"Ostracism" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... precise rules of right and wrong conduct; to discriminate infallibly between virtuous and vicious character; and all this with such certainty that they are prepared to visit all the rigors of the law, and all the ruinous penalties of social ostracism on people, however harmless their actions maybe who venture to laugh at their monstrous conceit or to pay their assumptions the extravagant compliment of criticizing them. As to children, who shall say what canings and birchings and terrifyings and threats of hell fire and impositions and ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw
... would be secured by the absence of a popular leader; but he refused to fill the vacancy of the archiepiscopal throne; and the sentence, which, after long hesitation, he pronounced, was that of a jealous ostracism, rather than of an ignominious exile. In the remote province of Gaul, but in the hospitable court of Treves, Athanasius passed about twenty eight months. The death of the emperor changed the face of public affairs and, amidst the general indulgence ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... experience of social ostracism. Although I curled a contumelious lip, I smarted under the indignity. It was all very well to say proudly "io son' io"; but io used to be a person of some importance who was not cavalierly "how d'ye do'd" ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... hanged themselves. Even in our own times a small statue of Themistokles used to stand in the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel; and he seems to have been a hero not only in mind, but in appearance. The Athenians made use of ostracism to banish him, in order to reduce his extravagant pretensions, as they always were wont to do in the case of men whom they thought over powerful and unfit for living in the equality of a democracy. For ostracism ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... contains within itself a volume of testimony. It shows that the Negro is still regarded as a sort of social and political pariah, whom no white person may teach without incurring social ostracism and being degraded to the level of the social outcast he or she would elevate in the scale of being. Is it surprising that the Negro is dissatisfied with his condition and desires to emigrate to some country where his children may ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... the lower and eastern South found himself, in 1865, a man without a country. Few in number in any community, they found themselves, upon their return from a harsh exile, the victims of ostracism or open hostility. One of them, William H. Smith, later Governor of Alabama, testified that the Southern people "manifest the most perfect contempt for a man who is known to be an unequivocal Union ...
— The Sequel of Appomattox - A Chronicle of the Reunion of the States, Volume 32 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Walter Lynwood Fleming
... genius. Even in historic times this process has continued and been an enormous clog on human progress. The man of revolutionary moral insight has had to pay the penalty, if not of death as in the case of Socrates or of Jesus-at least of ridicule and ostracism, of excommunication and isolation as, in our own day, with Tolstoy. Many and many a saint who might have been a beacon-light to mankind has lived under the curses or sneers of his fellows and died in loneliness, to be soon forgotten. A few have, after years of opposition, obtained a following ...
— Problems of Conduct • Durant Drake
... had of this kind, I remember, was on the Bowtown Circuit not long before he was superannuated, and it was with a woman. She was called Sal Prout. The omission of the last syllable of her given name implied social ostracism and personal contempt. And she deserved both, having been a notorious woman in her younger days. We heard of her first from Brother Rheubottom. He was the shriveled, grizzled local preacher who furnished a kind of gadfly gospel to the church at Bowtown when he was invited to fill the pulpit, which ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... keenly mortified by his ostracism, speaking of himself ever after as "a political corpse." Thenceforward he gave his whole energy to literary work, to occasional reviews, mainly to his "Invasion of the Crimea." In the "Edinburgh" I think he never wrote, cordially disliking ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell
... political strength and of weakness. The moralist unquestionably secures wide popular support; but he also wearies his audience, and many a voter has turned from Wilson in the spirit that led the Athenian to vote for the ostracism of Aristides, because he was tired of hearing him called "the Just." Whatever the immediate political effects, the country owes to Wilson a debt, which historians will doubtless acknowledge, for his insistence that morality must ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour
... good-natured cynic; I shall freely admit that I have disturbed the ordinary relations of labor and compensation, but I shall so treat the matter that I shall become the subject of a semi-admiration that will relieve me from social ostracism. I have carefully reviewed the ground. I shall go to jail, pass through my trial, receive my sentence, put on my prisoner's suit, begin my daily tasks, and all with as much equanimity as I possess at present. There will be ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 1 • Various
... and that they have long been doing their best to make us comfortable. But we must keep this knowledge to ourselves, for such of us who are in business would run great risk of loss, besides social ostracism, if we ventured to boldly express our views. Moreover, we do not care to put ourselves in open conflict with the clergy, upon whom we have been taught to look from earliest childhood with reverence and ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... the wealthier middle classes had bought or bargained themselves out of the tax, so that to pay it was a certain mark of the lower class or roture. Taillable, roturier, were terms of social ostracism ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... months succeeding her marriage. It was a life not altogether distasteful to her. She was not enough of a fine lady to be dismayed or humiliated by its straits and shifts of poverty, by its isolation and ostracism; while there was something in its alternations of want and profusion, in its piquant contrasts of real and mimic life, in its excitement, action, and change, which had a peculiar charm for her wild and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... therefore, of a more engrossing and more serious character. It comprehends nothing less than the absolute consolidation of sixteen States,—not by liberty of speech, or public discussion, or freedom of suffrage, but by a tyranny of opinion which threatens timid dissentients with social ostracism and suppresses the bolder form of opposition ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... demanded for Creation than any which could possibly be deduced from the Old Testament genealogies and chronicles, orthodox indignation burst forth violently; eminent dignitaries of the Church attacked him without mercy and for a time he was under social ostracism. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... Louvre alone. Marcel, who had repainted the picture ten times, and minutely gone over it from top to bottom, vowed that only a personal hostility on the part of the members of the jury could account for the ostracism which annually turned him away from the Salon, and in his idle moments he had composed, in honor of those watch-dogs of the Institute, a little dictionary of insults, with illustrations of a savage irony. This collection gained celebrity and enjoyed, among the studios and in ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... If it is not the want of proper materials, or of taste to use them, what can be the cause of the unjust ostracism against buttered toast? ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... overcoming it! Straight from the Pales of Kief, Ketchinoff, and Odessa they come to settle in the nearest to a pale we have to offer. Great has been their poverty; a long-standing terror with them, and along with it in many cases, persecution, starvation, and social ostracism. Poverty in all but spirit and mind. The great leveler to them is education, and it is no uncommon thing for the Jewish father to sacrifice himself in order to better his son, to take upon himself that ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... ostracism is gradually giving way among the more intelligent Christian people. Nothing, however, dies so hard as prejudice, and nothing is so cruel; but missions do not cease to be Home Missions, because they may be where there is sinful prejudice and ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... conventionalism had already adjudged them to be below the level of social respectability. Regard anyone as a mirror with a cracked face and he will soon justify your opinion of him. If the morals of Chinese actors will not bear investigation it is probably due to the social ostracism to which they have always been subjected. The same phenomenon may be seen in connection with Buddhism. As soon as Buddhism in China ceased to be a power the priests became a despised class and being despised they have often given occasion to ...
— America Through the Spectacles of an Oriental Diplomat • Wu Tingfang
... which a more or less promiscuous connection might possess is at once destroyed by the intrusion of the monetary element. In the resulting degradation the woman has the largest share, since it makes her a pariah and involves her in all the hardening and depraving influences of social ostracism. But her degradation only serves to render her influence on her partners more demoralizing. Prostitution," he concludes, "has a strong tendency towards emphasizing the naturally selfish attitude of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... fled. The Kashmiri, who had the dainty flower-like sweetness of a Japanese maid, and practically the same code, had lived in his protection before this. After the nursing incident he had married her, with benefit of clergy, and the result had been hell, a living suicide, ostracism. A good officer, he still remained Deputy Commissioner, the highest official of the district, but the social excellence was wiped out—he was a pariah, an outcast. And the girl, who now could not remain just a native, could not attain to the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... Raymond went to his room and flung himself on his bed. Under his cooling anger again obtruded the old satisfaction—amorphous, vile, not to be named—that he had felt before. This brought ultimate freedom a step nearer. If ostracism and punishment were to be his portion, then let him earn them. If the world—his world—was to turn against him, let the reversal be for something. Poverty would be a fair price for liberty, and those who now seemed so ready to hound him out of his present life and ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... well enough to have gone thither of itself, if it had been put on wheels. Marcel, who had repainted the canvas ten times over, from top to bottom, attributed to personal hostility on the part of the jury the ostracism which annually repulsed him from the large saloon; nevertheless he was not totally discouraged by the obstinate rejection which greeted him at every Exhibition. He was comfortably established in ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... of Philosophical Transactions there is no speculation upon this extraordinary subject. Ostracism. The fate of this datum is a good instance of damnation, not by denial, and not by explaining away, but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by Chladni, and is mentioned in other catalogues, but, from the absence of all inquiry, and of all but formal mention, we see ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... hearts of those who differ from us, their minds, and their emotions, but never their bodies. Discipline and restraint are the cardinal principles of our conduct and I warn you against any sort of tyrannical social ostracism. I was deeply grieved therefore to hear of the insult offered to a dead body in Delhi and feel that if it was the action of non-co-operators they have disgraced themselves and their creed. I repeat we cannot deliver our land ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... had simmered down as such things always do sooner or later and that the marriage was very far from being a happy one. As a matter of fact, he learned later that the county, to a woman, had refused to accept Lady Wilding; that her ladyship, chafing under this ostracism, was for having a number of her old professional friends come down to visit her and make a time of it, and that, on Sir Henry's objecting, a violent quarrel had ensued, and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer had come down to the hall in the effort to make peace. And he learned something else that ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... facts contributed to my choice of a special study: the social ostracism which very early in my professional career I found to be my lot; and the fact that in myself I afforded a living example of the hybrid. It has been said and not untruly that the Eurasian hates his father and scorns his mother. Certainly, ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... Skippy derived from his periodic application of ostracism was in the immediate success it achieved on his roommate's impressionable temperament. At present, being in an exceedingly grouchy mood, he drew forth a pad and pencil and tendered them with a plain intimation that only thus would ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... establish the idea of the book. The Negro during the Reconstruction period was a failure. The white man who has been restored to absolute power so as to establish social ostracism, segregation and lynching is a success. In other words, the whole study is from the white man's point of view. The Negro has no political rights which the white man should respect and unless things are in conformity with the white man's prejudice ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... During the next twenty years the Philo-laconian policy of Cimon (q.v.) secured Aegina, as a member of the Spartan league, from attack. The change in Athenian foreign policy, which was consequent upon the ostracism of Cimon in 461, led to what is sometimes called the First Peloponnesian War, in which the brunt of the fighting fell upon Corinth and Aegina. The latter state was forced to surrender to Athens after a siege, and to accept the position of a subject-ally ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... time until the forties the Negroes were a real issue in Cincinnati. During the late twenties they not only had to suffer from the legal disabilities provided in the "Black Laws," but had to withstand the humiliation of a rigid social ostracism.[17] They were regarded as intruders and denounced as an idle, profligate and criminal class with whom a self-respecting white man could not afford to associate. Their children were not permitted to attend the public schools and few persons braved the inconveniences of living ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... handful of men, who had already fallen into the monotony of routine, while every friendly overture he made towards the citizens of Flambeau was met with distrust and coldness, his stripes of office seeming to erect a barrier and induce an ostracism stronger and more complete than if they had been emblems of the penitentiary. He began to resent it keenly. Even Doret and the trader seemed to share the general feeling, hence the thought of the long, lonesome ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... And what is to be the end of it all? Can a country be called civilised in which a farmer with a family to maintain, having the capital and the experience necessary to manage successfully a small farm, is absolutely forbidden, on pain of social ostracism, and eventually on pain of death, by a conspiracy of his neighbours, to take that farm of its lawful owner at what he considers to be a fair rent? And how long can any civilisation of our complex modern type endure in a country in which such a state of things tolerated by the alleged ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (2 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... first case, the necessity of publicly acknowledging illegitimate motherhood requires so much moral courage that not one woman in a thousand is equal to it. It is not moral courage alone that is required; the social ostracism could be borne with stoicism and even with equanimity, if with it were not frequently associated the fear or the real danger of starvation. For under our present system the illegitimate mother finds many avenues of activity closed to her. A school teacher would lose her position instantly, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... is too soon for scientists to demand an honorable position. They should be content to escape the prison and the ostracism which was once the reward for ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, August 1887 - Volume 1, Number 7 • Various
... wealth, as where one man or the few have greater possessions than the equality or the frame of the commonwealth will bear, is an occasion of sedition, which ends for the greater part in monarchy and that for this cause the ostracism has been received in divers places, as in Argos and Athens. But that it were better to prevent the growth in the beginning, than, when it has got head, to seek the remedy ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... idea, even as a possibility, had not entered the mind of either. They had lived a long time; they were practical people. They knew from the outset that somehow they must arrange to go on together. The alternative meant a mere pittance of alimony for her; meant for him social ostracism and the small income cut in half; meant for both ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... High Residence of Blacherne was spoken of as a den of azymites, while Sancta Sophia was abandoned to the Patriarch. To be seen in the purlieus of the latter was a signal for vulgar anathemas and social ostracism. His habits meantime were of a sort to make him a popular idol. He grew, if possible, more severely penitential; he fasted and flagellated himself; he slept on the stony floor before his crucifix; he seldom issued from his cell, and ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... would say, the Nonconformist temperament. In the United States of North America we call it the New England conscience. For, of course, that frame of mind has been driven in on the English Catholics. The centuries that they have gone through—centuries of blind and malignant oppression, of ostracism from public employment, of being, as it were, a small beleagured garrison in a hostile country, and therefore having to act with great formality—all these things have combined to perform that conjuring trick. And I suppose that Papists in ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford
... him would be visited, in equal degree, upon his wife. It was this idea of martyrdom, joined to the deep interest I had in the doctrines of Moderation, that now took possession of my fancy and made me incline to accede to his request. Not that I sought ostracism and abuse,—far from it; the very mention of these things oppressed me with dread. But there was to me an inspiring sense of nobility in the thought of a man giving up his life to the prosecution of a great truth ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... each member of the Union will formally week by week refuse to accept his or her money, and it is believed that the Government will quickly be brought to its knees. No special steps are to be taken against traitors to the cause who accept work. The social ostracism thereby incurred is felt ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, June 4, 1919. • Various
... Avenue, including Jack's own bull terrier Scotty, which in an inadvertent moment devoured the small Pekingese of Jack's nearest neighbor, a dereliction of social observance which caused the complete and permanent social ostracism of Scotty—and Jack. ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... children, would suffer with him, for our economic scheme makes the would-be sceptic dependent upon the whims of the majority believers. He is forced to hold his tongue, or else is tortured. Are not the wants of his family, the hunger, and ostracism torture? Thus thousands are forced into hypocrisy. Many others, although they have outgrown all fear of the god of orthodoxy, the fear of the god ...
— The Necessity of Atheism • Dr. D.M. Brooks
... of the Southern States is, unhappily, not such as all true patriotic citizens would like to see. Social ostracism for opinion's sake, personal violence or threats toward persons entertaining political views opposed to those entertained by the majority of the old citizens, prevents immigration and the flow of much-needed capital into the States ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson
... include all cases of absence and of inquiry into what would have been the result if there had been no absence. Intimidation is one kind of undue influence; expectation of benefit is another; fear of social ostracism is another: will you go into them? There seems no middle course between excluding all inquiry into the causes of absence and the probable votes of the absent, and allowing it in every instance where persons entitled to vote have not voted. To my ...
— The Electoral Votes of 1876 - Who Should Count Them, What Should Be Counted, and the Remedy for a Wrong Count • David Dudley Field
... "Ostracism!" repeated Sir Philip.—"In plain English, does that mean that you choose to be black-balled by us? Why, damn it, Clary, you'll be nobody. But follow your own genius—damn me, if I take it upon me to understand your men of genius—they ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... late Sir Charles Lyell spoke to even so small a public as the members of that body. Our veteran leader lighted up once more; and, referring to the difficulties which beset his early efforts to create a rational science of geology, spoke, with his wonted clearness and vigour, of the social ostracism which pursued him after the publication of the "Principles of Geology," in 1830, on account of the obvious tendency of that noble work to discredit the Pentateuchal accounts of the Creation and the Deluge. If my younger contemporaries find this hard to believe, I may refer ...
— The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science - Essay #6 from "Science and Hebrew Tradition" • Thomas Henry Huxley
... new set of men among whom he had recently drifted, to the unfeigned disgust of gentlemen like Major Belwether; "club" men, in the commoner and more sinister interpretation of the word; unfit men, who had managed to slip into good clubs; men, once fit, who had deteriorated to the verge of ostracism; heavy, over-fed, idle, insolent men in questionable financial situation, hard card players, hard drinkers, hard riders, negative in their virtues, merciless in their vices, and whose cynical misconduct formed the sources of the stock of stories ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... citizenship to many foreigners and emancipated slaves ("freedmen") then living in Attica. This liberal measure swelled the number of citizens and helped to make the Athenians a more progressive people. Clisthenes, it is said, also established the curious arrangement known as ostracism. Every year, if necessary, the citizens were to meet in assembly and to vote against any persons whom they thought dangerous to the state. If as many as six thousand votes were cast, the man who received the highest number of ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... weight of such torment the thought came to him that he should go through the ceremony after all, that he should do as the people expected, that he should accept the Governorship, and then defy the social ostracism of the island by making Kate his wife. "It's not yet too ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... herself, ever would have developed that mine of reminiscence which produced those perfect early stories of English country life. To George Henry Lewes, the man for whose love and companionship she incurred social ostracism, readers in all English-speaking countries owe a great debt of gratitude, for it was his wise counsel and his constant stimulus and encouragement which resulted in making George Eliot a writer of fine novels instead of an essayist on ethical and religious subjects. It detracts ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... liberal party in Provins. And this is how it came about: The launch of the Rogrons in society had been watched with great curiosity by Colonel Gouraud and the lawyer Vinet, two men drawn together, first by their ostracism, next by their opinions. They both professed patriotism and for the same reason,—they wished to become of consequence. The Liberals in Provins were, so far, confined to one old soldier who kept a cafe, an innkeeper, Monsieur Cournant a notary, Doctor Neraud, and a few stray persons, mostly ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... of a Homeopathic Medical College and made a permanent appropriation of $6,000 for its support. The Board then gave in and proceeded to organize the College, to the great concern of the members of the regular Medical Faculty, many of whom were threatened with professional ostracism, since they were expected to give several preliminary courses to the students in the new college. The venerable Dr. Sager, who was then Emeritus Professor, even thought it necessary to resign all connection with the University. Though for a few years the position of ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw
... ostracism, Goree had departed for his office, muttering to himself as he unsteadily traversed the unlucky pathway. After a drink of corn whiskey from a demijohn under the table, he had flung himself into the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... as men are repelled. But she was aware, nevertheless, how strong the feeling was in others. She had not lived in India for nothing. Marriage with Shere Ali was impossible, even had she wished for it. It meant ostracism and ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... leaving the office, he said to her, with deep feeling: "I suppose you realize the consequences, Mrs. Gwyn? It means ostracism for you. You will not have a friend in this town,—not a person who will speak to you, aside from the storekeepers who value your custom and"—he bowed ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... Sunday meeting was the most impressive I ever attended. Aaron and I had spoken, Charles Remond followed, picturing the contumely and opprobrium everywhere heaped upon the black man and all identified with him, the ostracism from social circles, etc. At the climax he exclaimed: "I have a fond and loving mother, as true and noble a woman as God ever made; but whenever she thinks of her absent son, it is that he is an outcast." He sank into his seat, overwhelmed with emotion, and wept like a child. In a moment, while ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... or near male kinsmen of the family are allowed to go inside, for it leads into the Gyneconitis, the hall of the women. To thrust oneself into the Gyneconitis of even a fairly intimate friend is a studied insult at Athens, and sure to be resented by bodily chastisement, social ostracism, and a ruinous legal prosecution. The Gyneconitis is in short the Athenian's holy of holies. Their women are forbidden to participate in so much of public life that their own peculiar world is especially reserved ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... I saw the officer of Gilmor's regiment who had been our prisoner and who agreed to surrender Gilmor, or rather make his capture possible. I was sorry to see that he had become dissipated. He told me the cause was his social ostracism by the "Blue Bloods." I have never mentioned his name, and never will. I have, I think a fair amount of moral tone, and I cannot see that this man's act was low. He supposed that he was obtaining the privilege to live, in exchange for the mere incarceration ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... occasion in Atlanta, in July, 1872, General Toombs among other things referred to a lobby at the legislature in connection with a claim for the Mitchel heirs. Governor Brown had remained quiet during his long political ostracism, but he turned upon his accuser now with unlooked-for severity. He answered the charge by declaring that if Toombs accused him of lobbying this claim, he was an "unscrupulous liar." The reply did not attract much attention until it became ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... only by the occasional shame-faced remark of a neighbor, "That they do better when you are not too hard on them"; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement. It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees the lessened supply ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... the world, but who really trained Pericles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a busybody and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... inaccessibility to the ordinary methods of persuasion made it peculiarly formidable. If the Duke and Duchess persisted in being reconciled the Government could hardly be called on to interfere. Public opinion in the shape of social ostracism might be brought to bear on them, but that was as far as coercive measures could go. There was nothing for it but a conference, with powers to propose liberal terms. As it was, several of the foreign witnesses had already departed and others had ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... this. There were certain hard and fast rules of conduct, like the rule which prevented any boy from giving information to a master against another boy. But this was not a conscientious thing. It was part of the tradition, and the social ostracism which was the penalty of its infraction was too severe to risk incurring. But the boys who cut a schoolfellow for telling tales, did not do it from any high-minded sense of violated honour. It was simply a piece of self-defence, ...
— Where No Fear Was - A Book About Fear • Arthur Christopher Benson
... good-breeding went hand in hand with loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political life, were of ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... for Stephen Gard, far from weakening her love only made it the stronger. As that love came more and more between her and her old surroundings, and exacted from her sacrifice after sacrifice, the more she clung to it, and looked to it, and let the past go. The partial ostracism brought upon her by Gard's outspoken declaration of their mutual feeling—even this final offering of her dearly-loved brother—these only bound her heart to ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... thus opened in Islam was never closed. The ostracism of Ali "laid the foundation of the grand interminable schism which has divided the Mahometan Church, and equally destroyed the practice of charity among the members of their common creed and endangered the speculative truths ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... reach in the brief time at my disposal. Moreover, one must needs be the slave of etiquette even though he be a clerk, and if all the staff of an office frequent a certain restaurant, one must perforce fall into line with them under penalty of social ostracism. Thus, whether I liked it or not, for five days in the week I had to spend eighteenpence a day for lunch, and fourpence for teas; and if we add those small gratuities which the poorest men take it as a point of honour to observe, ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... this good man, Brandon, called for young Daniel, who was then too far away to be on hand in time to hear what was to have been said before death ensued. Thus died a man who was brave enough, in the midst of environments that were exacting to the extent of active ostracism for his assertion of his belief that the Negro is a real human being, possessed of a mind, soul and rights to happiness, and should share ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... restraints. Whenever, in states which have had a democratic basis, the legislators have endeavoured to put restraints upon ambition, their methods were as violent, as in the end they were ineffectual: as violent indeed as any the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition, one of the natural, inbred, incurable distempers of ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... neuter, although his flag was then in the roads." To this lack of countenance on the part of his superior, and direct persecution by those injuriously affected by his action, there was added a general social ostracism, to which he frequently alludes, and which was particularly emphasized by its contrast with the habits of hospitality prevalent among the small and wealthy planter community. One friend, however, stood by him, and offered to become his bail in the sum of ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. I (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
... qualities. This scurrilous manner in which all political discussions are carried on in Mexico, has always furnished a ready apology for the suppression of liberty of speech, and for the enforcement of the Mexican law of ostracism in turn by ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... endeavor to maintain the unity of the church. Even where the church and the state were separated so that the church could not use the civil law to persecute its opponents, other means of coercion were used, such as boycotting, ostracism, excommunication and anathemas. The idea of the Roman Catholic Church is that you cannot trust the people to interpret the Bible for themselves; the Pope and the church must do it ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... question of the non-re-eligibility of the members of the National Assembly for the Legislative Assembly which was so soon to succeed. The pure Jacobins, together with Robespierre, wished that the National Assembly should abdicate, en masse, and voluntarily sentence themselves to a political ostracism, in order to make room for men of newer ideas and more imbued with the spirit of the time. The moderate and constitutional Jacobins looked upon this abdication as equally fatal to the monarch, as it dealt a mortal blow to their ambition, for they wished to seize ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... the action of Medea commences. Medea has borne two sons to Jason; as a husband and father he returns to Greece with the object of his quest. But he is now received rather as the husband of a sorceress than as the winner of the Fleece. Ostracism and banishment accentuate the humiliation of marriage to a barbarian. Medea has sacrificed all to serve him; without her aid his expedition would have been fruitless, but with her he cannot live in the civilized community where she ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of private judgment—a pressure felt even in the courts of law, intimidating counsel, overawing witnesses, and making the defence of liberty a peril. There is the pressure of fear of political disfranchisement, of social ostracism, which weighs upon this community like a night-mare. We feel it everywhere. We know that we make sacrifices when we act in this cause. We feel that we suffer under it. And if this course is persevered in, I believe that if a man stands at that bar charged with being ...
— Report of the Proceedings at the Examination of Charles G. Davis, Esq., on the Charge of Aiding and Abetting in the Rescue of a Fugitive Slave • Various
... him with such concentrated enthusiasm kept within the bounds of a reserve but little in keeping with the evident warmth of their friendships. At these times Lucien discreetly took his leave, a feeling of curiosity mingling with the sense of something like pain at the ostracism to which he was subjected by these strangers, who all addressed each other by their Christian names. Each one of them, like d'Arthez, bore the stamp of genius ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... This poem was first printed in 1865, but was probably written in 1861 or 1862 in Germany or Italy. The friend was Ivar Bye, whom Bjrnson had saved from distress and social ostracism in Christiania before 1857, when Bye went as an actor with Bjrnson to the theater in Bergen. He was no great actor but an unusual man, for whom Bjrnson had deep respect and warm sympathy. Bjrnson described his character and life-experience ...
— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... rather abused it. She had hoped the final catastrophe would draw him closer to her; hoped the coolness of friends and acquaintances would make him more dependent on her love and sympathy. It acted in the opposite direction. The public seldom wants two scapegoats. Madame's ostracism satisfied its idea of justice. Every one knew Archie was very much under her control. Every one could see that he suffered dreadfully after Sophy's death. Every one came promptly to the opinion that Madame only was to blame in the matter. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... disgrace and shame. Tears might wash it out! But to hate and resent it—so it seemed to her—must be—in a world, where every detail of such a thing was or would be known—to go through life branded and crushed by it. If the man who was to be her husband could only face it thus (by a stern ostracism of the dead, by silencing all mention of them between himself and her), her cheeks could never cease to burn, her heart ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... projected, the White South that then was, fought them with every weapon at its command. Ridicule, villification, ostracism, violence, arson, murder were all employed to hinder the progress of the work. Outsiders looked on and thought it strange that they should do this. But, just as a snake, though a venomous animal, by ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... is exacted of a United States military cadet. Usually, the cadet's plain word is accepted as ample, for the sense of faith and honor is paramount at West Point. A cadet detected in a lie would be forced out of the cadet corps by the ostracism of his own comrades. ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... Abulfazl was born near Agra the 14th January, 1551. He too, equally with his brother, profited from the broad and comprehensive teaching of the father. Nor did he fail to notice, and in his mind to resent, the ostracism and more than ostracism, to which his father was subjected on account of the opinions to which the free workings of a capacious mind forced him to incline. The effect on the boy's mind was to inculcate the value of toleration for all beliefs, whilst the pressure ...
— Rulers of India: Akbar • George Bruce Malleson
... superiority which is as barefaced and unprincipled an imposture as the most impudent puffing. You may, by a tacit or avowed censure on all other arts, on all works of art, on all other pretensions, tastes, talents, but your own, produce a complete ostracism in the world of intellect, and leave yourself and your own performances alone standing, a mighty monument in an universal waste and wreck of genius. By cutting away the rude block and removing the rubbish from around it, the idol may be effectually exposed to view, placed on its pedestal ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... tend constantly to improve. Men form an ideal of behaviour by observing the conduct of the best of their class, and in proportion as this ideal gains acceptance, find themselves driven to adopt it for fear of the social ostracism which is the modern equivalent of excommunication. Little by little what was at first a rarely attained ideal becomes a part of good manners. It established itself as custom and finally becomes part ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... to Stedman for a portrait, and the need of money grew imperative. He the more blamed Frances for having quarrelled with her aunt, told her it was for her money he had married her, that she had ruined his career, and that she was to blame for his ostracism—a condition that his own misconduct had brought upon him. Finally, after twelve months of this, one morning he left a note saying he no longer would allow her to be a drag upon him, and sailed ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... cadet days," smiled the lieutenant, "such a suspicion against a cadet officer would certainly have resulted in ostracism ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock
... local governing bodies, we find, have long since been superseded by great provincial municipalities for all the more serious administrative purposes, but they still survive to discharge a number of curious minor functions, and not the least among these is this sort of aesthetic ostracism. Every year every minor local governing body pulls down a building selected by local plebiscite, and the greater Government pays a slight compensation to the owner, and resumes possession of the land it occupies. The idea would ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... acts as these on the part of government officials, it is not surprising that private citizens began to take their local affairs into their own hands. A regular system of espionage and ostracism was established all over the South. Everybody who was known or suspected of being opposed to slavery and disunion was not only closely watched, but was denied admission to homes in which he had always ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... found some relief in our change of living. If nothing else, I was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our increasing portion in the university town ever since the enmity of the nascent Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to me likewise adventure, and the greatest of all, for it was love-adventure. The change in our fortunes had hastened my marriage, and it was ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... reprehensible invasion of private rights was regarded by those in authority as a high and meritorious action. It was certainly so regarded by "the best society" of York at the time. The young men, who ought to have been made to suffer social ostracism, were petted and caressed as heroes who had done some grand service to the State; and, as will presently be seen, they were not even permitted to suffer any considerable pecuniary loss by reason of their breach ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... Executive, but never before characterized by the intensity, not infrequently malevolence, that had come to mark this and never before had a division between the Executive and the Congress reached a point at which a suggestion of his constitutional ostracism from office had been seriously ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross
... had written a letter to his friend, the Governor of St. Croix, which had caused that estimable functionary to forbid Levine the door of Government House. Levine could not endure social ostracism. He left St. Croix immediately, and took his son Peter with him. To this child Rachael never referred, and her mother doubted if she remembered anything associated with its impending birth. Perhaps she believed it dead. At all ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... as a school teacher "refused to bow before the Emperor's portrait."[100] He endured, as was to be expected, social ostracism and straitened means. But when his voice came to be heard in journalism it was recognised as the voice of a man of principle by people who heard it far from gladly. There is a seamy side to some Japanese journalism[101] and Uchimura soon resigned his editorial chair. He abandoned a second editorship ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... banished upon the appearance of the fourth and last dialogue of the Pursuits of Literature. Had a thunderbolt fallen upon him, he could not have been more astonished than he was by the onslaught of Mr. Matthias, which led to his ostracism from ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... and set-up I feel, as though I'd come into my own again after a period of social ostracism. I must confess that I get lonely for some one who talks my kind of nonsensical talk. Betsy trots off home every week end, and the doctor is conversational enough, but, oh, so horribly logical! Gordon somehow seems to stand for the life I belong to,—of country clubs and motors ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... oration on "Toussaint" that evening for the benefit of his admirers; and then that was not enough, but they must have his lecture on "The Lost Arts" the evening afterward. This was a fine triumph for him after twenty-five years of social ostracism but his anxiety in regard to the condition of the country, prevented him from enjoying it ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... they took up an absolutely new position. The structure of blind faith had once again crumbled at the assault of realities, and unhealthy, un-English truths, the statement of which would have meant ostracism twenty-four hours earlier, became suddenly the platitudes of the ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... our text were moved by 'fear.' They dreaded ridicule, the loss of position, the expulsion from Sanhedrim and synagogue, social ostracism, and all the armoury of offensive weapons which would have been used against them by their colleagues. So, ignobly they kept their thumb on their convictions, and the two of them sat dumb in the council when the scornful question was asked, 'Have any of the rulers or of the ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI • Alexander Maclaren
... She could remember more than twenty years ago when she had made her own runaway match, the tortures of inquisition through which she had been put by her husband's relatives, and the complete ostracism with which the ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres
... policy of the English Government; that the said Government is afraid of giving a chance to natives who may be suspected of being hostile to the British rule. In reality, the Government has little or nothing to do with it. This state of things must be attributed entirely to the social ostracism, to the contempt felt by a "superior" for an "inferior" race, a contempt deeply rooted in some members of the Anglo-Indian society and displayed at the least provocation. This question of racial "superiority" and "inferiority" plays ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... members of his caste are prohibited from accepting his hospitality. Not even his own household are permitted to dine with him. He is boycotted, absolutely, by all his best friends, associates, and companions. Not one of them dares, under penalty of complete ostracism, to harbour or favour him. Nor will he be invited to their homes. They dare not receive him under the shelter of their roofs nor offer him food. More than once the writer has seen the bitter tyranny of caste brought to bear ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... minutes the Nabob had been subjected to every manifestation of the terrible ostracism of that Paris world to which he had neither relationship nor serious ties, and whose contempt isolated him more surely than a visiting monarch is isolated by respect—the averted look, the apparently aimless step aside, the hat suddenly put on and pulled down ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... Vandervelde, at the same time, expressed opinions on this subject which were contrary to those held by the majority of Socialists, whilst several Catholics, who disapproved of the terms on which the Congo was offered to the nation, did not hesitate to say so. None of these expressions of opinion involved ostracism from the party, and, although party discipline is strict, there is but little doubt that this freedom of movement in respect to non-party questions will continue to grow. The annexation of the Congo was voted in due course, but the ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys
... of the people, whose power I increased that I might render it the basis and support of my own, I gained such an ascendant over all my opponents that, having first procured the banishment of Cimon by ostracism, and then of Thucydides, another formidable antagonist set up by the nobles against my authority, I became the unrivalled chief, or rather the monarch, of the Athenian Republic, without ever putting to death, ...
— Dialogues of the Dead • Lord Lyttelton
... favor as workingmen of the era of Jacquard looked upon the introduction of a new piece of machinery. Unless the apprentice had exceptional tact, he underwent a rough novitiate. In any case he served a term of social ostracism before he was admitted to full comradeship. Mr. Slocum could easily have found openings each year for a dozen learners, had the matter been under his control; but it was not. "I am the master of each ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... shops in purchasing slow perdition for the husband, and misery and shame for his wife and children. In respectable Pushton, a drunkard's family, especially if poor, had a very low social status. Mrs. Lacey and her children would not accept of bad associations, so they had scarcely any. This ostracism, within certain limits, is perhaps right. The preventive penalties of vice can scarcely be too great, and men and women must be made to feel that wrong-doing is certain to be followed by terrible consequences. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... physically attractive—and possibly too affectionate and trusting—to torturing anxiety, to illness, to the horrible suffering of undesired travail, to disgrace, and in nineteen cases out of twenty to ostracism and the infamy of the streets. Murder is a small thing compared with this. Who would not rather that his daughter were killed in her innocence than that she should be doomed to such ...
— Youth and Sex • Mary Scharlieb and F. Arthur Sibly
... for the fact that a husband, or somebody, unexpectedly turned up—a husky little man with a cast in one eye, who looked uxorious to an alarming degree. He carried her off in the nick of time to save Mr. Eames from social ostracism, mental dotage, and financial ruin. Her mere appearance had made him the laughing-stock of the place; her appetite had led him into outlays altogether incompatible with his income, chiefly in the matter of ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... and has trouble to keep her skirts from blowing up and entangling her waist, denotes that she will carry on a secret flirtation and will be horrified to find that scandal has gotten possession of her name and she will run a close risk of disgrace and ostracism. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... satin lining forming a lovely background for her finely-shaped head with its halo of silver hair. No one ever had seen her so moved as on this occasion when her memory must have carried her back to the days of bare halls, hostile audiences, ridicule, abuse, loneliness and ostracism by all but a very few staunch friends. "Would she be able to speak?" many in the audience asked themselves, but the nearest friends waited calmly and without anxiety. They never had known her to fail. The result was ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... justice, however, which is obliged to execute itself on the bodies of criminals demands the open degradation and social ostracism of unfaithful wives as a necessary portion of its machinery, and the well-being of ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... decked as Italian. Many of those financial institutions were but branches of German houses, and their methods were identical with those of the Banca Commerciale: long credits and easy modes of repayment offered to all those who agreed to deal with German firms, while discredit, ostracism, and ruin threatened the recalcitrant. And as Italian money and Italian institutions were employed as instruments of German interpenetration in foreign countries,[45] so Russian funds and banks were used as helps to German interpenetration ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... effective and comprehensive than this recession. Within the space of a few days a revolution was completed that had been sought by the power of our nation and of the civilized world, for a generation, with stripes and imprisonment, death, confiscation and the ostracism of the country's public contempt. It had been obtained, I knew, chiefly by the sagacity of the First Councillor using the pressure of circumstances to enforce the persuasions of diplomacy. I felt that a miracle of change had been brought to pass. He had placed ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... "This will make ostracism parallel to the Reformation or the Revolution," said Sheffield; "there is a battle of influence against influence, and one gets rid of the other; law or constitution does not come into question, but the will ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... widely stretching and vast acres, must respond to capital and energy, the money and the skill of the North. Here is room in South Carolina alone for all of New England, and in no State could the spirit of New England work such marvels. But so long as the fogs of slavery and misgovernment and ostracism and social hatred hang over them like the malaria of their own rice lowlands, so long South Carolina will be a prostrate State, crying for sympathy and help. Let us trust that the time has come for the people to help themselves, and in doing so, raise their Commonwealth to a pinacle of grandeur and ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... extract we have just made, some observations upon the famous law of Ostracism, which are well deserving of attention, and which we would willingly quote did our space allow of it. Perhaps it would be difficult, in following out the several applications of this law, to show that it had exactly the beneficial operation which—arguing on the theory of the institution,—is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... the education of the children. Outwardly he must conform to the ways of his neighbors, just as he must pay tribute to the policeman on the beat; for standing room is necessary to all operations, and social ostracism could ruin him as easily as police persecution. His children, if he started them right, would not have to bow to the yoke as low as he; his children's children might even be free men. And education was the ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... herself to speak to him of the strange avoidance of her husband that was being practised by the rest of the station either. She endured it dumbly, holding herself more and more aloof in consequence of it as the days went by. Ever since the days of her own ostracism she had placed a very light price upon social popularity. The love of such women as Mary Ralston—and the love of little Tessa—were of infinitely ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... such a course, and consequently Min Kean. In her heart, Elizabeth disapproved, but she was not able to speak as the others had done. She could only sit silent. Popular opinion was in favor of the ostracism. Then another question was brought up. Landis, again, was the one to set ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... of sacrifice, propitiation, and finally of thanksgiving. All are interwoven with tribal law and custom to such an extent that neglect, on the part of the individual, amounts to a crime against the community, and hence is punished with public indignation and ostracism. ...
— The Tinguian - Social, Religious, and Economic Life of a Philippine Tribe • Fay-Cooper Cole
... offence. But, as we learn that Behrisch was also excluded from the same society, and that he was dismissed from the charge of his pupils on the ground of his loose life, we may infer that Goethe does not state all the reasons for his own social ostracism.[25] ...
— The Youth of Goethe • Peter Hume Brown
... guards—Bonifacio, Marvin, who had killed a guard while trying to escape from the prison, and Bassett, the train-robber, who was driven to it because the express-messenger wouldn't raise his hands when ordered to do so. The remaining four smoldered, silent, in their cells, no doubt feeling their social ostracism in Limbo Lane society more keenly than they did the memory of their less ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... but had lived alone, speaking to no one, avoided by all, working out his punishment. Only the day before the meeting he had read of the massacre at Damascus from a newspaper which had been left on his doorstep overnight. Elder Fairley had so far broken the covenant of ostracism and boycott, knowing David's love ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... young girl the little child had been her charge. "Always take care of little Co", was one of my mother's dying charges to me, and fortunately "little Co" has—though the only one of my relatives who has done so—clung to me through change of faith, and through social ostracism. Her love for me, and her full belief that, however she differed from me, I meant right, have never varied, have never been shaken. She is intensely religious—as will be seen in the later story, wherein her life was much woven ...
— Autobiographical Sketches • Annie Besant |
