"Abject" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 his head high. The more the fellows cringed to him, the tighter he wrenched ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... 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
... don't cry till 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 he became, poor thing.' ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... 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
... The abject condition of the female sex, in all, out of Christian countries, is universally known and admitted. In all savage and pagan tribes, the severest burdens of physical toil are laid upon their shoulders; they are chiefly valued for the same reason that men value their most useful animals, ...
— The Ladies' Vase - Polite Manual for Young Ladies • An American Lady
... 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
... 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, envenomed by fanaticism, and which, far from associating ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... 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
... 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 reach ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... 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 |
