news that he had found the headless ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... A look of abject terror succeeded the former expression of rage and disappointment that had distorted Argetti's face, and when our hero saw this change to a look of terror there came a rapid beating of his ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... down on the floor, opened Alan's letter, despised herself for letting its author's spell creep over her anew with every word. It was an abject plea for mercy, for forgiveness, for restoration to favor. It had been a devil of jealousy that had possessed him, he had not known what he was doing. Surely she must know that he would not willingly harm or hurt or anger ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... "Enterprise," for which he received thirty dollars a week. This, with his earnings from the "Californian," made his total return larger than before. Very likely he was hard up from time to time—literary men are often that—but that he was ever in abject poverty, as he would have us believe, is just a ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... worship due to Him to a calf, which they believed to be the god who had brought them out of Egypt. In truth, it is hardly likely that men accustomed to the superstitions of Egypt, uncultivated and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any sound notions about the Deity, or that Moses should have taught them anything beyond a rule of right living; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the result of freedom, but like ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... sufferings, he gave you the money that really belonged to others. Then he sent in his accounts, and the deficiency was discovered. He lost his head, and declared that he had been robbed. You lived in the next room; you were known to be in abject poverty on the one day and in ample funds on the next; hence ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... that the overtures came from the Begam. 'In a manner the most abject and desponding, she addressed Mr. Thomas . . . implored him to come to her assistance, and, finally, offered to pay any sum of money the Marathas should require, on condition they would reinstate her in the Jagir. On receipt of these letters, Mr. ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... know what fear is? Not ordinary fear of insult, injury or death, but abject, quivering dread of something that you cannot see—fear that dries the inside of the mouth and half of the throat—fear that makes you sweat on the palms of the hands, and gulp in order to keep the uvula at work? This is a fine Fear—a great cowardice, and must ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... there four months. In a little while Desnoyers felt ready to retreat. Each to his own kind; he would never be able to understand such people. Exceedingly amiable, with an abject amiability and evident desire to please, but constantly blundering through a tactless desire to make their grandeur felt. The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child inspires, needing protection. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the stranger had turned his head and was looking at us—never shall I forget the infinite pathos of his expression at that moment. There was something in the face which betrayed misery and dejection so abject that for days afterwards the look haunted me. Again I saw the lips ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... touch and set his teeth. Ward tied his hands before him and told him to get up and go out to his horse. Buck obeyed with abject submissiveness, and Ward's lip curled again as he walked behind him to the door. He had not the slightest twinge of pity for the man. He was gloatingly glad that he could make him suffer, and he inwardly cursed his own humanity for being so merciful. He ought to have cut Buck's ear off slick ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... For she would go! Her resolution was irrevocable. All dropped from his side at once. The mistress, to whom he had sacrificed the noblest and most loving heart, he had lost under circumstances as abject as their two years of passion had been dishonorable. His wife was about to leave him, and would he succeed in keeping his son? He had returned to be avenged, and he had not even succeeded in meeting his rival. That being so impressionable ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget
... and others followed. At the base there was a crowd of men, with emaciated forms and faces, and coarse, squalid attire, who looked like the most abject paupers, and seemed the lowest in the land. As the Kohen reached the summit there arose a strange sound—a mournful, plaintive chant, which seemed to be sung chiefly by the paupers at the base of the pyramid. The words of this chant I could not make out, but the melancholy strain affected ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... his hand and lay still for a little, his eyes seeming unnaturally large as he turned them upwards, filled at once with a sort of defiance and an abject, cringing terror. ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... portion; and a little way onward, waiting for him, is death. Too old to play with passion, too young not to feel desire, he has endured a long struggle between the two souls in his breast—one longing for heaven and the other for the world; but he is beaten at last, and in the abject surrender of despair he determines to die by his own act. A childlike feeling, responsive in his heart to the divine prompting of sacred music, saves him from self-murder; but in a subsequent bitter revulsion he utters a curse upon everything in the state of man, and most of all upon that ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... started as if a pike had been thrust into his side. On his face was written blank astonishment, which expression, as she proceeded, gave way to one of abject fear. It would have been difficult to say which of the two was the more agitated. He dashed a hand to his brow as if to drive away the fumes of liquor which had mounted to his brain; looked at the kneeling figure; gazed on the tapers burning upon the table; and tried to form some words ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... to allow this error of fate and of men to be carried out, not to hinder it, to lend himself to it through his silence, to do nothing, in short, was to do everything! that this was hypocritical baseness in the last degree! that it was a base, cowardly, sneaking, abject, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and stately in her manner, and uttered, with the proudest mien, words expressive only of the most abject humility. "If her fair sister would come and see her at her poor house at Kennington, she would be right glad of so great honour." Margery replied courteously, but she had no desire to ...
— Mistress Margery • Emily Sarah Holt
... evinced, that though acknowledging my assumptions, he was no way overawed by them; treating me as familiarly, indeed, as if I were a mere mortal, one of the abject generation of mushrooms. ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... none like him to trumpet about the streets the brave nature, the wise conduct, and great glory of the King Diabolus. He would range and rove throughout all the streets of Mansoul to cry up his illustrious Lord, and would make himself even as an abject, among the base and rascal crew, to cry up his valiant prince. And I say, when and wheresoever he found these vassals, he would even make himself as one of them. In all ill courses he would act without bidding, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... was conscious of an overwhelming desire to flee from the white grimace on the bed that had been Lettice's and his. He drew back, in a momentary, abject, shameful cowardice; then he forced himself to return.... The fleering lips quivered, there was a slight stir under the counterpane. A little sound gathered, shaped into words barely audible in the stillness of the room broken only ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the wells were poisoned. On the contrary, we have proof that as a rule men died at their posts during all that trying time, that those in authority never lost their heads, and that though there must, of course, have been isolated cases of abject fear, expressing itself in the maddest extravagances of despair, yet we have to look long and look far and wide to find such cases—and after all ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... never felt till now My abject fortune, withered fame so low: Seyd is mine enemy; had swept my band From earth with ruthless but with open hand, And therefore came I, in my bark of war, 1530 To smite the smiter with the scimitar; Such is my weapon—not the secret knife; Who spares a Woman's seeks not Slumber's life. Thine ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... hands. Narrow, rough, steep old stone-stairs ran up between and inside the houses, all the doors of which were open to the air—here, however, none of the sweetest. Everywhere was shadow; everywhere one or another evil odour; everywhere a look of abject and dirty poverty—to an English eye, that is. Everywhere were pretty children, young, slatternly mothers, withered-up grandmothers, the gleam of glowing reds and yellows, and the coolness of subdued greens and fine blues. Such ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... therefore might suffer under the regime of a Bible class. His attention had been directed to the peace which passeth understanding. So he had been beaten, and was secretly twitted by Clara as an abject victim. Hence it was with a keen and peculiar feeling of triumph, of hopelessly cornering the inscrutable generation which a few months ago had cornered him, that he demanded, perhaps perkily: "What about ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... confusion; a heaving, surging herd of humanity, smitten with a very frenzy of fright and despair, every sense of manly pride, of honor, and duty, completely paralyzed, and dead to every feeling save the most abject, pitiful terror. A number of officers could be distinguished amid the tumult, performing, with violent gesticulations, the pantomimic accompaniments of shouting incoherent commands, mingled with threats and entreaties. There was a little drummer boy, I remember, too, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... prosecuted for sedition, and deemed himself only safe from compulsory exile by a voluntary exit to America. This event took place about two years after Montgomery's first connexion with Sheffield, and he had now reverted to his former condition of abject dependence unless for a fortunate occurrence. This was no less than his being appointed joint-proprietor and editor of the newspaper by a wealthy individual, who, noticing the abilities of the young shopman, purchased ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... were to execute those laws, and no man can doubt but what at that time there was a strong and powerful prejudice in the army and among all classes of citizens against extending the right of suffrage to negroes, especially down in the far south, where the great body of the slaves were in abject ignorance. ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... making excuses to consult him about my reading, and to confide in him her sufferings, as I learned, from my contumacy and temper. The fact is, I was altogether quiet and submissive. But I think she had a wish to reduce me to a state of the most abject bondage. She had designs of domination and subversion regarding the entire household, I now believe, worthy of the evil spirit ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... up their places we could see the expressions of abject fear upon the glistening faces of the wretched blacks, and longed to rush forth and rescue them, but with knowledge that instant death would result from such foolhardiness we remained breathlessly ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... showers. He breakfasted, lunched, dined there, drove with the ladies in the afternoon, and finally summoned up courage to be host at a picnic in the hills. He was still shy and quiet, but he no longer looked abject and listless. His shoulders were less bowed, even his skin grew more normal of hue, the flesh beneath it firmer. It might be a fool's paradise; these spoilt people of the world might have forgotten him before their ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... he said; "you might know I shouldn't change. I've got one or two little jobs to see to about Bouncing's funeral. That woman's half a little cat and half an abject fool. Still, you can't help feeling a bit sorry for her. I dare say I can get things done by lunch-time; then I'll drive over the Fluella. I'll put up at the Kulm; but don't bother to write till you've got something ...
— The Dark Tower • Phyllis Bottome
... voices from below—some stern, angry, threatening, others sullen, dogged, defiant, or craven with abject terror—attracted their attention. ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... dilated with the boundless view, and his chest heaved with an impossible desire, I saw Xerxes and his army, tossed and glittering, rank upon rank, multitude upon multitude, out of sight, but ever regularly advancing, and with confused roar of ceaseless music, prostrating themselves in abject homage. Or, as with arms outstretched and hair streaming on the wind, he chanted full lines of the resounding Iliad, I saw Homer pacing the Aegean sands of the Greek sunsets ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... well. Does the stag in his hour of victory need a diploma from the hind? Holding in his hands the malachite casket that was the symbol of his triumph, the Duke smiled dictatorially at his darling. He came near to thinking of her as a chattel. Then with a pang he remembered his abject devotion to her. Abject no longer though! The victory he had just won restored his manhood, his sense of supremacy among his fellows. He loved this woman on equal terms. She was transcendent? So was he, Dorset. To-night the world had on its moonlit surface two great ornaments—Zuleika ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... of the hut on the heath was the very picture of abject poverty and dreary desolation. The earthen floor was broken and rough; the sunlight came sifting through the chinks in the broken walls. A smoky fire of wet driftwood smoldered, under a pot on the crook. There was neither table nor chairs. A straw pallet with a wretched coverlet lay in one corner; ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... greater part of the trial, Delano had maintained his confidence and composure; but at length the evidence of his own people, and the master and crew of the Helen, became so overwhelming that he lost all hope, and, overcome by the most abject fear, sunk down, and would have fallen, had he not been supported. Recovering himself a little, he broke forth into earnest petitions that his life might be spared. He made the most trivial and weak excuses for his conduct, utterly unlikely to avail ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... for the grind-book," shrieked Mary Brooks. Then she noticed Roberta's expression of abject terror. "Never mind, Miss Lewis," she said kindly. "It's really an honor to be in the grind-book, but I promise not to tell if you'd rather I wouldn't. Won't you show that you forgive me by coming down to college ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... that she had intended to do, and had done it with as much of good result as she had expected. She had probably not thought that Linda would be quite so fierce as she had shown herself; but she had expected tears, and more of despair, and a clearer protestation of abject misery in the proposed marriage. Linda's mind would now be filled with the idea, and probably she might by degrees reconcile herself to it, and learn to think that Peter was not so very old a man. At any rate it would now be for Peter himself ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... for mercy to God and to his kinsman were wildly and blasphemously mingled. The sons of Ishmael turned away in horror at the disgusting spectacle, and even the stern nature of the squatter began to bend before so abject misery. ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... "Heaven forbid that I should aspire to such abject slavery. When I marry, it will ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... literally makes the nerves walk, dance, and run. It heightens the feelings and sensibilities to distraction, producing what is really hysteria. If the weather is clear, this drug will make life gorgeous; if it rains, tragic. Slight vexation becomes deadly revenge; courage becomes rashness; fear, abject terror; and gentle affection or even a passing liking is transformed into passionate love. It is the drug derived from the Indian hemp, scientifically named Cannabis Indica, better known as hashish, or bhang, or a dozen ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... the wicked doe glory with the name of good, and contrary the good and innocent be detracted and slandred as evill. Furthermore I, who by her great cruelty, was turned into a foure footed Asse, in most vile and abject manner: yea, and whose estate seemed worthily to be lamented and pittied of the most hard and stonie hearts, was accused of theft and robbing of my deare host Milo, which villany might rather be called parricide then theft, yet might not I defend mine owne cause or denie the fact any way, by ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... us up to the actual state of affairs. It seemed that little Pedlington was in an uproar. The whole of the Adalian public were in a state of lively commotion. Of course, as they had bullied loudly, they were abject in concession. Those more immediately concerned in the outrage on the soap-boiler, would have infallibly absconded, had not the strong arm of the law laid an embargo upon them, and laid them by as scapegoats in the first instance. The prevailing opinion about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... for rekindling the national pride, and for planting the dauphin once more upon his feet. When Joanna appeared, he had been on the point of giving up the struggle with the English, distressed as they were, and of flying to the south of France. She taught him to blush for such abject counsels. She liberated Orleans, that great city, so decisive by its fate for the issue of the war, and then beleaguered by the English with an elaborate application of engineering skill unprecedented in Europe. Entering the city after sunset ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... nothing but slavery. I found it just as hard to be beaten over the head with a piece of iron in New York as it was in Virginia. Whips and chains are everywhere necessary to degrade and brutalize the slave, in order to reduce him to that abject and humble state which Slavery requires. Nor is the effect much less disastrous on the man who holds supreme control over the soul and body of his fellow beings. Such unlimited power, in almost every instance transforms the man into a tyrant; ...
— Twenty-Two Years a Slave, and Forty Years a Freeman • Austin Steward
... it over, Mr. Sweesey," replied the girl, somewhat softened by his abject demeanor. "Here is the paper father wanted me to take to you. I think I'd better be going back to town after this. And I promise you I'll never again cross ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... his scarcely happier family. Nervous and irritable, the slightest inconveniences are magnified into terrible calamities, he constantly fears death, and his sleepless nights become a saturnalia of gloomy thoughts and abject fears. ...
— Health on the Farm - A Manual of Rural Sanitation and Hygiene • H. F. Harris
... standing in an admiring posture at the door of his cave. It was Flavius, the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his master had led to seek him out at his wretched dwelling, and to offer his services; and the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon, in that abject condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner of a beast among beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so affected this good servant, that he stood speechless, wrapped ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Eyrecourt's sense of injury urges her to indulge in violent measures—she is eager to place her deserted daughter under the protection of the law; to insist on a restitution of conjugal rights or on a judicial separation. At another time she sinks into a state of abject depression; declares that it is impossible for her, in Stella's deplorable situation, to face society; and recommends immediate retirement to some place on the Continent in which they can live cheaply. This latter suggestion ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... Maurice accompanied Harry to the residence of the poor woman they had seen at Mr T.'s shop. It was a miserable hovel, but after all there was an air of cleanliness and comfort about it, that the most abject poverty can seldom of itself destroy. A white curtain, mended it is true, in very many places, yet looking quite respectable, still shaded the only window of the apartment. There were a few coals, on which was laid a single stick of wood, in the open fire-place, but it sent ...
— Effie Maurice - Or What do I Love Best • Fanny Forester
... whose Socialistic Utopia had so oddly anticipated this actual experience. But here was no Utopia, no Socialistic state. He had already seen enough to realise that the ancient antithesis of luxury, waste and sensuality on the one hand and abject poverty on the other, still prevailed. He knew enough of the essential factors of life to understand that correlation. And not only were the buildings of the city gigantic and the crowds in the street gigantic, but the voices he had heard in the ways, the uneasiness ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... I thought, my lady," said Harry, bowing low over the hand she gave him, in a courtly manner he had acquired, perhaps from the old-world novels he had read, and he brushed her pink finger tips with his lips in a way that signified he was her abject slave. ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Even in her abject poverty, there had been something noticeable about Mag Henderson, aside from mere prettiness. Her print frocks, while often ragged and rarely clean, fitted her figure very neatly, and she managed effects with a bit of ribbon and a cheap feather that might have ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... voice; but he knew that the strange man had been engaged instead of himself, and this knowledge posted itself between his tongue and his thought. He heard himself stammering, he felt that his whole bearing had become drooping and abject. His master was talking swiftly and the other man was looking at him in an embarrassed, stealthy, and pleading manner: his eyes seemed to be apologising for having supplanted him—so he mumbled 'Good day, sir,' and ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... multiplicity and omnipresence, he hadn't a chance. You saw him fascinated, stupefied by the confusion and the mystery of it. She carried him off under Mrs. Viveash's unhappy nose. Wherever she went she called him, and he followed, flushed and shamefaced. He showed himself now pitifully abject, and now in pitiful revolt. Once or twice he was positively rude to her, and Miss Tarrant seemed to enjoy that more ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... brute power of audacity and nerve. Here stood the careless, unblushing villain, making light of his guilt, carrying it away from disgust itself, with resolute look and front erect. There stood the abler, subtler, profounder criminal, cowering, abject, pitiful; the power of mere intellectual knowledge shivered into pieces against the brazen metal with which the accident of constitution ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... series a distinguished red-tabbed party was dispersed because the Hun did an area strafe in front, behind, and around the single gun. Another time the descent of an 8-inch saved the amour-propre of a worried second lieutenant, who, after jockeying with his angle of sight, had got into abject difficulties with ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... people; an august senate listened to the enchantments of his eloquence; a powerful ministry dreading his resolutions; he was courted, flattered, feared; and obeyed. View him now, and the scene is shifted. Observe him descending to the most abject trifling, stooping to the meanest expedients, and the orator and statesman transformed to the vagabond ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... greatest in the land were in the field? Esmond never so much as thought of asking permission to hope so far above his reach as he knew this prize was—and passed his foolish, useless life in mere abject sighs and impotent longing. What nights of rage, what days of torment, of passionate unfulfilled desire, of sickening jealousy, can he recall! Beatrix thought no more of him than of the lackey that followed her chair. His complaints did not touch her in the least; his raptures rather fatigued ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... It had been evident to Stepton from the moment when his visitor came in that he was in great agony of mind. There was in his face a sort of still and abject misery which Stepton thought exceedingly promising. As he turned round, leaning his sharp elbow on his writing-table, Stepton was considering how to exploit this misery for the furthering ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... talking, I saw, quite wildly, his words dictated by abject terror—the terror he had resisted so long, but which had caught ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... this business that I don't understand," mused he as he paced onward; little thinking how soon he is to be enlightened on this and sundry other subjects. "I never felt more sanguine of bringing a crooked operation to a successful termination, and I never yet made such an abject failure. I shall make it my business to find out, and at once, what is this power behind the throne. So, according to Miss Wardour, may Satan fly away with her, I am not to approach the Lamotte's, I am to lose my reward, I am to retire from the field like a whipped cur. Miss Wardour, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... my place by the wall, on the outskirts of the hubbub, I saw the Clerk dragged down the aisle by the collar, bleeding, with a blackened eye, apparently half drunk and evidently frightened into an abject terror. He had stolen a bill introduced by Senator Bucklin, providing that cities could own their own water works and gas works; but the Senator's wife had been watching him; she had followed him to the basement and stopped him as he tried to escape to the street; and it was the Senator now who had ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... raise or annihilate at his Pleasure. It is true, that this has made the King of the Kofirans the most powerful Monarch in the Universe; but perhaps, it also makes the People the most miserable; tho' an abject Veneration for their Kings will not permit them to own their ...
— The Amours of Zeokinizul, King of the Kofirans - Translated from the Arabic of the famous Traveller Krinelbol • Claude Prosper Jolyot de Crbillon
... world? And if the world is judged by you, are you unworthy of the lowest courts? [6:3]Know you not that we shall judge angels? Much more then things pertaining to this life? [6:4]If then you have courts for the business of this life, do you constitute them of the most abject in the church? [6:5]I speak to your shame. Is there not now a wise man among you? not one who can judge between his brothers? [6:6]But brother goes to law with brother, and that before unbelievers. [6:7]Now ...
— The New Testament • Various
... said Max, "gave me my body and my reasoning power. You must not ask me to forfeit them. I agree with that old collegiate (a doctor of divinity like myself) to whom one of more austere piety had declared 'abject submission' the only possible attitude of the creature toward his Creator. 'No, no!' protested the Doctor, with outraged dignity, 'deference, but not—not abject submission!' Deference is all a man can honestly promise so long as reason remains to him; abject submission is ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... inquietude, disquietude, worry, concern; batophobia[obs3]; heartquake[obs3]; flutter, trepidation, fear and trembling, perturbation, tremor, quivering, shaking, trembling, throbbing heart, palpitation, ague fit, cold sweat; abject fear &c. (cowardice) 862; mortal funk, heartsinking[obs3], despondency; despair &c. 859. fright; affright, affrightment[obs3]; boof alarm[obs3][U.S.], dread, awe, terror, horror, dismay, consternation, panic, scare, stampede [of horses]. intimidation, terrorism, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... unavailing lamentations? Why utter prayers which are rejected, and supplications which are scorned? Shake off this weakness, Alice, and be yourself again. Once you had pride enough, and a little of it would now be of service to you. You would then see the folly of this abject conduct—humbling yourself to the dust only to be spurned, and suing for mercy only to be derided. Pray as loud and as long as you will, the ears of Heaven will remain ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... draw up ordinances to reform the realm and the royal household. The powers of the committee were to last until Michaelmas, 1311. A barren promise that the king's concession should not be counted a precedent made Edward's submission seem a little less abject. Four days later the ordainers were appointed, the method of their election being based upon the ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... question whether any person through a whole life has always been wholly insensible,—we will not say (though well we might) to the good and true,—but to beauty; at least, to some one kind, or degree, of the beautiful. The most abject wretch, however animalized by vice, may still be able to recall the time when a morning or evening sky, a bird, a flower, or the sight of some other object in nature, has given him a pleasure, which he felt to be distinct from that of his animal appetites, and to which he could attach not a thought ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... years have passed; and where The Gallic bugles stirred the air, And, through breached batteries, side by side, To victory stormed the hosts allied, And brave foes grounded, pale with pain, The arms they might not lift again, As abject as in that old day The slave still ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... I, "because I owed you a debt which, I felt, must be paid in person, or it would never be paid at all. Mrs. Lascelles, I owed and do owe you about the most abject apology man ever made! I have followed you all this way for no other earthly reason than to make it, in all sincere humility. But it has taken me more or less since Tuesday morning; and I can't kneel here. Do you ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... out of paternal affection by a spiritual father, whom it did not mis-become, to a son who was not dishonoured by receiving it. The unfortunate elector not only suffered in the ear, but was also obliged to make an abject apology, and to kiss the offender's feet before he was re-admitted to communion. At Maopongo the priests lost favour with the court and the women by whipping the queen, and, by the same process they abated the superhuman ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... were in abject misery, and in vain held out their hands to passers-by under the church porches, and in the squares, while only the watchmen disturbed the silence of the starlit nights, by their monotonous and melancholy ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When they are not engaged in acts of crime, they are beggars, assuming various religious forms, or affecting the most abject poverty. The women and children have the true whine of the professional mendicant, as they frequent thronged bazaars, receiving charity and stealing what they can. They sell mock baubles in some ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... doors, opened windows, torn down partitions, and given over the great trophied and pilastered dining-room to a decorative painter with a new theory of the human anatomy. Undine had silently assisted at this spectacle, and at the sight of the old Marquise's abject acquiescence; she had seen the Duchesse de Dordogne and the Princesse Estradina go past her door to visit Hubert's premier and marvel at the American bath-tubs and the Annamite bric-a-brac; and she had been present, with her husband, at the banquet at which ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... election placards, now the Salvation Army and now the unemployed came trailing in procession through the winter-grey streets, now the newspaper placards outside news-shops told of battles in strange places, now of amazing discoveries, now of sinister crimes, abject squalor and poverty, imperial splendour and luxury, Buckingham Palace, Rotten Row, Mayfair, the slums of Pimlico, garbage-littered streets of bawling costermongers, the inky silver of the barge-laden Thames—such was the background of our days. We went across St. Margaret's Close and through ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... but as they brought their women with them, the admiral concluded that no hostility was intended, and allowed them freely to mix with the whites. Their attitude and deportment showed that they looked upon them as gods, paying worship in the most abject manner. In order to show them that his men were but human, the admiral ordered them to eat and drink, that the people might observe that they were but men, as they. Even this failed to convince them and, during the whole time that ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... discover. His wife's views were hardly better. Her interference consisted only in the invariable repetition of a formula—"Come, now, be good lads, do!"— which certainly did not err on the side of severity. But the grandmother, if possible, made matters worse. She had brought up her own children in abject terror and unanswering submission; and Nature, as usual, revenged herself by causing her never to cross the wills of her grandchildren on any consideration. Accordingly, when Will set fire to the barn, let the pony into the bean-field, and the cows into ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... see aught to live for, but the outward sunshine of prosperity, which is an idle sunshine, compared with the ever-strengthening light that may grow in the spirit! How strong, how great, how beautiful may life be, when smiled upon by our Creator! how weak, how abject, how trampled upon, when ...
— Words of Cheer for the Tempted, the Toiling, and the Sorrowing • T. S. Arthur
... plume and nodding crest, They bore him to his dreamless rest, A cold and abject thing; Before the whisper of whose name Strong hearts had quailed in fear and shame, While nations knelt to fling The victor's laurel at his feet; Now gorgeous pall and winding-sheet, Were all that royalty could bring To mark the despot and the king: In solemn state they swept the glowing strand, ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... mistak'st my character. Look on me. Who am I? I know, thou say'st The Moor, a slave, an abject, beaten slave: (Eternal woes to him that made me so!) But look again. Has six years' cruel bondage Extinguish'd majesty so far, that nought Shines here to give an awe of one above thee? When the great Moorish king, Abdallah, fell, Fell by thy hand ...
— The Revenge - A Tragedy • Edward Young
... her into the room, carrying her impedimenta, wore the bored expression of the R.A. who is expected to admire the work of an outsider. He was the abject slave of his good-natured wife—she was good-natured, in spite of her love of scandal—and his only fault from her point of view, and his greatest one in the eyes of people in general, lay in an unfortunate habit of thinking aloud, a dangerous characteristic, which persons who are apt to find ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... to a few abject tears by these words and their pathetic tone. But, when Louisa opened her ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Central Government, the uncertainty in which the Colony is always kept as to what will happen to them next, which causes nearly all the mischief. We have treated the Cape Colony as we have treated Ireland, and with every prospect of bringing about the same results. First 'coercion,' then abject surrender, then coercion again—'a process,' as Mr. Froude justly remarks, 'which drives nations mad, as it drives children, yet is inevitable in every dependency belonging to us which is not entirely servile, so ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... most happy, had I only curb'd The impatience of my passionate desires: But envy gnaw'd my heart—I saw the youth Of mine own cousin Leopold endow'd With honour, and enrich'd with broad domains, The while myself, of equal age with him, In abject slavish nonage was ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... Platonic of liaisons. She is as high-strung as an Arabian steed,—proud, heroic, romantic, and French! and such must be permitted to take their own time and way, which we in our gaucherie can only humbly wonder at I have ever professed myself her abject slave, ready to follow any whim, and obeying the slightest signal of the jewelled hand. As that is her sacred pleasure, I have been inhabiting the most abstract realms of heroic sentiment, living ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... She knows well enough that Colonel Thorp is there, and she would shamelessly exult over his abject devotion. She respects neither innocent youth nor gray hairs, as ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... sea a whole week by contrary winds and bad weather, one half of the passengers must have slept upon the boards, howsoever their health might have suffered from this want of accommodation. Notwithstanding this check, he was so very abject and importunate, that we gave him a crown ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... acted wilfully, deliberately, and with her object clearly conceived before she began, she could not have achieved any greater success; for Malster was her abject slave. Jealous of every look or word she vouchsafed to another, hating even the kitten that her rosy well-made fingers clasped, literally ill away from her presence, and thrilled almost painfully by the sound of her voice when she returned, the whole of Brineweald had become for him but ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... Raised and supported by a superhuman daring, that invested the nauseous horrors of incessant bloodshed with a rude and appalling magnificence, the mistress of nations was now fated to sink by the most ignoble of defeats, under the most abject of tremblers. For this had the rough old kingdom shaken off its enemies by swarms from its vigorous arms! For this had the doubtful virtues of the Republic, and the perilous magnificence of the ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... the great Constable the idol of the Free Companies. But he had a taste for simples and much skill in them; and when Madame had once seen Badelon on his knees in the grass searching for plants, she lost her fear of him. Bigot, with his low brow and matted hair, was the abject slave of Suzanne, Madame St. Lo's woman, who twitted him mercilessly on his Norman patois, and poured the vials of her scorn on him a dozen times a day. In all, with La Tribe and the Carlats, Madame St. Lo's servants, and the Countess's following, they numbered not far short ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... said the personage, bowing respectfully. The bow was a triumph in itself; not too low, not abject in the least, not familiar; a bow which implied much, but promised nothing; a bow which seemed to demand references, but was far from repellant or ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... ludicrously armed with weapons of every description, and were proceeding hastily towards the Tuilleries, vociferating all kinds of gross abuse. It was a collection of all that was most vile and abject in the purlieus of Paris. "Let us follow the mob," said Bonaparte. We got the start of them, and took up our station on the terrace of the banks of the river. It was there that he witnessed the scandalous scenes which took place; and it would be ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the next issue of this rag?" he asked. "If so, you will find that the result of this case was a complete vindication. I was triumphantly acquitted. A month later you will find an abject apology from 'The Investigator.' This was a trumped-up affair, the work of my enemies. To-morrow I shall publish the ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... right of suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which attend this abject condition of total disfranchisement, and how anxiously and earnestly women desire to be taken out of the list of idiots, criminals and imbeciles, where they do not belong, and placed in the respectable company of men who choose their lawmakers, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... admitted that his brother's ranch was their next stopping-place, and Leander went through perfect contortions of apology and self-effacement before he could bring himself to ask them to do him a favor. It would have taken a very stern order of womankind to refuse anything so abject, and they blindly ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... to the judge advocate at an early stage in the proceedings, had laid proof after proof before the court, and left the case of the defense at the last without a leg to stand on. And then Nevins dropped the debonair and donned the abject, for the one friend or adviser left to him in the crowded camp, an officer who said he always took the side of the under dog in a fight, had told him that in its present temper that court, with old Turnbull as one of its leaders, would surely sentence him to a term of years at Alcatraz as well ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
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