"Toady" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... number, and driven to his food and litter by the herdsmen employed by the master of the establishment. To a thinking man, it is a sad indication for the future to see what slaves this hotel-railroad-steamboat system has made of the brave and the free when they travel. How they toady captains and conductors, and without murmuring put up with any imposition they please to practise upon them, even unto taking away their lives! As we all pay the same price at hotels, each one hopes by smirks and servility to induce the head-clerk to treat him a little better than ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... conditioned to toady to judges. He didn't have the guts to answer Passarelli, and took it out on me, instead. "Our partnership is dissolved, as of right now," he seethed. He dragged some money out of his pocket and threw it on the rug. "There's your share of the rent. I'm throwing your stuff out in the hall in the morning. ...
— Modus Vivendi • Gordon Randall Garrett
... deplorable step that his future brother-in-law would at any rate prove to be a snob—he had a vague notion that all Americans were snobs—and that thus Mr. Jerome would have the saving grace to admire and toady him. But Mr. Jerome showed no signs of doing anything of the sort; he treated him with an austere and distant politeness that Lord Ashbridge could not construe as being founded on admiration and a sense of his own inferiority, for it was so clearly founded on dislike. ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... guttle. To flatter, to toady. The word is rare in this sense, generally meaning ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... contribution to history and literature, the critics, one and all, have taxed their ingenuity to find strong words of ridicule and contempt for Boswell, and have done him great injustice. Because he bowed before the genius of Johnson, he was not a toady, nor a fool; at the worst, he was a fanatic, and a not always wise champion. Johnson was his king, ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... your important labours with a quail you were not reminded that the pate de Troyes, unlike the less reasonable human race, would feel offended if it were not cut. Then the wines were few. Some sherry, with a pedigree like an Arabian, heightened the flavour of the dish, not interfered with it; as a toady keeps up the conversation which he does not distract. A goblet of Graffenburg, with a bouquet like woman's breath, made you, as you remembered some liquid which it had been your fate to fall upon, suppose that German wines, like German ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... blending a manly independence of demeanor with the regard justly due to those placed by Providence farther up the social scale. Yet doubtless there are persons to whom the sneakiest manner is agreeable,—who enjoy the flattery and the humiliation of the wretched toady who is always ready to tell them that they are the most beautiful, graceful, witty, well-informed, aristocratic-looking, and generally-beloved of the human race. You must remember that it depends very ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... tell me! It was town talk the way he made her toady to his folks, even after he'd been cut off without a cent. Kittie told me herself the very sight of the old Bevins place over on Orchard Street gives her the creeps down her back. If not for old lady Scogin, 'way up in the seventies, she'd ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... intensely delighted that his eyebrows expanded, his eyes smiled, and he felt eager to toady to the Magistrate (by presenting the girl to him). He hastened to employ all his persuasive powers with his daughter (to further his purpose), and on the same evening he forthwith escorted Chiao Hsing in a small chair ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... biscuit was all the refreshment which he permitted himself on the road from Cambridge to Norwich; although he consented to dismount at the end of every ten miles to stretch his limbs. Sidling up to Sergeant Earl, as there was no greater man for him to toady, Francis North offered himself as the old man's travelling companion from the university to the manufacturing town; and when Earl with a grim smile accepted the courteous suggestion, the young man congratulated himself. On the following morning, however, he had reason to ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... the terrace! She is going to be the piquant young woman who aggravates by indifference, and disdains rank and splendour; the kind of girl who has her innings in novelettes—but not out of them. The successful women are those who know how to toady in the right way and not obviously. Walderhurst has far too good an opinion of himself to be attracted by a girl who is making up to another man: ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Bacon are no longer the innocent and ignorant rivals whom Thackeray drew. They do not give those wonderful parties; Miss Bunnion has become quite conventional; Percy Popjoy has abandoned letters; Mr. Wenham does not toady; Mr. Wagg does not joke any more. The literary life is very like any other, in London, or is it that we do not see it aright, not having the eyes of genius? Well, a life on the ocean wave, too, may not be so desirable as it seems ...
— Adventures among Books • Andrew Lang
... sprang so suddenly into existence. Now he understood, or thought he understood, which is a man's way when he seeks to interpret a woman's mind. Mrs. de la Vere, like the rest, was dazzled by Bower's wealth. After ignoring Helen during the past fortnight, she was prepared to toady to her instantly in her new guise as the chosen bride of a millionaire. The belief added fuel to the fire already raging in ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... Mo Mercer's right-hand man: in the language of refined society, he was "Mo's toady;" in the language of Hardscrabble, he was "Mo's wheel-horse." Cash believed in Mo Mercer with an abandonment that was perfectly ridiculous. Mr. Cash was dying to see the piano, and the first opportunity he had alone ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... is the horses were two and two, and the men not. Because each man was riding one horse and leading another. To exercise them. They came from Chatham Barracks. We all drew up in a line outside the churchyard wall, and saluted as they went by, though we had not read Toady Lion then. We have since. It is the only decent book I have ever read written by Toady Lion's author. The others are mere piffle. But many people like them. In Sir Toady Lion the ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... say Augustus Myrtle sought only the intimacy of the rich and well bred, you must not suppose he was a toady, or practised obsequiously. Not at all. He mingled with his associates, assuming to be one of them—their equal. True, his want of money led to desperate economical contrivances behind the scenes, but on the stage he betrayed by no sign that affairs ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... profound psychical deficit known as a "complex of inferiority." In Banneker they would have found sterile soil. He had no complex of inferiority, nor, for that matter, of superiority; mental attitudes which, applied to social status, breed respectively the toady and the snob. He had no complex at all. He had, or would have had, if the soul-analysts had invented such a thing, a simplex. Relative status was a matter to which he gave little thought. He maintained personal standards not because of what others ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... their method as "the perfection of lecturing to high-bred audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners—of course he had, the dog! And we all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... young man," he growled. "The one that makes a fool of himself is the one that's going to play the toady to a master who will send him to heel with a kick, every time he opens his mouth to bark! Go your own way. I'm only sorry you ever set foot ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pacing from one corner to the other. "He has got what he wanted, one way or the other, the good-for-nothing toady! Making up to ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... fate and fortunes of deserving men has been, among the vulgar, a common imputation upon the man of fashion, of which class most frequently is the man of power. He is accused of lavishing his favours only upon the toady and the tuft-hunter, and leaving men of independent mind to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... ever been prominently identified with the Government of Canada, if we are at all able to judge, has possessed a spark of honest or true patriotism. From first to last, every man Jack of them has fleeced the poor Canucks unmercifully, and played the toady to England in the most fulsome and sickening manner. Even the best of them were rotten to the core, and but mere adventurers. Look at the case of the "Hyena," as he was called in his prime. One day we find him out at the elbows ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh
... to preach a sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even. If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... nevare think to put eet zere themselves. France do more for America zan any ozare nation, but ze Americans forget. Zey forget Lafayette. Zey forget France make it possibul for zem to conquaire Engalande an' get ze freedom zey ware aftaire. An' now zey—zey—what you call eet?—toady to Engalande. Zey pretende to love ze Engaleesh. Bah! Uncale Sam an' John Bull both need to have some of ze conaceit ...
— Frank Merriwell's Nobility - The Tragedy of the Ocean Tramp • Burt L. Standish (AKA Gilbert Patten)
... about seventeen or eighteen he began to ask odd questions of one of his preceptors, a learned and ceremonious personage who, considering the extent of his certificated wisdom, was yet so singularly servile of habit and disposition that he might have won a success on the stage as Chief Toady in a burlesque of Court life. He was a pale, thin old man, with a wizened face set well back amid wisps of white hair, and a scraggy throat which asserted its working muscles visibly whenever he spoke, laughed or took food. His way of shaking hands expressed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... that poor toady," the bishop went on. "And yet here am I, and God has called me and shown me the light of his countenance, and for a month I have faltered. That is the mystery of the human heart, that it can and does sin against the light. What ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... pretty bubbles, bubbles, Riding on the little brook; See the spiders try to catch them, And old Mr. Toady Frog sings 'Po-dunk!' and jumps down deep. Oh, green old Mr. ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... Josiah says, to be given, afore we got the fisheries, if we ever got them, at all. 'So,' sais I, out of a bit of fun, for I can't help taken a rise out of folks no how I can fix it, 'send us a lord. We are mighty fond of noblemen to Washington, and toady them first-rate. It will please such a man as Pierce to show him so much respect as to send a peer to him. He will ...
— Nature and Human Nature • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... discussing the Saturday Westminster. Did they not compete regularly for prizes? Had not Mr. Benson three times won a guinea, and Miss Rosseter once ten and sixpence? Of course Everard Benson had a weak heart, but still, to win prizes, remember parrots, toady Miss Perry, despise Miss Rosseter, give tea-parties in his rooms (which were in the style of Whistler, with pretty books on tables), all this, so Jacob felt without knowing him, made him a contemptible ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Laura, who had gone quite beyond the point where she knew or cared what she said, went on with a rush of words: 'I mean to tell you, now that I am started, that anybody who isn't blind can see why you toady to the Winships, who have money and social position, and why you are so anxious to keep everybody else from getting into their good graces; but they are so partial to you that they have given you an entirely false idea of yourself; and you might as well know that unless you keep ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... not polite to be plain spoken! My dear, there are times when to be merely "polite" is to be a toady! There are times when politeness is a pillow of hen feathers, wherewith to smother honor and strangle truth. If all you care for is to be popular, to go through life like a molasses-drop in a child's mouth, why, then, choose your way and live up to it, but don't expect to rank ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... better, is he not? I know little of him or nothing, but he has a more reputable outside than she has. Indeed I liked him. He had known Lord Ongar well; and though he did not toady him nor was afraid of him, yet he was gentle and considerate. Once to me he said words that I was called on to resent; but he never repeated them, and I know that he was prompted by him who should have protected me. It is too bad, ...
— The Claverings • Anthony Trollope
... Looks more Like we acted through spite makes me appear contemptible Black is a toady will do as you ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... me with violence?" he soliloquized, as he paced to and fro. "Suppose I find him with his senora? Who will be willing to be my second? The curate? Capitan Tiago? Damn the hour in which I listened to her advice! The old toady! To oblige me to get myself tangled up, to tell lies, to make a blustering fool of myself! What will the young lady say about me? Now I'm sorry that I've been secretary to all ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... be sure, a few exceptions. And chief among these were the bully, Andy Shanks, and his toady, Sid Wilton, together with two or three others who hung about Shanks, because of his money and the "good times" he could give those who ...
— The Rushton Boys at Rally Hall - Or, Great Days in School and Out • Spencer Davenport
... which took place years ago, but I have seen no reason to change the opinion then formed, that Mr. Parasyte, the principal, was a "toady" of the first water; that he was a narrow-minded, partial man, in whom the principle of justice had never been developed. He was a good teacher, an excellent teacher; by which I mean only to say that he had ...
— Breaking Away - or The Fortunes of a Student • Oliver Optic
... to play, the Convalescents, who had shown great form, required only twelve runs to win the match. Kippy and Gunner Toady shared the batting. A pretty glance to leg for two by the Gunner was all that could be taken out of the penultimate over, and Kippy at the pergola end faced Mark Styles, the postman, to take the first ball of the last over. Two singles were ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 5, 1917 • Various
... Lady Storms, whom he encountered in Vienna, he heard more than from any other. She had crossed the Channel with her Chaplain, her spaniel, her toady, and her parrot, in search of enlivenment for her declining years, and hearing that her Apollo Belvidere was within reach, sent a message saying she would coax him to come and make love to an old woman, who adored him as no young one could, and whose time ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... curtain fell on this brilliant spectacle, Mrs. Dewey assumed a stately air, showing, on all occasions, a conscious superiority that was offensive to our really best people. There are in all communities a class who toady to the rich; and we had a few of these in S——. They flattered the Deweys, and basked in the sunshine of their ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur |
