"Meanly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... could. And then I lost the paper I had stolen—couldn't find it anywhere, and for weeks I was in constant terror lest it should turn up. Then I saw the fellows were all suspecting you to be the thief, and you know how meanly I took advantage of that to hide my own guilt. Oh, Greenfield, what a wretch, what a miserable wretch I ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... from the crowd in which Berry joined heartily, rolling his eyes and contorting his limbs so as to show in the completest manner the striking contrast between his lank, stringy, meanly-clad frame and the full, round, well-clothed form ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... common goods, and are therein so compassionate that rather than one should starve through want, they would starve all; thus they pass their time merrily, not regarding our pomp, but are better content with their own, which some men esteem so meanly of." Such were the Indians whilst in the pride and energy of their primitive natures: they resembled those wild plants which thrive best in the shades of the forest, but shrink from the hand of cultivation and perish beneath ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... character. Lord Chancellor Thurlow was a type of the lawyer who fights his way to success and cares for little else. But he was a true and generous friend to Johnson, for whose proposed journey to Italy he offered to provide the means. And if his career allowed any one to think meanly of his abilities, Johnson's opinion of them would be a sufficient answer. He always maintained that "to make a speech in a public assembly is a knack"; it {241} was the question and answer of conversation, he thought, that showed what a man's real abilities were. And out of that test Thurlow ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... the only town of any importance on the road. It is pleasantly seated in a valley, is of no great size, is but meanly built, though extremely neat, has a cathedral and a bishop, and is the shire-town of Hampshire. The assizes were sitting, and Southampton was full of troops that had been sent from Winchester, in order to comply with a custom ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... prosecution began to weave its web of circumstantial evidence about Job. How shrewd it was! How carefully each suspicious incident was told and retold! How meanly everything bad in his life was emphasized, everything good forgotten! They brought the tales of long-ago years when he was a mere boy. They proved that the passionate blood of a gambler was in his veins; that his father before him had shot a companion. The story ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... then bowed again, and thanked him for his civility. Being meanly clad, and very humble, he thought she asked alms; upon which he offered her two pieces of gold. The old woman stepped back in a sort of surprise, as if my brother had affronted her. "Good God!" said she, "what is the meaning of this? Is it possible, sir, that ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments Complete • Anonymous
... seizes on whatever serves to depreciate or to ridicule his neighbour: nations proverb each other; counties flout counties; obscure towns sharpen their wits on towns as obscure as themselves—the same evil principle lurking in poor human nature, if it cannot always assume predominance, will meanly gratify itself by insult or contempt. They expose some prevalent folly, or allude to some disgrace which the natives have incurred. In France, the Burgundians have a proverb, Mieux vaut bon repas que bel habit; "Better ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... Dolly's hand had been the probability that he would thus obtain the whole of that income for himself. But, while wanting money, he wanted also some of the good things which ought to accompany it. A superior intellect,—an intellect slightly superior to his own, of which he did not think meanly, a power of conversation which he might imitate, and that fineness of thought which, he flattered himself, he might be able to achieve while living with the daughter of a gentleman,—these were the treasures which ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... Godfrey Kneller painted him—a handsome giant, six feet eight inches high, with full lips, dark skin, and curly hair that always showed beneath his wig. The Tsar disdained to adorn his person, and was often meanly clad, wearing coarse darned stockings, thick shoes, ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... they were not acquainted with whitemen and therefore could forgive them. that among whitemen it was considered disgracefull to lye or entrap an enimy by falsehood. I told him if they continued to think thus meanly of us that they might rely on it that no whitemen would ever come to trade with them or bring them arms and amunition and that if the bulk of his nation still entertained this opinion I still hoped that there were some among them that were not affraid to die, that ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... chop" upon a skewer through the streets of London. How every line revels in the recollection of having dined, and speaks how seldom! while the well-buttered bread infers the usual fare. Still it is not meanly written. There are a glorying and exultation in every word that redeem it, and show the author is more to be envied than compassionated; though a little further on we perceive the shifts to which his homeless state ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... Yoga austerities. And no king who is afflicted with calamity through the fates should, if wise, act in a censurable way. A king keeping his eye fixed for ever on virtue should walk along the path of virtue like myself and, knowing what his duties are, should not act so meanly as thou directest. When others desirous of acquiring religious merits do not accept gifts, how can I do what they themselves do not? On the conclusion of this speech, that best of kings, Yayati, was then addressed by Vasumat in ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... being grown up that makes one stare so. If it wasn't for that...." But this gives away her case, surrenders all claim to her equality with Laetitia's twenty-four years. The advantage is caught at meanly. ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... impossible for mothers of families to get help from the intelligence-offices, and ladies were obliged through lack of cooks and chambermaids to do the work of the kitchen and the chamber and parlor, they learned to realize what such work was, how poorly paid, how badly lodged, how meanly fed. From this practical knowledge it was impossible for them to retreat to their old supremacy and indifference as mistresses. The servant problem was solved, once for all, by humanity, and it is doubtful whether, if Mr. Homos returned to us now, he would give offence by preaching the example ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... Baliol; and that every incident which had since happened, had tended to wean them from any attachment to the latter. The slender capacity of John had proved unable to defend them against their enemies: he had meanly resigned his crown into the hands of the conqueror: he had, before his deliverance from captivity, reiterated that resignation in a manner seemingly voluntary; and had in that deed thrown out many ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part B. - From Henry III. to Richard III. • David Hume
... believe you know how unkind you are," she says, with a suspicion of tears in her voice, whether feigned or real he hardly dares conjecture. Feeling herself in the wrong, she seeks meanly to free herself from the false position by placing him there in ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... different reception at the Portman home, secretly depending on his power to force Mrs. Braddock to welcome an armistice, no matter how distasteful it may have been to her. He had not anticipated the outcome. Miss Grand accompanied him, meanly it is true, in the hope that she might gloat over the Braddocks in ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... stony quiet while they talked on, she thought, forever. Their voices sounded in her ears like voices heard in a dream, their laughter had a nightmare cruelty. Yet she was resolved to be just to Mr. Arbuton, she was determined not meanly to condemn him; she confessed to herself, with a glimmer of her wonted humor, that her dress must be an ordeal of peculiar anguish to him, and she half blamed herself for her conscientiousness in wearing it. If she had conceived ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... marry Wharton, or any one else, so long as it were made impossible for her to bruise and exhaust her young bloom amid such scenes—such gross physical abominations. Amazing!—how meanly, passionately timorous the man of Raeburn's type can be for the woman! He himself may be morally "ever a fighter," and feel the glow, the stern joy of the fight. But she!—let her leave the human brute and his unsavoury struggle alone! It cannot be borne—it was never meant—that she should dip ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... with the maternal instinct—and as a necessary supplement to it. This instinct is more or less futile in most women because they are more or less ignorant of the realities as to wise and foolish expenditure. But it is found in the most extravagant women no less than in the most absurdly and meanly stingy. ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... of women, but he has other dangerous tastes; he has no heart, but he has a palate; he does not care for the love of women, but he enjoys good living—that will make one link in his fetters. Then he loves pomp and splendor; he has so long been forced to live meanly that wealth will intoxicate him; he will wish to lavish honors and rain gold upon his people. Frederick William has stowed away millions; we will help ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... Margett, which arrived here nine months after, about the time of Michaellmas, in her sixty persons, most gentlemen, few or no tradesmen, except some Polanders to make Pitch, tarre, potashes, &c., to be retorned for present gaine, soe meanly likewise were these furnished forth for victualles, that in lesse then two monthes after their arrivall, want compelled us to imploye our time abroad in trading with the Indians for corne; whereby though for a time we partly relieved our necessities, yet in Maye ...
— Colonial Records of Virginia • Various
... which distinguishes one person from another. Purpose, intention, aim. Principles, fixed rules. Capacity, ability, the power of receiving ideas. Sordid, base, meanly avaricious. ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... well, and as is fitting, . . . it is that which I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... sustain them in their arduous efforts. They began well. The Sarah led the way, the Firefly following close in our wake. As long as the friendly emulation between the two teams endured, we made fair progress. But when it was discovered that the Firefly had meanly hitched itself on to the stern of the Sarah, and was permitting our four "paupers" to pull the whole cavalcade, a difference of opinion arose. The Firefly tugs, having nothing to do, amused themselves by peppering the inoffensive crew of the Sarah with pebbles from the bank; while ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... produced his pocket book, and counted out thirty-five dollars. Tiffles had already borrowed from Overtop and Maltboy, but had generously spared the oldest of the three bachelors. Marcus felt that his time had come, and he would not meanly avoid his destiny. He placed the money in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... pleaded for the world, declaring that she had two faithful servants whom she was about to send into it to bring sinners to the feet of the Saviour; one of these was Dominic himself, the other was a poor man, meanly clad, whom he had never seen before. This vision came to the devout Spaniard, according to the legend, during the night, which he spent, as he was wont, in a church, in prayer. Next morning, while he mused on the dream which had been sent to him, his eye fell all at once upon ...
— Italy, the Magic Land • Lilian Whiting
... you," &c. so common in his ears, would scarcely ever have been used had it not been for my influence. To be sure I have overheard him say, as we have been walking along, "There goes an old acquaintance of mine; but, bless me, how altered he is! he looks poor and meanly dressed, but I'm determined I'll speak to him, for fear he should think me so shabby as to shy him." Thus giving an instance in himself, certainly, of respect for the man and not the coat. My short history goes rather to prove that the reverse ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... shores commodious ports abound, Clear flow the waters of the varying ground; Cold nipping winds a lengthen'd winter bring, Late rise the products of the tardy spring. The broken soil a labouring race requires; Each barren hill its generous crops admires, Where nature meanly did her gifts impart, Yet, smiling, owns how much ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... offence. Perhaps the essence of it is the indescribable meanness of their motive. For this phonography really amounts to a study of the cheapest way of spelling words. These phonographers are sweaters of the Queen's English, living meanly on the selvage of honest mental commerce by clipping the coin of thought. But enough of them. They are mentioned here only to be disavowed. They would substitute one narrow orthodoxy for another, and I would ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... Is it not, as most men do, out of ill design? may he not dissemble now? may he not recoil hereafter? have not others made as fair a show? yet we know what came of it." Thus do calumnious tongues pervert the judgments of men to think ill of the most innocent, and meanly of the worthiest actions. Even commendation itself is often used calumniously, with intent to breed dislike and ill-will towards a person commended in envious or jealous ears; or so as to give passage to dispraises, and render the accusations following more credible. 'Tis an artifice ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow
... fortunes of another being, and what remained for me but that, where I had sowed destruction, where speedy salvation was demanded of me, I should blindly rush forward to the rescue?—for the last hour struck! Think not so meanly of me, my Adelbert, as to imagine that I should have regarded any price that was demanded as too high, that I should have begrudged anything that was mine even more than my gold. No, Adelbert! but my soul was possessed with the most unconquerable ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... not good that human nature should have the road of life made too easy. Better to be under the necessity of working hard and faring meanly, than to have everything done ready to our hand and a pillow of down to repose upon. Indeed, to start in life with comparatively small means seems so necessary as a stimulus to work, that it may almost be set down as one of the conditions essential to success in life. Hence, an eminent judge, ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... groves of the academy. [1] The voice of malicious folly was at length silenced by the shouts of victory; the conqueror of the Franks and Alemanni could no longer be painted as an object of contempt; and the monarch himself was meanly ambitious of stealing from his lieutenant the honorable reward of his labors. In the letters crowned with laurel, which, according to ancient custom, were addressed to the provinces, the name of Julian was omitted. "Constantius had made his dispositions in person; he had signalized his ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... which was nearest to the wall, was occupied by a party, or rather family, consisting of a grimy- looking man, somewhat under the middle size, dressed in faded velveteens, and wearing a leather apron—a rather pretty-looking woman, but sun-burnt, and meanly dressed, and two ragged children, a boy and girl, about four or five years old. The man sat with his eyes fixed upon the table, supporting his chin with both his hands; the woman, who was next to him, sat quite still, save that occasionally she ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... were contained, and a danger, a seduction, a poison, a narcotic by which the present might live AT THE EXPENSE OF THE FUTURE? Perhaps more comfortably, less dangerously, but also in humbler style- more meanly? So that just morality were to blame, if a HIGHEST MIGHTINESS AND SPLENDOR of type of man-possible in itself were never attained? And that, therefore, morality itself would be ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... Cause I've meanly quitted For the sake of pelf; But ah, the Devil has me outwitted; Instead of ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... confidential cordiality. He owned it was so, but said that he never concealed from him disagreeable truths—on the contrary, told him everything—and assured me that at any time he would tell the Duke anything that I thought he ought to know. I told him to give him a notion how meanly Aberdeen was thought of, that Alvanley had told Talleyrand not to notice him, but to go at once to the Duke when he had any important business to transact, and that he might tell the Duke this if he pleased, but no one else. He said he would, and then he began to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... and unscrupulous. In a few weeks he had deprived his rival of all authority. His own power did not last long. He had a sharp tongue, and did not hesitate to let all men, great and small, know how meanly he thought of them. Those whom he despised found a leader in John, who was anxious to succeed his brother, and thought that it might some day be useful to have made himself popular in England. In the autumn of 1191 William of Longchamps was driven ...
— A Student's History of England, v. 1 (of 3) - From the earliest times to the Death of King Edward VII • Samuel Rawson Gardiner
... represented the classic spirit, and have never been equalled since, because they were the legitimate product of that classic spirit. You cannot have another Phidias till man again believes in Jupiter. The Gothic architecture, how meanly is it imitated now! What cathedrals built in this century rival those of Milan or Strasbourg or Notre Dame? Ah! there is no such Catholicism to inspire the builders; the very men who reared them would not be architects, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... who came to the court of King Arthur at this Pentecost seeking hospitality, were two strangers in especial, who because of being meanly garbed and of a seeming awkwardness brought forth the mockery and jest of Sir Kay the Seneschal. Nor did Sir Kay mean harm thereby, for he was knight who held no villainy. Yet was his tongue overly sharp and too oft disposed to sting ...
— In the Court of King Arthur • Samuel Lowe
... in my face. No; I had never pressed him; I had never even encouraged him to come. I was proud of him; proud of his handsome looks, of his kind, gentle ways, of that bright face he could show when others were happy; proud, too (meanly proud, if you like) of his great wealth and startling liberalities. And yet he would have been in the way of my Paris life, of much of which he would have disapproved. I had feared to expose to criticism his innocent remarks on art; ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... fact, I will also add another, namely that not even Nero's Golden House would satisfy Vitellius. He delighted in and commended the name and the life and all the practices of its former owner, yet he found fault with the structure itself, saying that it had been badly built and was scantily and meanly equipped. When he fell ill one time he looked about for a room to afford him an abode; so little did even Nero's surroundings satisfy him. His wife Galeria ridiculed the small amount of decoration found in the royal apartments. This pair, as they spent ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... a plot of twenty acres, forty-four feet above the Potomac. It is 170 feet front, and eighty-six deep; built of freestone, with Ionic pilasters. It was shown to us by one Martin Renehan, an Irishman; and as the President was absent, we visited all the rooms, which were meanly furnished—indeed, carpets and chair-bottoms worn out; a common pine dining-table, which the Prince de Joinville, Lord Ashburton, Lord Morpeth, Mr. Fox, and Mr. Pakenham, our present minister, with others, to the number of forty-four (they never have more), ...
— Journal of a Voyage across the Atlantic • George Moore
... York. Arrived in this last city, he obtained notoriety, of no very respectable kind, as a "medium" claiming powers of supernatural communication with the world of spirits. When the imposture was ultimately discovered, he had gained money by his unworthy appeal to the meanly prosaic superstition of modern times. A long interval had then elapsed, and nothing had been heard of him, when a starving man was discovered by a traveller, lost on a Western prairie. The ill-fated Irish lord had associated himself with an Indian tribe—had committed ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... this world are to be found always among the thoroughly-upright, meanly-impeccable members of any and every church. They are the Scribes and Pharisees who contribute most to the building of fine houses of worship; they give most to its causes. They are the "right hands" of ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... seemed to have his attention attracted to the three friends. At first he looked uncomprehendingly, and then, as the features of the lads toward whom he had acted so meanly became plainer, ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... negroes, who fare so much better. But surely 'man liveth not by bread alone!' Our fathers who died for Christ on the hillside and the scaffold were noble men, and never, never shall slavery produce such, and yet they toiled as hard, and fared as meanly as we their children." ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... success Attained through wisdom and admired of men, What boundless jealousies environ you! When for this rule, which to my hand the State Committed unsolicited and free, Creon, my first of friends, trusted and sure, Would undermine and hurl me from my throne, Meanly suborning such a mendicant Botcher of lies, this crafty wizard rogue, Blind in his art, and seeing but for gain. Where are the proofs of thy prophetic power? How came it, when the minstrel-hound was here, This folk had no deliverance ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... He was meanly clad: a coarse cloak, stained and threadbare, was thrown open, showing a close habit of the most ordinary fabric; yet a natural and graceful bearing imparted a dignity even to his poor and ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... We—even we here—hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed, this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne
... above necessaries of life, but conveys its various manufactures down to the ports of the Mediterranean sea expeditiously, and at little expence. The small boats, which ply upon the Soane as ours do upon the Thames, are flat bottomed, and very meanly built; they have, however, a tilt to shelter them from the heat, and to preserve the complexion, or hide the blushes of your female Patronne:—yes, my dear Sir, Female!—for they are all conducted by females; many of whom are young, handsome, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse
... came to rail at you, and talk such Truths, too, as shall let you see the Vanity of that Pride, which taught you how to set such a Price on Sin. For such it is, whilst that which is Love's due is meanly barter'd for. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... advantage to himself and to his house. That very alliance was the original cause of his gaining a crown—the foundation of the Prussian monarchy. It will not be denied, even by those who think most meanly of the externals of rank and title, that the attainment of a higher step in the European hierarchy, as it then stood, was an object worth ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... babe you there shall find To human view displayed, All meanly wrapped in swaddling bands, ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... than yours, and I am the more severely punished. I have bidden farewell to my dreams: I am Madame la Presidente in all my glory, and I resign myself to giving my arm for forty years to my big awkward Roulandiere, to living meanly in every way, and to having forever before me two heavy brows and two wall-eyes pierced in a yellow face, which is destined never to know what it ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... the prior, who, if desirous of power, had nothing meanly covetous in his temper, but was even magnificent in his generous kindness; "certainly the Dominican convent can afford to her sovereign the hospitality which the house offers to every wanderer of whatever condition who will receive it at the hands of the poor servants of our patron. No, ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Boab. I cannot meanly for my life provide; I'll either perish in't, or stem this tide. To guard the palace, Ozmyn, be your care: If they o'ercome, no sword will hurt ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... (the confidence of which she was unworthy) with her ungracious distrust of him. Not only had she wronged Grace Roseberry—she had wronged Julian Gray. Could she deceive him as she had deceived the others? Could she meanly accept that implicit trust, that devoted belief? Never had she felt the base submissions which her own imposture condemned her to undergo with a loathing of them so overwhelming as the loathing that she felt now. In horror of herself, she turned her head aside in silence ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... dark watches of the night pores over the bitter scroll of his delinquencies? When Henry H. Rogers reads the record set down here of this faithless and degrading action, he will suffer infinitely more than ever I did for the loss of the gold he and his associates so meanly filched. Nor will the knowledge of the seven and a half score of millions marshalled ready at his nod, abate one jot or tittle of the measure of ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... "I don't want to pile up the agony. Besides," she added, with an obvious effort, "I must be honest. I—I know I have given you reason to think meanly of me—vilely! But, don't you see, Mark, I—I have done with all that. I was never so anxious to make the best of myself. Not that it can ...
— Enter Bridget • Thomas Cobb
... Megaris (then Theodoret's capital) was ablaze with bonfires on the night that the Comte de la Foret entered it at the head of his forces. Demetrios, meanly clothed, his hands tied behind him, trudged sullenly beside his conqueror's horse. Yet of the two the gloomier face showed below the count's coronet, for Perion did not relish the impendent interview with King Theodoret. They came thus amid much shouting ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... willingness to extend every fair advantage to an adversary: a courage to strive to the uttermost without regard to the material value of the prize—and paramount to all the rest, a scorn for any meanly gained advantage, however profitable. If there was any value in his heritage of gentle blood and a sportsman's training, it should stand him in good stead now, for the sake of the ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... stomach, and look you," and she pointed across the room to a pile of nets beside a wooden bench. "There are three score rents to mend and the day is done." She turned to the doorway and for a moment stood looking out, barefooted, meanly clad and unkept, yet of comely form and with abundant dark hair falling around an oval face of more than ordinary beauty. She sighed and turned back ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... how unjustly severe you are! How exceedingly uncharitable! How can you think so meanly of the people with ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Verity was touched alike with self-reproach and admiration. For he had succeeded in asserting himself beyond his intention. Had overcome, had worsted her; yet, as it occurred to him, won a but barren victory. That she was alienated and resentful he could hardly doubt, while the riddle he had rather meanly used to procure her discomfiture remained unanswered as ever, dipped indeed only deeper in mystery. He was hoist with his own petard, in short; and stood there nonplussed, vexed alike ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... have behaved meanly and dishonourably to me. I don't wish to discuss the matter, ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... afterwards; but it happened otherwise; they had nothing in them of that pride which is termed l'esprit du corps; but at times mixed with the convicts familiarly as former cornpanions; yet when they chose to quarrel with, or complain of them, they meanly asserted ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of circumstance or setting, and was purely a matter of character, depending upon a mind familiar with large interests and launched towards ideal aims. He might be silent, melancholy, impracticable, but never meanly self-conscious. It had rarely occurred to anyone to pity or ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may be sure of its never being more, for if I were not attached to another person as much as I can be to anyone, I should make a point of not bestowing my affection on a man who had dared to think so meanly of me. Reginald has a good figure and is not unworthy the praise you have heard given him, but is still greatly inferior to our friend at Langford. He is less polished, less insinuating than Mainwaring, and is comparatively deficient in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... of King John's wise men thought little of the plan, King John himself thought that there was something in it. But instead of helping Columbus he meanly resolved to send out an expedition of his own. This he did, and when Columbus heard of it he was so angry that he left Portugal, which for more than ten years he had made his home. He was poor and in debt, so he left the country secretly, in fear of the King, ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... as they see her stand In majestic pride serenely, And gnash with the impotent rage of hate, Creeping up slowly, meanly; While she cries, "Come forth from your covered dens, All your hireling legions send me, I'll bare my breast to a million swords, Whilst God and ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... a triumphant smile upon Hugo's face as he rode away from the lawyer's office. Twice in that day had his generalship been successful, and his success disposed him to think rather meanly of his fellow-creatures' intellects. It was surely very easy, and decidedly pleasant, to outwit one's neighbours! He had made both Brian and Mr. Colquhoun give him information which they would have certainly withheld had ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... with a great problem, it is like a precious stone which thousands stumble over before one finally picks it up. Wagner asked himself the meaning of the fact that an art such as music should have become so very important a feature of the lives of modern men. It is not necessary to think meanly of life in order to suspect a riddle behind this question. On the contrary, when all the great forces of existence are duly considered, and struggling life is regarded as striving mightily after conscious freedom and independence of thought, only then does music seem to be a riddle ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... a little consolatory, at a time when the whole rage of an oligarchical tyranny, though impotent against the English as a nation, meanly exhausts itself on the few helpless individuals within its power. Embarrassments accumulate and if Mr. Pitt's agents did not most obligingly write letters, and these letters happen to be intercepted just when they are most necessary, the Comite de Salut Publique would be ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... cannot extend its views beyond the present minute division of existence. If all the faculties of woman's mind are only to be cultivated as they respect her dependence on man; if, when she obtains a husband she has arrived at her goal, and meanly proud, is satisfied with such a paltry crown, let her grovel contentedly, scarcely raised by her employments above the animal kingdom; but, if she is struggling for the prize of her high calling, let ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... at this day in Scotland (besides a great many poor families very meanly provided for by the church boxes, with others, who, by living on bad food, fall into various diseases) two hundred thousand people begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country. And though the number of them be perhaps ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... adventure and that contempt of peril. But of what stamp must have been that soul which could find consolation in all this? And, as often happens, the man to whom she thus devoted herself was not wholly worthy of her. He had infinite spirit; but he was coldly calculating, profoundly selfish, meanly ambitious. He measured others by himself. He was naturally as subtle in evil, as she was disposed spontaneously to virtue. Full of finesse in his self-love and in the pursuit of his own interest, ...
— Political Women (Vol. 1 of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... chief favourite of Montoni. Verezzi was a man of some talent, of fiery imagination, and the slave of alternate passions. He was gay, voluptuous, and daring; yet had neither perseverance or true courage, and was meanly selfish in all his aims. Quick to form schemes, and sanguine in his hope of success, he was the first to undertake, and to abandon, not only his own plans, but those adopted from other persons. Proud and impetuous, he revolted against all subordination; yet those who were acquainted with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... passed the closed and deserted store, but Marmaduke Simms was perched on the veranda, and Trooper meanly deserted his fair partner, and swung himself up beside his chum, there to wait until the sound of the first hymn would assure them they were in no danger of being too ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... my keeping his head straight that he might the easier rob our fellow-passengers raised a pretty question of ethics. I meanly dodged it. I told him professional etiquette required I should leave him to ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... but the Elector Frederick the Wise ever gave Albert Duerer a commission for pictures, while a writing addressed by the great painter to the magistracy of Nuremberg tells us that his native city never gave him employment even to the value of 500 florins. At the same time his pictures were so meanly paid, that for the means of subsistence, as he says himself, he was compelled to devote himself to engraving. How far more such a man as Duerer would have been appreciated in Italy or in the Netherlands is further evidenced ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... disburdened his breast about Clichy; of all the phases of his decline from the fashionable man in the Bois to the shabby skulker in the banlieue, he had something to say. He had been everybody's victim. The world had been against him. Friends had proved themselves ungrateful, and foes had acted meanly. Nobody could imagine half his sufferings. While he dwelt on himself with all the volubility and wearying detail of a wholly selfish man, I was eager to catch the least clue to a history that interested me much more deeply ...
— The Cockaynes in Paris - 'Gone abroad' • Blanchard Jerrold
... 235 Or care, that what so tenderly he pressed Was a dependant on [13] the obdurate heart Of one who came to disunite their lives For ever—sad alternative! preferred, By the unbending Parents of the Maid, 240 To secret 'spousals meanly disavowed. —So be it! ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... any moment. They therefore study political weather-wisdom, and in varying degrees adapt themselves to the indications of the sky. It will now be readily perceived how the popular sentiment in England, so far as it is awake, is not meanly provided with the ways of making itself respected, whether for the purpose of displacing and replacing a Ministry, or of constraining it (as sometimes happens) to alter or reverse its policy sufficiently, at least, to conjure down the gathering and ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... did God make you and me capable of anticipating the future for? That we might let our hopes run along the low levels, or that we might elevate them and twine them round the very pillars of God's Throne; which? I do not find fault with you because you hope, but because you hope so meanly, and about such trivial and transitory things. I remember I once saw a sea-bird kept in a garden, confined within high walls, and with clipped wings, set to pick up grubs and insects. It ought to have been away out, hovering over the free ocean, or soaring with sunlit wing to a height ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... fatal fluency; not good enough and not bad enough to be interesting. It is like the student's theme, which was returned to him without corrections, yet with a low mark; and in reply to the student's resentful question, "Why did you not correct my faults, if you thought meanly of my work?" the teacher replied wearily, "Your theme has no faults; it is distinguished by ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... Grief or Danger free, Nor think the Doom of Man revers'd for thee: Deign on the passing World to turn thine Eyes, And pause awhile from Learning to be wise; There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail; Toil, Envy, Want, the Garret, and the Jail. See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just; To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust. If Dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's Life, and Galileo's ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... up and run a-muck. No, no, Miles Milton, don't you think of that! What good would it do to kill half-a-dozen Arabs to accompany you into the next world? The poor wretches are only defending their country after all. (Another pause.) Besides, you deserve what you've got for so meanly forsaking your poor mother; think o' that, Miles, when you feel tempted to stick your lance into the Mahdi's gizzard, as Molloy would have said. Ah! poor Molloy! I fear that I shall never see you again in this life. After giving the Mahdi and his steed such a tremendous heave they would be sure ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... to the quick, it is a shrewd sign that the man is a mechanic, to whom long nails would be troublesome, or that he gets his bread by fiddling; and if they are longer than his fingers ends, and encircled with a black rim, it foretells he has been laboriously and meanly employed, and too fatigued to clean himself: a good apology for want of cleanliness in a mechanic, but the greatest disgrace that can attend ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... man may ridicule others, may controvert them, scorn them; but he who has any respect for himself seems to have renounced the right of thinking meanly of others.—Goethe. ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... [he has no pace, but runs where he will] [Tyrrwhit: place] A pace is a certain or prescribed walk, so we say of a man meanly obsequious, that he has learned his ...
— Johnson's Notes to Shakespeare Vol. I Comedies • Samuel Johnson
... huge four-cornered "spare room," because her sister, who has married a city man, is obliged to have a folding-bed in the cramped limits of her flat Partly because so little is done for him educationally, and partly because he must live narrowly and dress meanly, the life of the average laborer tends to become flat and monotonous, with nothing in his work to feed his mind or hold his interest. Theoretically, we would all admit that the man at the bottom, who performs the meanest and humblest work, so long as the work is necessary, performs a useful ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... it's so meanly put together and so badly burned, that the devil himself wouldn't know it. I tell you, madam, most distinctly and emphatically, that it is bread pudding and the ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... bloody feet I clambered down And fled the wages of my sin, I am the leavings of the town, And meanly serve its meanest inn. ...
— Trees and Other Poems • Joyce Kilmer
... oblig'd them to marry, to leave their Cells, and live as did others. For of these, some there are who seldom speak, and therefore edifie none; sleep little, and lie hard, are clad nastily, and eat meanly (and oftentimes that which is unwholsom) and therefore benefit none; Not because they might not, both for their own, and the Good of others, and the Publick; but because they will not; Custom, and a prodigious [104]Sloth ...
— Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets • John Evelyn
... irons in against this folly of the disarming as I could manage. It did not reach my ears till nearly too late. What a risk to take! What an expense to incur! And for how poor a gain! Apart from the treachery of it. My dear fellow, politics is a vile and a bungling business. I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of mercy came. From her Marquez the tyrant learned that his speculation in treachery had collapsed. Louis Napoleon wanted no more of that stock. Besides, every French bayonet was needed in France. The rabid Leopard heard, and that night meanly crept away to save his own loathsome pelt. Bombs had begun to fall into the City, when a Mexican general worthier of the name took upon himself the heroic shame of unconditional surrender. The Oaxacans outside marched in, led by their young chief, Porfirio Diaz, and they fed the people, and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... and attractively painted passes out of the story and drops out of the list of actors just when some redeeming figure is most needed to assuage the dreariness of disgust with which we follow the fortunes of so meanly criminal a crew: and the splendid eloquence of the only other respectable person in the play is not of itself sufficient to make a living figure, rather than the mere mouthpiece for indignant emotion, of so subordinate and inactive ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... wounded thro' the sides of its Professors, whether all good Men or not; so is Virtue, where Women are thought too meanly of, and depretiated. The Author of the following Work, being convinced of the Truth of this Observation, has endeavoured in it to exalt the Sex. He has made his Heroine pass thro' many Persecutions from her Friends, and ardent Trials from her Lover; yet in the first to keep her ...
— Clarissa: Preface, Hints of Prefaces, and Postscript • Samuel Richardson
... El Feri, are compelled to seek for safety in disguise and flight; I thought we should meet with succour and assistance in the mountain home of Caneri—and how do I meet him? Not ready in arms to cover our retreat; not laudably occupied in providing resources for our dispirited soldiers, but meanly courting the blandishments of a Christian slave. Weak and forlorn and despairing, my few brave comrades are stretched on yonder street, fainting through want, and worn out with fatigue. I call upon Caneri for help, and I find that the power which was intrusted to him ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... of personal filth. But this is inconsistent with the daily practice of bathing mentioned, Sec. 22. It doubtless refers to the dress, as Gr. and K. understand it: nudi ac sordidipoorly and meanly ...
— Germania and Agricola • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... discover in him no one proof or symptom of a commanding genius. They have discovered him never controlling, never creating events, but always yielding to them with rapid change, and sheltering himself from inconsistency by perpetual indefiniteness. In the Russian war, they saw him abandoning meanly what he had planned weakly, and threatened insolently. In the debates on the Regency, they detected the laxity of his constitutional principles, and received proofs that his eloquence consisted not in the ready application of a general system to particular questions, but in the facility ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... clumsily, stupidly, meanly. One goes to the theatre just for the refreshment of seeing them happen in another way—in symmetrical, satisfactory form, with unmistakable effect and ...
— Picture and Text - 1893 • Henry James
... he had not had the courage to destroy. She had hoped to find some proof, some clue; but no, there was nothing serious in it. Lily did not give up, for all that; on the contrary. After the visit to Jimmy, which made Trampy so meanly jealous, she lost no opportunity of inquiring. But Martello himself, the father, never had news of his daughter. He hadn't heard for ever so long; and it was to no avail that Lily asked about Ave Maria, the one who ran away with a man, a great ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... dearest Father! May no sloth, Or weakness of my weaker soul, Delay him in his kingly growth, Or hold him meanly from the goal That shines with ...
— The Mistress of the Manse • J. G. Holland
... lasting to insure anything which we may bequeath to posterity; and by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully. In order to discover the line of our duty rightly, we should take our children by the hand, and fix our station a few years farther into life; that eminence will present a prospect which a few present fears and prejudices ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... spoke through his eyes when ushered so suddenly into the company of those whom his earliest education had taught him to treat with awe and reverence. The degree of embarrassment, which his demeanor evinced, had nothing in it either meanly servile, or utterly disconcerted. It was no more than became a generous and ingenuous youth of a bold spirit, but totally inexperienced, who should for the first time be called upon to think and ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... o'er Garrick's fortunes, shows us clear Whence all his spleen to GENIUS.—Ill to bear A Friend's renown, that to his own must reign, Compar'd, a Meteor's evanescent train, To Jupiter's fix'd orb, proves that each sneer, Subtle and fatal to poetic Sense, Did from insidious ENVY meanly flow, Illumed with dazzling hues of eloquence, And Sophist-Wit, that labor to o'er-throw Th' awards of AGES, and new laws dispense That lift the mean, and lay ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... Stella, in words which I would now give everything I possess to recall. A detestable jealousy took possession of me. I meanly hinted that Penrose could claim no great merit (in the matter of Romayne's conversion) for yielding to the entreaties of a beautiful woman who had fascinated him, though he might be afraid to own it. She protested against my unworthy insinuation—but ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... "Well! Aramis," continued Porthos, "I have dreamed, I have imagined that an event has taken place in France. I dreamt of M. Fouquet all the night, of lifeless fish, of broken eggs, of chambers badly furnished, meanly kept. Villainous dreams, my dear ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... be indications of hypocrisy. Nobody was more alive than Edwards himself to the danger of using such phrases mechanically. When you call yourself the worst of men, he says, be careful that you do not think highly of yourself just because you think so meanly. And if you reply, 'No, I have not a high opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil;' ask again, 'whether on this very account that you think yourself as proud as the devil, you do not think yourself to be very humble' (iv. ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... heard it disputed in conversation, whether it be more laudable or desirable, that a man should think too highly or too meanly of himself: it is on all hands agreed to be best, that he should think rightly; but since a fallible being will always make some deviations from exact rectitude, it is not wholly useless to inquire towards which side it ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... never thinks so meanly of ambition as when walking through a grave-yard.—To see men who have filled the world with their glory for half a century or more, reduced to a six foot mudhole, gives pride a shock which requires a long stay in a city to counteract.—The gentlemen ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... beds in a fright, I should indignantly have repelled the accusation. Now, however, owing to the way in which Coleman had requested my assistance, it appeared to my bewildered senses that I should be meanly deserting my friends the moment they had got into difficulties, if I were to refuse; but when he used the word "shabby," it settled the business, and, seizing a rope with my uninjured hand, ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... They adventured when the night was not far spent, & next day, towards even, were they come to a country-side called Skaun, and seeing there a homestead thither went they craving lodging for the night. Of their names they made a secret & their garb was but meanly. The yeoman who abode in the place was called Biorn Venom-Sore, a wealthy man was he but withal churlish, and he drave them away, & they came that same evening to another homestead ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... disarm him, and honoureth him at her pleasure, and commandeth that all be obedient to him, and do his commandment so long as he shall please to be there. Now feel they safer in the castle for that the king hath so meanly departed thence, and it well seemeth them that never will he dare come back for dread of his nephew more than of any other, whereof make they ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... the mind falls asleep." But she does not regard superiority as an external thing, and says very wisely, "It is merit which should separate you from people, not dignity or pride." By "people" she indicates all those who think meanly and commonly. "The court is full of them," she adds. Her standards of honor are high, and her sentiments of humanity quite in the vein of the coming age. She urges her daughter to treat her servants with kindness. "One of the ancients ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason
... daughters. One of the officers, a German, was repulsed by the young girl he had impudently approached, but the other one, a Frenchman, took advantage of the other sister, and after committing the dastardly outrage, he ran away with his companion. Marquis, shall I name you the man who acted so meanly? It was the then ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... more than anything, hurt him, bringing him down to her base, sordid level, making him fellow-conspirator with her, plotting...ugh! How cruelly unfair that he, upright, generous, should be involved like this so meanly. ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... shall hang, Hollow Pyramides of siluer plate: The sailes of foulded Lawne, where shall be wrought The warres of Troy, but not Troyes ouerthrow: For ballace, emptie Didos treasurie, Take what ye will, but leaue AEneas here. Achates, thou shalt be so meanly clad, As Seaborne Nymphes shall swarme about thy ships, And wanton Mermaides court thee with sweete songs, Flinging in fauours of more soueraigne worth, Then Thetis hangs about Apolloes necke, So that AEneas may but stay ...
— The Tragedy of Dido Queene of Carthage • Christopher Marlowe
... their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... man's sole joys, shall find no joy in him; Yet of far nobler kind His silent pleasures prove. For not unmarked by him the ways of men; Nor yet to him the ample page unknown, Where, traced by Nature's hand, Is many a pleasing line. Oh! when the world's dull children bend the knee, Meanly obsequious, to some mortal god, It yields no vulgar joy Alone to stand aloof; Or when they jostle on wealth's crowded road, And swells the tumult on the breeze, 'tis sweet, Thoughtful, at length reclined, To list the wrathful ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... will "nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. . . . The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which if followed the world will forever applaud and God ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... to know, why in the general attack which Mr. Pope has lately made against writers living and dead, he has so often had a fling of satire at me. I should be very willing to plead guilty to his indictment, and think as meanly of myself as he can possibly do, were his quarrel altogether upon a fair, or unbiassed nature. But he is angry at the man; and as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... Young as I was and insipient, I was prepared for what is called the burlesque Olympus of the Iliad, so grievous to Professor Murray. I think I recognised then, what seems perfectly plain to me now, that you might as well think meanly of a God of Africa because the natives make him of a cocoanut on a stick, as of Zeus and Hera because Homer says that they played peccant husband and jealous wife. If Homer halted it is rash to assume that Hephaistos did. The pathetic fallacy has crept in here. Mythology was one of the few ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... bloody guilt? No. For this act she stands in history like Lady Macbeth, ever rubbing her hands, but "the damned spot" will not out at her bidding. Granted all that is charged against Mary, never was woman so meanly, basely, cruelly treated ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... Macdonald, husband of Boswell's Yorkshire cousin Miss Bosville, and the host at the masquerade in February, was on his way to Edinburgh, and met them at the house of a tenant, 'as we believe,' wrote Johnson to Mrs Thrale, 'that he might with less reproach entertain us meanly. Boswell was very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony. Boswell has some thoughts of collecting the stories and making a novel of his life.' In the first edition of his book something strong had clearly been written, but it was wisely suppressed at the last moment when ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... that he invented a tubular screw which is still used for pumping water, and that for a long time he foiled the attacks of the Romans on Syracuse by the mechanical devices and engines which he used against them. But he thought meanly of these things, and his real interest was in pure mathematical speculation; he caused to be engraved on his tomb a representation of a cylinder circumscribing a sphere, with the ratio 3/2 which the cylinder bears to the sphere: from which we infer that he regarded this as his ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... woman without ever looking back on your love as a folly, she must die while you are courting her; and if you would maintain the slightest belief in human heroism, you must never make a pilgrimage to see the hero. I confess I have often meanly shrunk from confessing to these accomplished and acute gentlemen what my own experience has been. I am afraid I have often smiled with hypocritical assent, and gratified them with an epigram on the fleeting nature of our illusions, which any one moderately acquainted with French literature can ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... soon, ah! soon, rebellion will commence, If music meanly borrows aid from sense; Strong in new arms, lo! giant Handel stands, Like bold Briareus, with his hundred hands, To stir, to rouse, to shake the soul he comes, And Jove's ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... Atlantick Ocean. We had a passage of about twelve miles to the point where —— —— resided, having come from his seat in the middle of the island to a small house on the shore, as we believe, that he might with less reproach entertain us meanly. If he aspired to meanness, his retrograde ambition was completely gratified... Boswell was very angry, and reproached him with his improper parsimony.' Piozzi Letters, i. 137. A little later he wrote:—'I ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... on them. It appeared so ridiculous a show to all that had never stirred out of their country, and had not seen the customs of other nations, that though they paid some reverence to those that were the most meanly clad, as if they had been the ambassadors, yet when they saw the ambassadors themselves, so full of gold and chains, they looked upon them as slaves, and forbore to treat them with reverence. You might have seen the children, who were grown big enough to despise their playthings, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... said, with the old whimsical look. "If you did you would think meanly of me ever after. Yes, that is why, Mary Ann. I am a selfish brute—selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost essence of my every thought. Beethoven is worth two of me, aren't you, Beethoven?" The spaniel, thinking ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... and Philip was no more proof against its effects, than those potentates who had gone before him.—There was a great resemblance between the project of invading England, with the invincible armada, as it was called, and the attack on Greece by the King of Persia. That monarch must have thought very meanly of England, to suppose that the island could be conquered by 30,000 men, even if they could have made good their landing. Indeed, to try such an experiment on a nation that had supported its claim to valour so well at Agincourt and ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... had force. It pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of power. Everyone had need of one's power, whereas one's own need, at the best, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it. The effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most cases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore, though it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite agent, the outrage was not the greatest of which ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... that Alexander was surly. Nor, if the weather was dark with him, that he tried to shake his darkness into others' skies. Nor that he meanly succumbed to the weight, whatever it was, that bore upon him. He did his work, and achieved at least the show of equanimity. Strickland wondered. What was it that had happened? It never occurred to him that it had happened here in this dale. But in all that life of Alexander's in ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... men who are capable of loving a machine more deeply than they can love a woman. They are among the happiest men on earth. This is not a sneer meanly shot from cover at women. It is simply a statement of notorious fact. Men who worry themselves to distraction over the perfecting of a machine are indubitably blessed beyond their kind. Most of us have known such men. Yesterday they ...
— The Human Machine • E. Arnold Bennett
... rise in the morning and come down stairs to the cheerful breakfast, or when you are called at noon and night, to join the family circle again around a neatly-spread table, did you ever think what a refining influence this single custom has upon your life? The savage eats his meanly-prepared food from the vessel in which it is cooked, each member of his household dipping with his fingers, or some rude utensil, into the one dish. He is scarcely raised above the cattle that eat their fodder at the crib, or the ...
— Step by Step - or, Tidy's Way to Freedom • The American Tract Society
... yet—something within her at the moment rose up royal—his equal. He knew her, as she might be! Between them there was something deeper than the shallow kind greeting they gave the world,—recognition. She stood nearest to him,—she only! If sometimes she had grown meanly jealous of the thorough-bred, made women, down in the town yonder, his friends, in her secret soul she knew she was his peer,—she only! And he knew it. Not that she was not weak in mind or will beside him, but she loved him, as a man can be loved but once. She loved him,—that ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... with their eyes closed. Most of these had come aboard at New Orleans, probably. The brisk ones had been aboard already, from the North. Charley was wickedly pleased to see the long-nosed man stretched limp, and greenish in the face, while his two companions meanly teased him. And then, as Charley's father and Mr. Grigsby appeared, Charley began to feel ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... danger free, Nor think the doom of man revers'd for thee: Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes, And pause awhile from letters, to be wise; There mark what ills the scholar's life assail, Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the gaol[q]. See nations, slowly wise and meanly just, To buried merit raise the tardy bust. If dreams yet flatter, once again attend, Hear Lydiat's life, and Galileo's end[r]. Nor deem, when learning her last prize bestows, The glitt'ring eminence exempt from woes; See, when the vulgar scape[s], despis'd or aw'd, Rebellion's ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... Harvey, finding his clothes upon a chair, his tools redeemed from pawn, and a beefsteak ready for his dinner, accused his wife of having money, and meanly refusing him the benefit of it. She acknowledged she had a little, and appealed to the improved state of things as a proof that she knew better than he the use of money. He demanded the said money. She refused—he leathered her—she put him ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... a gentleman. Still there was much left to say. He could own that he thought she would now accept his hand; and when Fairthorn looked happy at that thought, and hinted at excuses for her former fickleness, it was a great relief to Darrell to fly into a rage; but if the flute-player meanly turned round and became himself Caroline's accuser, then poor Fairthorn was indeed frightened; for Darrell's trembling lip or melancholy manner overwhelmed the assailant with self-reproach, and sent him sidelong into one ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... these works were meanly printed, and were usually found in a state of filth and rags, and would have perished in their own merited neglect, had they not been recently splendidly reprinted by Sir Walter Scott. Thus the garbage has been cleanly laid on a fashionable epergne, and ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... toward that shrine which then in all the realm Was richest, Arthur leading, slowly went The marshalled Order of their Table Round, And Lancelot sad beyond his wont, to see The maiden buried, not as one unknown, Nor meanly, but with gorgeous obsequies, And mass, and rolling music, like a queen. And when the knights had laid her comely head Low in the dust of half-forgotten kings, Then Arthur spake among them, 'Let her tomb Be costly, and her image thereupon, And let the shield of Lancelot at her feet Be carven, and ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... interview, felt more than one inward call to interfere with a few earnest words, and had controlled myself under a dread of the possible results, very unworthy of a Christian Englishwoman who looks, not to what is meanly prudent, but to what is morally right. At the point at which matters had now arrived, I rose superior to all considerations of mere expediency. If I had contemplated interposing any remonstrance of my own humble devising, I might possibly have still hesitated. But the distressing ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... had happened; but (Gilbart groaned) why had it happened to him? In his stupefaction he returned again and again upon this, catching in the flood at that one little straw of self; not inhumanly, as callous to the ruin of others; but pitifully, meanly, because it was the one thing familiar in the roar and din. He cursed Casey; cursed him for betraying his friendship. The man had no right— He pulled up suddenly, with a laugh. After all, Casey had played the game, had faced the music, and would go down with ...
— The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of two portals as finally thou needs must go, What of the porch and arch of Being be of high span or meanly low? ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 1,Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... depart," cried Militona to the torero, "I hold you vile, base, and a coward. I believe all that has been said of you; I believe that you could have saved Domingues when the bull knelt upon his breast, and that you would not, because you were meanly jealous ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the winter wild, While the Heaven-born child, All meanly wrapt, in the rude manger lies; Nature, in awe to him, Had doff'd her gaudy trim, With her great Master so to sympathize: It was no season then for her To wanton with the ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... most contrary chap," laughed Frank. "Here a short time ago you never even dreamed of coming and now you talk as if you'd been expecting to go right along, and had been meanly ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... you think so meanly of me,' went on Cyril in the same heavy, monotonous voice, as though he were repeating some lesson that he had carefully conned and got by heart, 'as to suppose that I should take advantage of her promise and yours? If you will let me see her, I will tell her so. Do you think ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... when they are rudely checked and turned from their course will often do) with those who indulged instead of checking it. But because Lycidas is magnificent, and Il Penseroso charming poetry, we are not to think meanly of "Fair Daffodils," or "Ask me no more," of "Going to the Wars," or "Tell me no ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... desire, but you should desire them to be as they are.’ . . . It is your duty to play well the part assigned to you, but to choose the part is the act of Another. Have always death before your eyes, and the evils which are least supportable, and you would never think meanly of anything, nor desire anything in excess. He shows in a thousand ways what is the duty of man. He wishes him to be humble, to conceal his good resolutions, especially in their beginnings, that he may carry them out in secret. Nothing is so ruinous to them as publicity. He ...
— Pascal • John Tulloch
... Men must propagate, like other animals, by the mouth. Never did oppression light the nuptial torch; never did extortion and usury spread out the genial bed. Does any of you think that England, so wasted, would, under such a nursing attendance, so rapidly and cheaply recover? But he is meanly acquainted with either England or India who does not know that England would a thousand times sooner resume population, fertility, and what ought to be the ultimate secretion from both, revenue, than such ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... no intention of demanding the payment of this debt," answered Amasis. "On the contrary, I am thankful that Phanes has escaped. Gyges has saved my soul from the guilt of shedding innocent blood, and thine from the reproach of having revenged thyself meanly on a man, to whom thy father ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... chin through it. A forehead remarkably lofty but not broad, mounted almost perpendicularly above the man's eyes; and these were large and dark and full of fire, though marred by a discontented expression. His mouth was full-lipped, his other features huddled rather meanly together under the high brow: but his face, while admittedly plain even to ugliness, was not commonplace; for its eyes were remarkable, and the cast of thought ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... wilt be apt to judge from what thou hast seen, thou already expectest a scene of riot and debauchery; to see the candidates servilely cringing, meanly suing, and basely bribing the electors, depriving themselves of sense and reason, and selling more than Esau did for a mess of pottage; for, what is birthright, what is inheritance, when put in the ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Bampfylde Moore Carew • Unknown
... had as housekeeper a woman so skinny that it made you feel cold to look at her, and her disposition was on a par with her appearance. Of course, it suited the national thrift, particularly congenial to Bogue, to feed us meanly, but we did not relish ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... meanly of your Clarissa, if you do not believe, that the greatest pleasure she can receive in this life is in your prosperity and welfare. Think not of me, my only friend, but as we were in times past: and suppose me gone a great, great way off!—A ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson |
