"Ignoble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... life; that I ought to keep alive that glowing affection, a spark of which I may sometimes communicate to others; to study children, the people, and the poor, and to write for their benefit; to let no ignoble word fall from my pen, to sacrifice all my inclinations to the common welfare, never to lose heart, never to strive for approval, to hope for nothing and long for nothing but the day on which I may at last say to myself: I have done what I could, my life has not ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Italian • Various
... and to me in other things, will be true in this I know. This feeling is stronger than all else—so strong that I have feared and failed to comprehend it. I had not even thought of it until it came upon me with fearful force, and I am conscious that it has not reached its height yet. It is not an ignoble pas' sion, I know. How could a passion for such a creature be ignoble? And yet again, there have been times when I have felt that perhaps it was best to struggle against it. I am beset on every side, as I have said, and I appeal to you. Ought love to ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... music which forbids unreality, rebukes frivolity into silence, subdues ignoble passions, soothes the heart's sorrow, and summons to the soul high and holy thoughts. It was difficult to begin the conversation; the trivial themes of the earlier part of the evening seemed foreign to the mood that had ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations and distant ages gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to ...
— A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) • John Courtenay
... embalms the spirit of sour misanthropy; but woe betide the ignoble prose-writer who should thus dare to compare notes with the world, or ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... it. But the nineteenth-century artist finds it not in Prince, or Pope, or Patron, but in high indifference of temper, in the pleasure of the creation of beautiful things, and the long contemplation of them, in disdain of what in life is common and ignoble and in such felicitous sense of humour as enables one to see how vain and foolish is all popular opinion, and popular judgment, upon the wonderful things of art. These qualities Mr. John Gray possesses in a marked degree. He needs no other protection, nor, indeed, would he ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... economical fashion adopted by certain theatres—called lyric—of causing the cymbals and the long drum to be played by the same performer. The sound of the cymbals when attached to the drum—as they must be to render this economy feasible—is an ignoble noise, fit only for bands at tea-gardens. This custom, moreover, leads mediocre composers into the habit of never employing one of these instruments without the other, and considering their use as solely confined to forcibly marking the accented parts of the bar. This is an ...
— The Orchestral Conductor - Theory of His Art • Hector Berlioz
... but a living skeleton, covered over with a wrinkled, yellow skin. Since the melting away of his gold, it had been very generally conceded that there was no such striking resemblance, after all, betwixt the ignoble features of the ruined merchant and that majestic face upon the mountain-side. So the people ceased to honour him during his lifetime, and quietly consigned him to forgetfulness after his decease. Once in a while, it is true, his memory was brought ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... means," the Prince rejoined warmly. "I am not favourably inclined towards this network of espionage. The school of diplomacy in which I have been brought up tries to work without such ignoble means." ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... avarice of betting destroys the best part of us. As I have said, it kills the soul. Who, indeed, can call that which is left in the confirmed gambler, a soul! It is rather, as one well describes it, "a shrunken, useless organ, a noble capacity sentenced to death by an ignoble passion, which droops as a withered hand by the side, and cumbers ...
— Men in the Making • Ambrose Shepherd
... much its violence as its Machiavellian cunning. The art popularly known to-day as camouflage—of dressing-up one design under the guise of something quite different, of making black appear white by glorifying the most ignoble actions, of making white appear black by holding up all honourable traditions to contempt and ridicule, in a word perversion—has been reduced to a system by the secret directors of world revolution. It is here that we can detect the non-proletarian character of the movement. The working-man of ...
— Secret Societies And Subversive Movements • Nesta H. Webster
... wide-ranging raptor only attacks comparatively large birds, and, after fastidiously picking a meal from the flesh of the head and neck, abandons the untouched body to the polybori and other hawks of the more ignoble sort. ...
— The Naturalist in La Plata • W. H. Hudson
... when only ten years of age used to collect an audience in his father's shop, by his talent for improvisation. He thus attracted the notice of Gravina, a celebrated patron of letters, who adopted him as his son, changed his somewhat ignoble name of Trepassi to Metastasio, and had him educated in every branch necessary for a literary career. He still continued to improvise verses on any given subject for the amusement of company. His youth, his harmonious voice, and prepossessing ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... which the nineteenth century has no worthy use. It finds ignoble occupation as a gaping-ground for the vacuous tourist,—somewhat as Heine might have imagined Pan carrying the gentleman's luggage from the coach to the hotel. It suffers teetotal picnic-parties to encamp amid its savage hollows, and it humbly allows itself to be painted ...
— The Quest of the Golden Girl • Richard le Gallienne
... that day, stretches now a trilateral patch of pasture-land, which faces a small house. At that time this space was rough forest-ground, and where now, in the hedge, rise two small trees, types of the diminutive offspring of our niggard and ignoble civilization, rose then two huge oaks, coeval with the warriors of the Norman Conquest. They grew close together; yet, though their roots interlaced, though their branches mingled, one had not taken nourishment ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the open air can give, and promote the health which shows itself in the complexion. It is the young lady who interprets literally the Scotch invitation "come into the fire," and who spoils the backs of library novels by holding them too near the comfortable hearth, she it is who suffers from the ignoble and unbecoming liberties that winter takes with the human countenance. Happier and wiser is she who studies the always living and popular Dutch roll rather than the Grecian bend, and who blooms with continual health and good temper. Our changeful climate affords so few opportunities of ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and the sight of the head of the vicar's coachman above the coping of the schoolyard wall. Then the gates opened and the vicar and his wife and Miss Merewether, her daughter, and Maisie Shepherd appeared and were immediately ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... began, "please don't consider it is at all ignoble to be financially embarrassed. In fact, more than half of our girls are continually 'rationed,' as they call a cut in allowance. And if it is only a matter of a ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... a few favorites of his immediate family and a small body of troops, and commenced his journey—a journey which was considered by all the people as a base and ignoble flight. He involved himself in endless troubles by this step. A revolt broke out on the way among the guards who accompanied him. One of the generals who headed the revolt sent a messenger to Genghis Khan informing him of the emperor's ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... brain is wandering; what can lead you to suspect such treachery? And, since you arouse my suspicions, since you hold a light over those ignoble labyrinths of the human heart which I refused to contemplate, I will speak to you with the same freedom. Was I not in this man's power? Is not this house his? Are not the people by whom I am surrounded devoted to his orders? Gaston, if you love me, you will ask my pardon for what you have ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... redolent of the elements that went into his careful grooming. She even tried in vain to read his novels; but they proved too much for her. She explained to him that his local colour was so brilliant that it dazzled her; but the ignoble truth was that she found it boring, although her letters going out of town were splashed thickly with ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... home, and had been brought up to look upon fox-hunting as their future vocation. Lolling on their saddles, probably voting it all a bore, were two or three tufts, and their "tail;" and stuck into all sorts of vehicles, lawful and unlawful, buggies, drags, and tandems, were that ignoble herd, who, like myself, had come to the steeple-chase, just because it was the most convenient idleness at hand, and because other men were going. There were all sorts of people there besides, of course: carriages of all grades of pretension, containing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... however, that the cause of the Allies should prevail not for their own sakes alone, but for the sake of the world, that it is difficult to imagine their consenting to an ignoble pacification. The Allies have signed an important document, in order to prove their solidarity, that no one of them will sign peace without the sanction of the other partners. Let us suppose that the rival armies have fought each other to a standstill; let us suppose that France ...
— Armageddon—And After • W. L. Courtney
... long services, and despising his person, refused to admit him to her presence; and for the love of this lady who had so unkindly treated him, the noble Orsino, forsaking the sports of the held and all manly exercises in which he used to delight, passed his hours in ignoble sloth, listening to the effeminate sounds of soft music, gentle airs, and passionate love-songs; and neglecting the company of the wise and learned lords with whom he used to associate, he was now all day long conversing with young Cesario. Unmeet companion ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... short as if the only thing to do were to accept the law of one's talent and thinking that if certain consequences didn't follow it was only because one wasn't logical enough. My disaster has served me right—I mean for using that ignoble word at all. It's a mere distributor's, a mere hawker's word. What is 'success' anyhow? When a book's right, it's right—shame to it surely if it isn't. When it sells it sells—it brings money like potatoes or beer. If there's dishonour one way and ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... war stirred two passions in the heart of Fernando Stevens, revenge and patriotism. One was a noble and the other a very human but ignoble passion; but Fernando was only a common mortal with mortal weaknesses. When he reflected on the wrongs he had suffered; when he remembered the death of poor Boseley, slain to gratify the malice of Captain Snipes, and poor Sukey still the slave of the British monarch, ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... this deliberation. It is this: you ought never to conclude that a man must necessarily be innoxious because he is in other respects insignificant. You will see that a man bred in obscure, vulgar, and ignoble occupations, and trained in sordid, base, and mercenary habits, is not incapable of doing extensive mischief, because he is little, and because his vices are of a mean nature. My Lords, we have shown to you already, and ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... promiscuously in narrow prisons, while each of the hand's fingers claims its separate apartment, leading from the antechamber, in the dainty glove. As a natural consequence of all this, their faculties are cramped, they grow into ignoble shapes, they become callous by long abuse, and all their natural gifts are crushed and trodden ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Despite his poetry and merit, Stops in his quick retreat awhile, And tries the long-forgotten smile; E'en the pursuing Bum forgets His business, and the man of Debts; The one neglecting "Caption"—"Bail"— The other "thoughts of gyves and Jail"— So wondrous are the spells that bind The noble and ignoble mind. The Paviour halts in mid-grunt—stands With rammer in his idle hands; And quite refined, and at his ease, Forgetting onions, bread, and cheese, The hungry Drayman leaves his lunch, To take a peep ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... chancellor of the exchequer, who, contrary to all precedent, had not been taken into counsel, strongly protested against the nomination, as soon as he was informed of it. Out of this dispute arose the ignoble fall of the Goderich administration, though it was preceded by more serious dissensions on foreign policy. The king, whose activity revived with the increasing weakness of his ministers, committed himself, without asking their opinion, to a hearty approval of Codrington's action ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... dirty den—the Hotel Boncoeur—that the whole cursed life had commenced. Gervaise remained looking at the window of the first floor, from which hung a broken shutter, and recalled to mind her youth with Lantier, their first rows and the ignoble way in which he had abandoned her. Never mind, she was young then, and it all seemed gay to her, seen from a distance. Only twenty years. Mon Dieu! and yet she had fallen to street-walking. Then the sight of the lodging house ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... by the hand, and he now raised it to his lips and kissed it. "The offer from you," he said, "is as high-minded, as generous, and as honourable as its acceptance by me would be mean-spirited, vile, and ignoble. But whether I fail or whether I succeed, you shall see me before the winter ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... any right to call it an ignoble judgment, if he determine to put them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few Christians so convinced of the splendour ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... rudely but patiently resident races, possessing fields and orchards, quiet herds, homes of a sort, moralities and memories not ignoble, dwelt, or rather drifted, and shook, a shattered chain of gloomier tribes, piratical mainly, and predatory, nomad essentially; homeless, of necessity, finding no stay nor comfort in earth, or bitter sky: desperately wandering along ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... large-based, full-nurtured Pharisee, bland, urbane, impressive, diffusing about him a "sultry" warmth of benevolence, as the author calls it again and again, and basking in the noontide of prosperity and the consideration of society; but in reality hard, gross, and ignoble. Judge Pyncheon is an elaborate piece of description, made up of a hundred admirable touches, in which satire is always winged with fancy, and fancy is linked with a deep sense of reality. It is difficult to say whether Hawthorne followed a model in describing Judge ...
— Hawthorne - (English Men of Letters Series) • Henry James, Junr.
... honour? oh, Henrico, Where have you left your goodnesse? sure you cannot Be so ignoble, if you thinke me worthy To be your wife at least, to turne Eleonora Into ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... faltered. He got the prize for which he faltered; but lo! the grand prize of his ambition to-day slips from his grasp because of his faltering in his former contest, and his success in the canvass for the Senate, purchased for an ignoble price, has cost him the loss of the Presidency ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... Heathcliff, the outcast, nameless, adventurer? Antonio and his Duchess; but they have belonged to each other and been happy; these two are eternally separate. Their passion is only heightened by its absolute freedom from desire; even the wicked and desperate Heathcliff has no ignoble love for Catharine; all he asks is that she live, and that he may see her; that she may be happy even if it be with Linton. "I would never have banished him from her society, while she desired his," asserts Heathcliff, and now she is mad with grief and dying. The consciousness ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... pilfering, fraud, theft, occasionally arson or manslaughter. One man, however, was arraigned for murder with highway robbery, and a woman for the most ignoble traffic, which evil feminine ingenuity ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... the side of the path stands a tiny roadside oratory. On the walls of this little shrine, which (or its predecessor) has stood here for three hundred years, one might formerly read in stilted French the following astonishing inscription, ignoble witness to human platitude, as ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... seat nearer him to look at the expression of his face. She did not believe him and wanted now to understand his secret meaning. She never did believe any one, and however generous were their intentions, she always suspected some petty or ignoble motive or selfish object in them. And when she looked searchingly into his face, it seemed to him that there was a gleam of green light in her eyes ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... be Bhimasena, could address me with such unbecoming words as thou dost? Therefore, I shall tell thee, O delighter of the Vrishnis, about my own prowess and unrivalled might. Although to speak of one's own prowess is always an ignoble act, yet, pierced as I am by thy unfriendly strictures, I will speak of my own might. Behold, O Krishna, these—the firmament and the earth—which are immovable, immense, and infinite, and which are the refuge ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... masks, which appears astonishing to us, was not only justifiable, but absolutely essential; far from considering them as a makeshift, the Greeks would certainly, and with justice too, have looked upon it as a makeshift to be obliged to allow a player with vulgar, ignoble, or strongly marked features, to represent an Apollo or a Hercules; nay, rather they would have deemed it downright profanation. How little is it in the power of the most finished actor to change the character of his ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... than with your knowledge. How this comes to pass is foreign to my present purpose to say; but it certainly lies in a most afflicted state. For the ungodly have gone to such lengths, that the truth of Christ, if not vanquished, dissipated, and entirely destroyed, is buried, as it were, in ignoble obscurity, while the poor, despised church is either destroyed by cruel massacres, or driven away into banishment, or menaced and terrified into total silence. And still they continue their wonted madness and ferocity, pushing ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... lawyer looked straight before him, while the girl, swept on by her ignoble rage, displayed still more of the moral ulceration which had been injected into her ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the old unshared intimacy too great to be borne without tears, she rose, walked to the farther end of the room, held the curtains apart, and stood there mastered for a moment. The grief itself was not ignoble; the sting of it lay in the fact that she had been led to this act of treachery against herself. Trapped, cheated, robbed, first by Ralph and then by Katharine, she seemed all dissolved in humiliation, and bereft of anything she could call ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... the photographs were restored to the portfolio and the red leather tongue drawn through, with a little breath heavy with pleasure, and Faith carried off the whole to be put where profane hands should not get hold of it. Then the comparatively ignoble business of dressing occupied her. And Mrs. Derrick yet more, who of course was there to help and look on; while Faith's head was erratically in her portfolio, or at Rome, or at Florence, or—elsewhere,—as the ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble call— ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... scantily attired woman with a dirty yashmak covering her face. The chamber which should have been very sacred if only because there the last of the Byzantine Emperors composedly resigned himself to the inevitable, had become a filthy den devoted to one of the most ignoble of uses. The shame is, of course, to the Greeks of Constantinople.] watching the movements of the Turks. The subtle prophet which sometimes mercifully goes before death had discharged its office with him. He had dismissed ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... to illustrate Hatto's cruelty and treachery. Facing the Mouse Tower, on the opposite bank of the Rhine, stands the castle of Ehrenfels, the scene of another of his ignoble deeds. ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... broadside of Cape Cod to land upon, why was I washed ashore just at this particular spot? Answer:—Because at this spot, at this time, Eastboro Twin-Lights needed an assistant keeper. I like the spot. It is beautiful. 'Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife.' With your permission, I'll stay here. The leopard may or may not change his spots, but I sha'n't. I like this one and here I stay. Yes, I mean it. I stay—as your assistant. Come, what do you say? ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... homes, had died long years ago with the passing of the mother who had borne him in her heart. It might be that he needed such a vision to redeem his spirit from the harshness which sin and pride in high places, and want and crime and poverty of spirit among ignoble ones, had made him grow to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... never likely to know," and there the matter dropped. It is humiliating to think, that amongst white men banded together in exploring parties, where the success and safety of the enterprise are much dependent on the good conduct of each individual member, there should be found individuals so ignoble, as to appropriate an undue share of the common stock of food on which the health, and perhaps the life of each equally depends; and yet, sad to say, such instances are not singular. The well-proved charge against ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... others had been verbal. Despite her hatred for Marjorie Dean and her friends, Mignon had resolved to profit by the sudden show of friendliness which, true to their compact, the five girls had lost no time in carrying out. Ignoble of soul, she did not value the favor of these girls as a concession which she had been fortunate enough to receive. She decided to use it only as a wedge to reinstate herself in a certain leadership which her bad behavior of last year had lost her. ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... discovered the intrigue. He went immediately into Alexander's apartment, highly excited with resentment and anger. He had never intended to make Aridaeus, whose birth on the mother's side was obscure and ignoble, the heir to his throne, and he reproached Alexander in the bitterest terms for being of so debased and degenerate a spirit as to desire to marry the daughter of a Persian governor; a man who was, in fact, the mere slave, as he said, ...
— Cleopatra • Jacob Abbott
... authorities, he ordered them to death as relapsed heretics. On the island in the Seine, where now stands the statue of Henry IV, between the King's garden on one side and the convent of the Augustinian monks on the other, the two pyres were raised—two out of the four had shrunk back into their ignoble confessions. It was the hour of vespers when these two aged and noble men were led out to be burned; they were tied each to the stake. The flames kindled dully and heavily; the wood, hastily piled up, was green or wet; or in cruel mercy the tardiness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... busy street, hardly a shop window, not a bookstore, not an ignoble news-stand, but had displayed his wife's picture. It was Mrs. Carey, Mrs. Oswald Carey, Mrs. Carey and the ex-King, everywhere. One infamous pictorial publication had a bare-necked portrait of ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.
... Guidobaldo makes formal surrender to him, takes leave of his faithful friends, enjoins fidelity to Valentinois and trust in God, and so on December 19 he departs into exile, the one pathetic noble figure amid so many ignoble ones. Paolo, taking possession of the duchy, assumes the title ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... "I will show you our farms, our vines and orchards. Your participants will enjoy these; they have no interest in the dolor of an ignoble sjambak." ...
— Sjambak • John Holbrook Vance
... of this man as his insignificance permits, I should call him a "gabby" fellow—loud of resolution, ignoble of effort. Over his lager no man would be braver. His face is familiar to me from a review of those detective cabinets usually called "Rogues' Galleries." As a "sneak thief" or "bagman," I should convict him by his face; the same indictment would ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... only ones condemned to death. The innocent men were released at once, but Laurent and his companion were put in prison to await the guillotine. But, pooh! Master Laurent had too pretty a head to fall under the executioner's ignoble knife. The judges who condemned him, the curious who expected to witness him executed, had forgotten what Montaigne calls the corporeal recommendation of beauty. There was a woman belonging to the jailer of Yssen-geaux, his ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... discredit a mechanical philosophy. Seldom can penetration and courage in thinking hold their own against the miscellaneous habits of discourse; and nobody remembers that moral values must remain captious, and imaginative life ignoble and dark, so long as the whole basis and application of them is falsely conceived. Discoveries in science are made only by near-sighted specialists, while the influence of public sentiment and policy still works systematically ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... was himself, and such a man is next door to a devil, for, I suppose, the definition of devil is 'self-engrossed still,' and whosoever lives for himself is dead. Don't let the earth be the centre of your system, but the sun. Do not live to yourselves, or your pleasures will all be ignoble and creeping, but live to God. 'Remember.' Well, then, you and I know a good deal more about God than the writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes did—both about what He is and how to remember Him. I am not going to content myself by taking his point ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it is certain that this crude beginning of Christian music arose from a vital necessity, and was accompanied by an indomitable faith. If we look back, we note that until now music had either been the servant of ignoble masters, looked upon as a mathematical problem to be solved scientifically, or used according to methods prescribed by the state. It had been dragged down to the lowest depths of sensuality by the dance, and its divine origin forgotten in lilting ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... systematic groups and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of Nature: a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay we complained above, that a certain ignoble complexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also discernible. Often, also, we have to exclaim: Would to Heaven those same Biographical Documents were come! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much in the Author's individuality; as if it were not Argument that had taught him, but Experience. ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... desire for ourselves. The standard of aspiration and effort cannot be lowered to meet weakness. This is nobility of life—to aim at the unattainable, and to be ever approximating towards our aim. It is more blessed to be smitten with the longing to win the unwon than to stagnate in ignoble contentment with partial attainments. Better to climb, with faces turned upwards to the inaccessible peak, than to lie at ease in the fat valleys! It is the salt of life to have our aims set fixedly towards ideal perfection, and to say, 'I count not myself ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... Caracas was nevertheless eagerly explored. A governor, newly arrived on that coast, could recommend himself to the Spanish court only by boasting of the mines of his province; and in order to take from cupidity what was most ignoble and repulsive, the thirst of gold was justified by the purpose to which it was pretended the riches acquired by fraud and violence might be employed. "Gold," says Christopher Columbus, in his last letter* (Lettera rarissima data nelle Indie nella isola di Jamaica a 7 Julio ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... criticized by audiences that have not the mental capacity to appreciate his work. The virtuosos look to the students of the world to do their share in the education of the great musical public. Do not waste your time with music that is trite or ignoble. Life is too short to spend it wandering in the barren Saharas of ...
— Great Pianists on Piano Playing • James Francis Cooke
... of the revelers; on the gay carpet and the rich damask are pools of spilled liquors, heaps of shivered glass, and bouquets and garlands that have ceased to be fragrant hours ago. All around, in different attitudes—ignoble and helpless—are strewn the bodies of those who have gone down early in the battle of the Bacchanals: they lie in their ranks as they fell. One figure towers above the rest—pre-eminent as Satan in the conclave of the ruined ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... ground. The balls passed too high or too low, but they impressed the fact on enthusiasts, who had longed for battle, that one might die for one's country and not die gloriously. It seemed such an ignoble, such a dastardly, outrageous thing, that death could come to them from unseen hands, for as yet they had not seen a soul. But now they are at the foot of the hill—though it is not correct to so call it, for it was a long, winding valley, ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... too frequently occur to be worth estimating. And it will be seen, upon examination, that not merely the verbiage, but the sentiment, is thus egotistic throughout, exhibiting a degree of arrogance and self-importance, only to be met with in a Clerical Locofoco, used by bad men for ignoble purposes. To carry out the idea of your vanity, you say in the winding ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... sight. "Ha! start ye back? Fool! coward! knave! Think ye my noble father's glaive Would drink the life-blood of a slave? The pearls that on the handle flame Would blush to rubies in their shame; The blade would quiver in thy breast Ashamed of such ignoble rest. No! thus I rend the tyrant's chain, And fling ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... European monarchies, which were founded upon the ruins of the Roman empire, the sovereigns and the great lords came universally to consider the administration of justice as an office both too laborious and too ignoble for them to execute in their own persons. They universally, therefore, discharged themselves of it, by appointing a deputy, bailiff ...
— An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations • Adam Smith
... dust They preach, 'In greatness is no trust.' Here is an acre sown indeed With the richest, royall'st seed That the earth did e'er suck in, Since the first man died for sin. Here the bones of birth have cried, 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state, Buried in dust, once ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... cousin; a good plain girl, but not a person to delight a sculptor's eye. Roderick has a goodly share of the old Southern arrogance; he has the aristocratic temperament. He will have nothing to do with the small towns-people; he says they 're 'ignoble.' He cannot endure his mother's friends—the old ladies and the ministers and the tea-party people; they bore him to death. So he comes and lounges here and rails ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... me. He has a remarkable face—the kind of face that suggests depth and force. I am sure he is very proud. He could bear any extreme of poverty rather than condescend to ignoble ...
— Will Warburton • George Gissing
... Pepys. It was but a pair of creaking Sunday boots on the feet of a pagan. Mr. Pepys was an appreciator of life to a degree that not many Englishmen have been since Chaucer. He was a walking appetite. And not an entirely ignoble appetite either. He reminds one in some respects of the poet in Browning's "How it strikes a Contemporary," save that he had more worldly success. One fancies him with the same inquisitive ferrule on the end of his stick, ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... Fannie!" He strained up a superior smile. "Is passion—are passions bound to be ignoble? But you're making ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... anxiety in his countenance to permit full expression of the natural dignity of the features. It was a fine face and might have been distinctly noble, but circumstances had marred the purpose of Nature; you perceived that his cares had too often been of the kind which are created by ignoble necessities, such as leave to most men of his standing a bare humanity of visage. He had long thin white hair; his beard was short and merely grizzled. In his left hand he carried a ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... would have made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever denomination, I make bold ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... Fortune, as Pampinea has shewn us, does sometimes bide treasures most rich of native worth in the obscurity of base occupations, so in like manner 'tis not seldom found that Nature has enshrined prodigies of wit in the most ignoble of human forms. Whereof a notable example is afforded by two of our citizens, of whom I purpose for a brief while to discourse. The one, Messer Forese da Rabatta by name, was short and deformed of person and withal flat-cheeked and flat-nosed, insomuch that never a Baroncio(1) had ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... rights of humanity. The captain was said to have expressed a sense of pride in what he termed the smart capture of his erring apprentice, and some talk was heard of the contemplated exploits of drilling after sailing again. Poor man! He was never to have the opportunity of gratifying an ignoble desire, for the night after the vessel's arrival the youthful incorrigible disembarked with a vow that he would never return to her again; and he kept his word. Could those fields and lanes in Scotland speak out the thoughts and the sufferings of the days that were spent ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... virtue and honour, have been pardoned. But of all the forms of pride, even the pride of upstart wealth not excepted, the most offensive is the pride of ancestry when found in company with sordid and ignoble vices, greediness, mendacity, knavery and impudence; and such was the pride of Seymour. Many, even of those who were well pleased to see the ministers galled by his keen and skilful rhetoric, remembered that ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... and was ordained lector; but was overcome by his violent passion for eloquence to teach rhetoric. St. Gregory Nazianzen wrote to him in the strongest terms, exhorting him to renounce that paltry or ignoble glory, as he elegantly calls it.[1] This letter produced its desired effect. St. Gregory returned to the sacred ministry in the lower functions of the altar: after some time he was called by his brother Basil to assist him in his pastoral ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... with God, of whom—to him at least—it is a symbol. They do, however, take careful count of some unhappy moments, in which, wearied out by the emptiness of life, he has raised—with remorse I am sure—the cup of ignoble pleasures to his lips, believing he might find forgetfulness there. How many times have not his accusers drained this cup, without redeeming the sin by a single virtue; without—I will not say bearing—but without having even the capacity of appreciating ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... Sampson had brought from Meg herself. So that on one particular night all the forces of order, as well as those of disorder, were directing themselves toward the custom-house of Portanferry, where in a close and ignoble apartment Harry Bertram and his worthy friend, Dandie Dinmont, were sleeping. It was Bertram who wakened first. There was a strong smell of burning in the room. From the window he could see a crowded boat-load of men landing at the little harbour, and ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... himself. "Not till you are in safety," he said, and was dully aware of some discomfort. The dying woman, the sheer ugliness of death, the sordid emotions about her numbed the life in him. He felt himself in a world inhuman. Yet, even afterwards, he seems not to have discovered anything ignoble in his admired Pretender. The blame was fate's that mocked coldly at the ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... loafer), perhaps analogous to the even less complimentary modern French word "foutre" (blackguard). Mr. Jesse, however, derives the word "fetter" from the Norman "defaytor" (defaulter), as if the lane had once been a sanctuary for skulking debtors. In either case the derivation is somewhat ignoble, but the inhabitants have long since lived it down. Stow says it was once a mere byway leading to gardens (quantum mutatus!) If men of the Bobadil and Pistol character ever did look over the garden-gates ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... any sort of posing, apparently, or a wish to affect me with a sense of his greatness. I saw that he was as much abashed by our encounter as I was; he was visibly shy to the point of discomfort, but in no ignoble sense was he conscious, and as nearly as he could with one so much his younger he made an absolute equality between us. My memory of him is without alloy one of the finest pleasures of my life: In my heart ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her gray eyes full of fire, her face glowing like a rose. Perhaps she was of the enemy's country. Perhaps those she loved, those who made up her life, had set her feet in this path that she was treading. If she was a spy,—Lord! How the mere word hurt one!—it wasn't for ignoble motives; it ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... chose (Cardinal Beaufort and Ugolino) showed inherent apathy: had he felt deeply, he would not have sought for this strongest possible excitement of feeling,—would not willingly have dwelt on the worst conditions of despair—the despair of the ignoble. His religious subjects are conceived even with less care than these. Beautiful as it is, this Holy Family by which we stand has neither dignity nor sacredness, other than those which attach to every group of gentle mother and ruddy babe; while his Faiths, Charities, ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... of a prince, whose comeliness her spiritless father hath made over to base and contemptible embraces! Unhappy child of thy mother, with thy happiness marred by consorting with this bed! thy purity is handled by the impurity of a peasant, thy nobility is bowed down by ignoble commonness, thy high birth is impaired by the estate of thy husband! But thou, if any pith be in thee, if valour reign in thy soul at all, if thou deem thyself fit husband for a king's daughter, wrest the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... Scientist, can here pursue their studies, and breathe forth inspired thoughts which the res angusta domi have so long stifled. In society congenial to their tastes, far from "the madding crowd's ignoble strife," they may succeed in accomplishing their life's work, and their happiness would be the happiness of ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... eye. It is so with all forests and moorlands. The spirit of Robin Hood and Johnny of Breadislee is theirs. They are remnants of the home of man's fierce youth, still consecrated to the genius of animal excitement and savage freedom; after all, not the most ignoble qualities of human nature. Besides, there is no better method of giving a living picture of a whole country than by taking some one feature of it as a guide, and bringing all other observations into harmony with that original key. ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... God's high glory! Pure gems around His burning throne! Mute watchers o'er man's strange, sad story Of crime and woe through ages gone! 'Twas yours, the wild and hallowing spell, That lured me from ignoble glens— Taught me where sweeter fountains Than ever ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... of you to cheer and charm me by coming here!" he said, in his most mournful and most musical tones. "I have dressed, expressly to receive you, in the prettiest clothes I have. Don't be surprised. Except in this ignoble and material nineteenth century, men have always worn precious stuffs and beautiful colors as well as women. A hundred years ago a gentleman in pink silk was a gentleman properly dressed. Fifteen hundred years ago the patricians of the classic times wore bracelets ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... thoughts away from him. He must not think of such things—it was selfish and ignoble. He must think of the good that he would be able to do with all the money. He might help the poor at last. He and Miss Gladys would devote their lives to this. Perhaps some day he might even own the mill where the children worked, ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... or plenipotentiaries of Madam League they had laid the crown at the feet of the King of Spain, hoping by still further drafts on his exchequer and his credulity to prolong indefinitely their own ignoble reign. The extreme democratic party, which had hitherto supported the House of Lorraine and had seemed to idolize that family in the person of the great Balafre, now believed themselves possessed of sufficient power to control the Duke of Mayenne and all his adherents. They sent ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... "I will larn it yet," he repeated over and over. And even while the words were in his mouth, if he had had less obstinacy in his make-up, he would have yielded himself to despair. But a good thing happened to him. Miss Slocum, not knowing his ignoble motive, and seeing a very earnest child striving to improve himself, set about helping him in ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... they had viewed all those fair, exotic scenes through the blurred auras of their emotional infirmities, he and his wife returned to their home in New York. There they were protected against all contact with ugliness, all ignoble influences, all sources of unhappiness ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... their country: does it follow that the Constitution ought, for that reason alone, to be rejected? If, according to the noble precept, it be lawful to accept good advice even from an enemy, shall we set the ignoble example of refusing such advice even when it is offered by our friends? The prudent inquiry, in all cases, ought surely to be, not so much FROM WHOM the advice comes, as whether the ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the workhouse. As she thought of this she trembled with true maternal instincts. Her beautiful boy,—so glorious with his outward gifts, so fit, as she thought him, for all the graces of the grand world! Though the ambition was vilely ignoble, the mother's love ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... were slain by me; they all perished by my hand. The task of vindication is ignoble. What is it that I am called to ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Theodoric (son of Triarius), whom we met with seventeen years ago, and whose receipt of stipendia from the court of Constantinople, at the very time when their own were withheld, raised the wrath of Walamir and Theudemir. This Theodoric, it will be remembered, was of unkingly, perhaps of quite ignoble, birth, had risen to greatness by clinging to the skirts of Aspar, and had, so far as the Emperor's favour was concerned, fallen with his fall. Shortly before the death of Leo he had appeared in arms against the Empire, taking one city and besieging another, and had forced the Emperor ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... secret spleen there must have been—a twist of a painter's wrist may expose his soul. He became a solitary and ate the bitter root of sin, for, cerebral as he is, his discovery of the human soul shows it as ill at ease before its maker. Flaubert has said that "the ignoble is the sublime of the lower slope." But no man may sun himself on this slope by the flames of hell without his soul shrivelling away. Rodin, who admires Rops and has been greatly influenced by him; Rodin, as an artist superior ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the Schlegel household continued to lead its life of cultured but not ignoble ease, still swimming gracefully on the grey tides of London. Concerts and plays swept past them, money had been spent and renewed, reputations won and lost, and the city herself, emblematic of their lives, rose and fell ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... sake she had conquered her dread of the lion in the pageant. Indeed she had found other lions in her path that she feared more—the glitter and gauds of her tinsel world, the enervating love of ease, the influence of sordid surroundings and ignoble ideals. But not one could withstand the simple goodness of the unsophisticated girl. They retreated before the power of her fireside traditions of right thinking and true living which she had learned ...
— Una Of The Hill Country - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... never be the same again, can say with all earnestness: "It is the memory that the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun—that is all which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or the ignoble." ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... denied, may receive even fuller inspiration from the sea and skies and heights of his native land! This was in 1859. There was then no token or presage of that other July day, when, under the very shadow of these mountains, an army thrilled with heroic impulse; when men, whose whole lives had been ignoble, redeemed them by the most sublime daring; and those whose lives held every promise yielded them with the most patriotic devotion; and through long sultry hours, men cheerfully endured the tortures ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... imagining a dozen emergencies of their unprotected state, with which the elder girl could scarcely grapple. There was little to fear from depredatory man or beast—desperadoes of the mountain trail never stooped to ignoble burglary, bear or panther seldom approached a cabin—but there was the chance of sudden illness, fire, the accidents that beset childhood, to say nothing of the narrowing moral and mental effect of their ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... well-behaved, reasonable, and manageable, was for the majority a flash only; and the dreamed-of social ideal, touched for a moment was to recede again into the far distance. It was Madame Sand's error, and no ignoble one, to entertain the belief that a nation could safely be trusted to the guidance of a force so variable and uncontrollable as enthusiasm, and that the principle of self-devotion could be relied upon as a motive power. The divisions, ...
— Famous Women: George Sand • Bertha Thomas
... of Tommy, he would have definitely disliked her. The dislike would not have been fair, but it would have existed in spite of himself. It would not have been fair because it would have been founded simply upon the ignoble resentment of envy, upon the poor truth that he was not in the state of mind to avoid resenting the injustice of fate in bestowing multi-millions upon one person and his offspring. He resented his own resentment, but was obliged to acknowledge its ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... somewhat offended when he got this protest, which seemed to him like ingratitude; but Dr. Bell remained undisturbed, and secretly made up his mind to continue his efforts with more energy than ever for his friend. 'A noble soul, yet altogether unfit for this ignoble world,' he said to Mr. Gilchrist, issuing his circulars for another philanthropic campaign. When Clare learnt that new appeals to assist him had been put forward, he determined to interfere in the matter. Accordingly, he wrote long letters—very ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... was to prepare them, the evil hour of oblivion was put off for only a little longer. Sooner or later, there came a time when the Double was reduced to seek his food among the town refuse, and amid the ignoble and corrupt filth which lay rejected on the ground. Then, in order that the offerings consecrated on the day of burial might for ever preserve their virtues, the survivors conceived the idea of drawing and describing them on the walls of the chapel (fig. 127). The painted or sculptured ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... world; has written miles of French memorandums; has sung serenades in Italian; and, if he were not so confoundedly lazy, would probably speak more languages than any man in Parliament. But yet he cannot pronounce either a final "g" or allow a word to end in a vowel without adding the ignoble, superfluous, and utterly brutal "er." When he wishes to confound Mr. Gladstone, he assaults about "Ugander"; when the concerns of our great Eastern dependency move him to interest, he asks about "Indier"; and he speaks of the primordial accomplishments ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... mentioned. It is one of the many instances of uninterrupted traditions, that this part of our theatres is still devoted to receive musicians, although, in comparison with their predecessors, they are of an ignoble and ...
— The Mirror Of Literature, Amusement, And Instruction, No. 391 - Vol. 14, No. 391, Saturday, September 26, 1829 • Various
... virtue that inflicts the stroke Dies with him, and the rank ignoble heads Of plundering faction soon unite again, And prince-protected share the ...
— Count Julian • Walter Savage Landor
... here by Masaccio. Michelangelo's figures are more correct, but far less tangible and less powerful; and while he represents nothing but a man warding off a blow dealt from a sword, and a woman cringing with ignoble fear, Masaccio's Adam and Eve stride away from Eden heart-broken with shame and grief, hearing, perhaps, but not seeing, the angel hovering high overhead who directs their ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... "with a lively curiosity on his fine countenance, which I thought open and noble." The next time that the king appears all is altered. His Majesty's eyes are without the smallest expression; he has a vulgar laugh which seems like idiocy, an ignoble figure, an awkward gait, and the look of a big boy ill brought up. It is the same with more important questions. Barere is for the parliaments on the Monday and against the parliaments on the Tuesday, for feudality in the morning and against feudality in the afternoon. ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... imprisonment for debt. Under the old monarchy that stain could have been spared you by obtaining a lettre de cachet and shutting you up for a few days in a military prison.—But you are here; you stand before your father, who hears you. You know all that you did before you were sent to that ignoble prison. Will you swear to me before your father's shade, and in presence of God who sees all, that you have done no dishonorable act; that your debts are the result of youthful folly, and that your ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... unprepossessing as their parents and promising to grow up no whit happier, who in due course would give birth to children of their own as poor in spirit and looks as they. Yet now and again a young girl would pass, tall and fair and desirable, rousing in young men a not ignoble passion to possess, and in the old regret for the ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... in holding him up to scorn, and not being able to deny the fact of his triumph, explained it by the adoption of tortuous and despicable methods. They would not even allow that he was of royal birth, but asserted that he was of ignoble origin, the son of a female goatherd and a certain Atradates,* who, belonging to the savage clan of the Mardians, lived by brigandage. Cyrus himself, according to this account, spent his infancy and early youth in a condition not far short of slavery, employed at first in sweeping out the exterior ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 9 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... wind-torn clouds, it saw a half-mile breadth of racing water where had been pasture-fields; the yellow, foam-laced river was half way up the tall, slender arches of Cluhir Bridge, lapping ever higher, as if in envy, to hide the sole beauty of the ignoble town. Trees, and hayricks, broken boats, and humble pieces of cottage furniture, jostled each other between the piers, tossing and dancing in grotesque gaiety, like drunken holiday-makers on their way ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... with an enormous mass of cactus. On the south side, invisible from the port, are three fine Gothic windows, now filled up, but preserving the traceries. The palace could scarcely have had a nobler site, or the site a more ignoble occupancy. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... to pass over in silence, as incompatible with the gravity and dignity of history, that this worthy gentleman should likewise have been nicknamed from what in modern times is considered the most ignoble part of the dress. But, in truth, the small-clothes seems to have been a very dignified garment in the eyes of our venerated ancestors, in all probability from its covering that part of the body which has been pronounced ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... was before them; but he assured them that pirates were so much in the habit of conquering Spaniards that if they would all promise to follow him and do their best, he was certain he could take the town. He assured them that it would be an ignoble thing to give up such a grand enterprise as this simply because they found the enemy strong and so well prepared to meet them, and ended by stating that if he saw a man flinch or hold back for a second, he would pistol him with his own hand. Whereupon the pirates all shook hands and promised ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... of mind, which really is a symptom of glorious health, never merges into the dreamy laziness and ignoble activity exhibited by Brazilians in the east and north ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... freedom from petty cares may serve as a useful foil to set off the vulgarity and hideousness of that type of life which a hard middle-class tends to establish, and to help people to see this vulgarity and hideousness in their true colours. From such an ignoble spectacle as that of poor Mrs. Lincoln,—a spectacle to vulgarise a whole nation,—aristocracies undoubtedly preserve us. But the true grace and serenity is that of which Greece and Greek art suggest the admirable ideals of perfection,—a ...
— Culture and Anarchy • Matthew Arnold
... the inglorious campaign of the Thierache. Edward returned to Brussels "like a fox to his hole," and each side denounced the other for failing to keep the appointed tryst. The chivalry of the fourteenth century saw something ignoble in the sluggishness of Philip; but no modern soldier would blame him for his inactivity. Without striking a blow, he obtained the object of his campaign, for the enemy abandoned French territory. Had Edward been fully confident of victory, he could easily have forced a battle by advancing ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... trophies, bearing the forty names of these Swiss; civic crowns on the names of these murderers of citizens; busts of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, Sidney, the greatest philosophers and most virtuous patriots, mingled with the ignoble busts of these malefactors, and sullied by the contact; these soldiers themselves, astonished if not ashamed of their glory, advancing in the midst of a group of rebellious French-guard, in all the glorification of the forsaking of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... as I have said, did not dare show its faintest shadow on the lowest horizons of even the most ignoble consciences. Are you quite sure that, in other times which we think better and more virtuous than our own, men would not have seen it, would not have spoken of it? Can you find a nation, even among the greatest, which, after six months of a war compared with which all other wars ...
— The Wrack of the Storm • Maurice Maeterlinck
... with the physical desire, the result is a sterile intellectualism, a life of starved and timid experience. It was here, of course, that Walt Whitman's view gave offence; he thought of civilisation as a conventional system, cultivating a false shame and an ignoble reserve about bodily processes. But the vital truth of his doctrine lies in the fact that many of our saddest, because most remediable, disasters are caused by a timid reticence about the strongest force that animates ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... joy; the world cries for more sunshine; the world begs for a laugh. Mankind gloats over the depiction of deeds both noble and ignoble. The world delights in that which is novel. The Negro is a son of caloric. His presence is sunshine. He tells a story leaving nothing out. He is himself a novelty, and it will not be too far in the twentieth century before he will take pity on the world and ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... himself to Igh art. You know the anecdote, Colonel? King Alfred flying from the Danes, took refuge in a neaterd's 'ut. The rustic's wife told him to bake a cake, and the fugitive sovering set down to his ignoble task, and forgetting it in the cares of state, let the cake burn, on which the woman struck him. The moment chose is when she is lifting her 'and to deliver the blow. The king receives it with majesty mingled with meekness. In the background the door of the 'ut is open, letting ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... the same expression—an expression which indicated that they knew something exquisite and sacred which other people could never know. Other people, in their presence, were apt to feel mysteriously ignoble and to become secretly uneasy about ancestors, gloves, and pronunciation. The Magsworth Bitts manner was withholding and reserved, though sometimes gracious, granting small smiles as great favours and giving off a chilling kind of preciousness. Naturally, when any citizen ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... carved oak with the pinchbeck architecture of Strawberry Hill, and intimating that the feudalism in his romances was only a shade more genuine than the feudalism of "The Castle of Otranto." Scott was imprudent; Abbotsford was his weakness, but it was no ignoble weakness. If the ideal of the life which he proposed to himself there was scarcely a heroic one, neither was it vulgar or selfish. The artist or the philosopher should perhaps be superior to the ambition of owning land and having "a stake in the country," but the ambition ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... and tramples upon him. The black man, in return, suspects and fears his old oppressor, and sometimes, goaded to desperation, turns upon him. A perpetual discontent has always brooded over Jamaica; and it is recorded that no less than thirty bloody rebellions have left their crimson stains on her ignoble annals. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... nothing more ignoble than the ordinary joys of men. They are too often like the iridescent scum on a stagnant pond, fruit and proof of corruption. They are fragile and hollow, for all the play of colour on them, like a soap bubble that breaks ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... acts of chivalry on both sides, deeds which are luminous with a spirit transcending the hatreds of the time, and glorify human nature; but it is happily questionable whether it produced an example to equal that expounded in these pages, of ignoble ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... and in an English castle, the King of Scotland. His prison, however, proved a noble school instead of an ignoble confinement to his fine and elevated spirit. The name of Stewart has never been so splendidly illustrated as by this patriotic and chivalrous Prince. No doubt it is infinitely to the credit of the English kings, both Henrys, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... day, or in ours, of persons who know and can recite variants of our traditional ballads. The strange song of The Bitter Withy, unknown to Professor Child, was recovered from recitation but lately, in several English counties. The ignoble lay of Johnny Johnston has also been recovered: it is widely diffused. I myself obtained a genuine version of Where Goudie rins, through the kindness of Lady Mary Glyn; and a friend of Lady Rosalind Northcote procured the low English version of Young Beichan, or Lord Bateman, from ...
— Sir Walter Scott and the Border Minstrelsy • Andrew Lang
... ignoble sound, was in the days of James, a new institution, as fashionable among the youth of that age as the first- rate modern club-houses are amongst those of the present day. It differed chiefly, in being open to all whom good clothes and good assurance combined to introduce there. The company usually ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott |
