"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and ancient House, which was powerful and illustrious when the Hohenzollerns were but mean and petty barbarian princelings. Withdraw yourself, while the opportunity is still with you, from the fatal domination of this vain and inflated upstart who endeavours to serve only his own selfish designs. Our enemies will make peace with you, and thus he too will be forced to abandon the War. With him and with the deeds that have outraged the world they will not initiate any movement that tends to peace. He must go through his punishment, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... wonderment how the apples get inside the dumplings. How can a critic criticise a creator? The man who looks on writing things about the man who does things. But he criticises and artists owe him much. Neither in "ink-horn terms" nor in an "upstart Asiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions. He must be an artist in temperament and he must have a credo. He need not be a painter to write of painting, for his primary appeal is to the public. He is the middle-man, the interpreter, the vulgariser. The ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... wench that my mother loved, and who really was a very good girl: and of this you may be ashamed. As to the other, I dare say you don't think of it; but if you should, you would be utterly inexcusable. Consider, brother, that ours is no upstart family; but is as ancient as the best in the kingdom! and, for several hundreds of years, it has never been known, that the heirs of it have disgraced themselves by unequal matches: And you know you have been sought to by some of the best families in the nation, for your alliance. ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... since there are upstart ministers as well as City-turned gentlemen, I will remember Moliere's M. Jourdain, and feed full the gluttonous ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of the upstart town, for the horrible clouds of thick, dung-impregnated dust would not allow us to keep our eyes open. But we perceived that almost every trace of what was once little better than a second rate fortress and a village was obliterated; the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... remember all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and touch his horses, and trot off, without ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... new creation seemed to bloom around. No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety. Those hills, now bristled, like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil—the hardy oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm—while here and there the tulip tree reared its majestic head, the giant ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... for their places; and it is not impossible that, in the ruin imminent from our contentions for power, and in the necessary extinction both of ancient families and of generous sentiments, our consular fasces may become the water-sprinklers of some upstart priesthood, and that my son may apply for lustration to the son of my groom. The interest of such men requires that the spirit of arms and of arts be extinguished. They will predicate peace, that the people may be tractable to them; but a religion altogether pacific is ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... pick there—and sell 'em like a huckster; some do. Nature's gone—it's damned artifice rules, I tell ye; and a squire of our country must be three parts lawyer to keep his own. You must learn; by God, sir, you must cogitate; you must stew at books and maps, or you'll have some infernal upstart taking the lead of you, and leaving you nothing but the whiff of his tail.' He concluded, 'I'm glad to see you toss down your claret, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Shakspeare the man, as distinguished from the author, there remains little more to record. Already in 1592, Greene, in his posthumous Groat's-worth of Wit, had expressed the earliest vocation of Shakspeare in the following sentence: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers; in his own conceit the only Shakscene in a country!" This alludes to Shakspeare's office of recasting, and even recomposing, dramatic works, so as to fit them for representation; and Master Greene, it is probable, had ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... be stopped! If we can silence them with threats—all right. If not...." He lapsed into silence. Then his anger boiled to the surface again. "What man in his right mind could believe such a fairy tale? That upstart from ...
— Men Called Him Master • Elwyn Allen Smith
... had many, especially among the nobility, who looked upon him as a vulgar upstart, used this incident to bring him before a court-martial. It was unpatriotic, they declared, and they demanded that he be degraded and fined. His defence, which with all the records of his career are in the Navy Department at Copenhagen, ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... still exercised a suzerainty over it and all its belongings, and if Egypt was not strong enough to rule itself and its annexations, it only seemed fair that the suzerain power should intervene to prevent its being grasped by an upstart like the Mahdi. Besides, the Sultan of Turkey is the head of the Mohammedan religion, and had therefore a special interest in suppressing the claims of a ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... gave Mr. Ramsay-Stewart a chance when he came. They disliked him, and he was an upstart and a gombeen man and a usurper, and such foolishness, in the mouths of every one of them. As if it was his fault, poor gentleman, that the Misses Conyers never married, and so ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... honesta. Upright (post) fosto. Uprightly rekte, honeste. Uprightness rekteco, honesteco. Uproar bruego, tumulto. Uproot elradikigi. Upset renversi, renversigxi. Upshot rezultato. Upside down renversite. Upstairs supre. Upstart elsaltulo. Up to (until) gxis. Up to now gxis nun. Urban urba. Urbane gxentila. Urchin bubo. Urge urgxi. Urgent urgxa. Urine urino. Urinal urinejo. Urn urno. Us nin. Usage uzo—ado. Use uzi. Use (employment) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... it; and then asks whether it is this which he requires to have explained to him, or which he believes himself capable of conducting. The revelation acts on Job as the sign of the Macrocosmos on the modern Faust; but when he sinks crushed, it is not as the rebellious upstart, struck down in his pride—for he had himself, partially at least, subdued his own presumption—but as a humble penitent, struggling to overcome his weakness. He abhors himself for his murmurs, and "repents in dust and ashes." It will have occurred to every one that the secret which has ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... Although at first an attack was only made against the noblesse, yet latterly, every rich and powerful family was included among the proscribed, and all the commercial houses of the first respectability were annihilated. These have never been replaced, and the upstart race of petty traders have not yet obtained the confidence of foreigners. The trade of France is therefore very confined; and even were opportunities now afforded of establishing a trade with foreign nations, it would be long before France could benefit by it, from the total ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... upstart cheat us out of our heritage?" they cried; and they made a plot to waylay and kill Theseus in a grove close by ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... of the Meadow Saffron rises bare from the earth, and is, therefore, called "Upstart" and "Naked Lady." This plant owes its botanical name Colchicum, to Colchis, in Natalia, which abounded in poisonous vegetables, and gave rise to the fiction about the enchantress Medea. She renewed the vitality of her aged father, AEneas, by drawing blood ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... writer of the times complains of the breaking up of old family establishments, all crowding to "upstart London." "Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house, and an emperor in the streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a coach: giving that allowance to horses and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... a time, it behoves every lover of literature to declare himself, and to furnish his quota of facts or arguments corrective of this upstart paradox. It is under the influence of that sentiment that I submit, for consideration in the proper quarter, some short extracts from ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various
... is no such accusation in 'Evolution, Old and New'] than it would be to men of science in general for requiring such elementary instruction on some of the most famous literature in science from an upstart ignoramus, who, until two or three years ago, considered himself a painter by profession."—'Nature,' Jan. ...
— Evolution, Old & New - Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, - as compared with that of Charles Darwin • Samuel Butler
... required almost a formal order from her husband to bring her to Dresden. She was then a pretty woman, twenty-four years old, witty, and proud of her birth and her crown. Napoleon she looked on as an upstart, a vainglorious adventurer, the cause of all the humiliations inflicted on the Austrian monarchy; and the splendor which surrounded the hero of Marengo, of Austerlitz, of Wagram, aroused in her a resentment all the keener because she was compelled to hide it. Napoleon in ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... around St. Petersburg; and a small Polish village called Lodz, near the German frontier, grew rapidly into a prosperous town of 300,000 inhabitants, and became a serious rival to the ancient Muscovite capital. So severely was the competition of this young upstart felt, that the Moscow merchants petitioned the Emperor to protect them by drawing a customs frontier round the Polish provinces, but their petition ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... effeminated by their ease, made insipient by their debauchery, they were entirely powerless. All that they possessed in reality was the nominal rank and hereditary birth. On the contrary, despised as the ignorant, sneered at as the upstart, put in contempt as the vulgar, the Samurai or military class had everything in their hands. It was the time when Yori-tomo[FN79] (1148-1199) conquered all over the empire, and established the Samurai Government ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... needed. Above all, reason was called to decide upon questions before which man's reason stands impotent; and imagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religious feeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of the rational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were not theirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the light and fire of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... that time a very poor country, and the poor relation has {148} never been a popular character anywhere. Consequently Englishmen—and who was ever more English than Johnson?—commonly saw in the newly arrived Scot a pauper and an upstart come to live upon his betters: and they revenged themselves in the manner natural to rich relations. To Johnson's tongue, too, the Scots offered the important additional temptations of being often Whigs, oftener ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... about myself to take advantage of the offer. Then I cannot bring myself to think of selling Claremont, though I know that a penniless man has no right to the luxury of sentimental attachments. If I were in Egypt it would not matter to me that some upstart speculator owned ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... that life gave to me. Let that pass! It perish'd, and all perish'd with it. Ambition? Wealth left nothing to add to my social condition. Fame? But fame in itself presupposes some great Field wherein to pursue and attain it. The State? I, to cringe to an upstart? The Camp? I, to draw From its sheath the old sword of the Dukes of Luvois To defend usurpation? Books, then? Science, Art? But, alas! I was fashion'd for action: my heart, Wither'd thing though it be, I should hardly compress 'Twixt ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith
... at this sudden appearance of Buckingham, their arch-enemy, and were hating him and Richard with fierce intensity; Buckingham was regarding them with all the fervid resentment the old Nobility had for this upstart family; while Gloucester, with neither hatred nor resentment in his mind, but with the cool, calm judgment that ever rose above the pettiness of personal feeling, was viewing them only as pawns that hampered his game of statecraft and therefore must ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... eyes to his mistress! Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood's widow! Rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry's heart at the very notion; the honor of the family, of which he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance, and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to their house. 'Tis true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles, and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and elsewhere, with WORTH and not BIRTH for a text: but Tom Tusher to take the place ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... "I'll show that upstart Corner House girl that she sha'n't ride over me," she declared, angrily, as the contestants gathered for ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... disturbing his ancestors' work than of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you have wit enough) that Sir John was a very ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... brittle, dry hills they were, and left them behind. It was pitiful! It was as though a revered tragedian should overnight find that his vogue had departed; that he was no longer getting over; that an irreverent upstart, breaking in on his most sonorous periods, was getting laughs with slang. We had lots of water; the dust we left behind; it wasn't even hot in ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... remarkably tapering. Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was sensuous, insolent and dazzling. Withal her presence intimated tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered potentialities. And she was royal! No mere upstart of an impostor could have assumed that perfect hauteur, that ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... the servant; but as she went across the hall and up the staircase she felt with a swelling heart that had she been the real cousin of these children, and not an "upstart" (Grant's favourite word), they would perhaps have been sent for to the drawing-room to be ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... power, you claim, Extends but to the natives, not to us: Dare you, who in the British seas strike sail, Nay more, whose lives and freedom are our alms, Presume to sit and judge your benefactors? Your base new upstart commonwealth should blush, To doom the subjects of an English king, The meanest of whose merchants would disdain The narrow life, and the domestic baseness, Of one of those you call ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... cousin of yours is better off. On my word, we are obliged to you, Monsieur des Barres and I. If you had not been there to bring him to his senses—Come, Angelot, this country is not a place for loyal men. Do you care to stay here and be bullied by upstart soldiers? Start off with me to join the Princes; there is ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... a considerable amount of dishonesty among them. These conditions apart, they were neither worse nor better than the men of their time. As the original Company gained stability by the incorporation of its upstart rival established in 1698,[2] which put an end to a condition of affairs that promised to be ruinous to both, and by the grant of perpetuity issued in the year following incorporation, there was a gradual improvement in the quality of their civil servants. Though no increase in the salaries of ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... upstart; one that swears like a falconer, and will lie in the duke's ear day by day, like a maker of almanacs: and yet I knew him, since he came to th' court, smell worse of sweat ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... what is revealed. The king called our ancestor to the front and made him earl of Ormiston on the spot—'Gold-Mist-on;' that is, 'Be ever in the van;' and a proud race were the earls of Ormiston, and well they answered to the name. But their fortunes waned when the modern upstart, the Norman William, laid his greedy hands on everything for himself and his mob of pirates, and at present we are only middle-class people, but our blood must be the bluest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... days from Sicily to Rome, three hours from Rome to Interamna![151] Entered by night, did he? so he did before! No one went to meet him? neither did anyone on the other occasion, exactly when it should have been done! In short, I bring our young upstart to his bearings, not only by a set and serious speech, but also by repartees of this sort. Accordingly, I have come now to rally him and jest with him in quite a familiar manner. For instance, when we were escorting a candidate, he asked me "whether ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... against the nobles who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier parodies what the new and ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;— Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,— I ask ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... on herself," said Dame Scratchard. "Why didn't she come to me before she sat? She was always an upstart, self-conceited thing; but I'm sure I ...
— Queer Little Folks • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... And so severely sweep away, That few remember where it lay. So rapid streams the wealthy land About them have at their command; And shifting channels here restore, There break down, what they bank'd before. Thou art not Honour! for those gay Feathers will wear and drop away; And princes to some upstart line Gives new ones, that are full as fine. Thou art not Pleasure! for thy rose Upon a thorn doth still repose; Which, if not cropp'd, will quickly shed, But soon as cropp'd, grows dull and dead. Thou art the sand, which fills one glass, And ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan
... doubt of it now. The Princess and her escort—the plebeian upstart—were quite near at hand, and, to the dismay of the smokers, apparently were unaware of their presence in the shadows. Chase's heart was boiling with disappointed rage. His idol had fallen, from a tremendous height to a depth ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... enemies in Spain. The nobles of the court, the men who had lost money in voyages to the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad enough about "this upstart Italian," ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... little consolation in Landover's contention that the upstart was bound to hang himself if they gave him rope enough, or in Ruth's patient reminder that Percival was getting results,—and getting them ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the nation, ready to be blown into a flame. His creatures in the capital might disown it, but he knew in his secret heart that he was a usurper, and that at any moment that smouldering hatred and hope might burn up him and his upstart monarchy. An evil conscience is full of fears, and shrinks from the good news that the King of all is at hand. His coming should be joy, as is that of the bursting spring or the rosy dawn; but our own sin makes the day of the Lord ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... there is one surpassingly strange relic of the past. The palace of the Farnesi, like many a haunt of upstart tyranny and beggared pride on these Italian plains, rises misshapen and disconsolate above the stream that bears the city's name. The squalor of this gray-brown edifice of formless brick, left naked like the palace of the same Farnesi ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... an Idea that brought the Balkan League into being and carried its armies in triumph to Salonica and Adrianople. Freedom, Unity, Liberation, such were the forms which that Idea took: the determination of a free people to resist an upstart despot's designs of world-dominion; the enthusiasm of a divided nation for the dream of national unity; the longing of races which had but recently won their own freedom, to emancipate their kinsmen from an alien and oppressive yoke. In each of these struggles error and even ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... There is n't a book in my library that has such a generous way of laying its treasures before you. From Alpha to Omega, calm, assured rest at any page that your choice or accident may light on. No lifting of a rebellious leaf like an upstart servant that does not know his place and can never be taught manners, but tranquil, well-bred repose. A book may be a perfect gentleman in its aspect and demeanor, and this book would be good company for personages like Roger ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the one to whom you were talking. I will do him the justice to say he is a handsome wretch, but like all those foreign adventurers he has a dissipated air. As for the other, he is simply commonplace and vulgar, with little upstart radical notions." ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... well!" said the minister, pushing him back; "but that is not the question yet. You, Joseph, be in Paris before this young upstart, who will become a favorite, I am certain. Become his friend; make him of my party or destroy him. Let him serve me or fall. But, above all, send me every day safe persons to give me verbal accounts. ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny
... he!" shrieks out Gruff; "a promise is a promise if there are laws in Paflagonia! And as for that monster, that wretch, that fiend, that ugly little vixen—as for that upstart, that ingrate, that beast, Betsinda, Master Giglio will have no little difficulty in discovering her whereabouts. He may look very long before finding HER, I warrant. He little knows that ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as it were definitely, the landlords having given up hope of discovering serious tenants. And, of those kept open, the majority were struggling desperately to make ends meet. Only Holl's and a new upstart draper, who had widely advertised his dress-making department, were really flourishing. The confectionery half of Mr. Brindley's business was disappearing. People would not go to Hanbridge for their bread or for their groceries, but they would go for their cakes. These electric trams had ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... dissension; prelates put into the sees of Alexandria and Antioch by the arm of power; that arm itself directed by the ambitious spirit of a Byzantine bishop, who not only named the holders of the second and third seats of the Church, but reduced them to do his bidding, and wait upon his upstart throne. Gaul was in the hand of princes, mostly Arian, one pagan. Spain was dominated by Sueves and Visigoths, both Arian. In Africa Simplicius during forty years had been witness of the piracies of Genseric, making the Mediterranean insecure, ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... to?' she screamed, 'if the master is to be bullied before us all. Is there no one here who will take this impudent upstart and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the time of which we are now speaking (133-63 B.C.), the secular law had fully asserted its supremacy on its own ground, and it was the dignity and influence, not the power of the post, that made the pontificate so great an object of ambition, and so inaccessible to upstart candidates. Even for Cicero to obtain a seat in the college of augurs was no easy task, although he had already won his way to the consulship and been hailed as the saviour of ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... this upstart is old Talbot's ghost, He speaks with such a proud commanding spirit, For God's sake, let him have 'em; to keep them here, They would but stink, ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... the subject of old county families in general, and poured out all the vials of his wrath on "that confounded upstart of a Newbroom, Lord Minchampstead," supplanting all the fine old blood in the country—"Why, sir, that Pentremochyn, and Carcarrow moors too (—good shooting there, there used to be), they ought to be mine, sir, if every man had his rights!" And ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... persistent hatred of the Florentine writers of that epoch. Even the pomp and display with which the despot was perhaps less anxious to gratify his own vanity than to impress the popular imagination, awakened their keenest sarcasm. Woe to an adventurer if he fell into their hands, like the upstart Doge Agnello of Pisa (1364), who used to ride out with a golden scepter, and show himself at the window of his house, 'as relics are shown,' reclining on embroidered drapery and cushions, served like ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... Saville Row, Stonehouse reflected rapidly and contemptuously, must have been bribed to have turned out such perfection at such short notice. Too much perfection and too new. An upstart young rake. No, not quite that, either. Pain had lent an elusive beauty to the plain and freckled face, and happiness had made it lovable. It was obvious that he was trying to suppress his pride and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... "And how wilt thou prove him?"; and the King answered, "I will send for him to the presence and entreat him with honour and give him a jewel which I have. An he know it and wot its price, he is a man of worth and wealth; but an he know it not, he is an impostor and an upstart and I will do him die by the foulest fashion of deaths." So he sent for Ma'aruf, who came and saluted him. The King returned his salam and seating him beside himself, said to him, "Art thou the merchant ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... foot through the strongest part of their walls, without any great exertion of his muscles. All these absurdities arise from the general tide of luxury, which hath overspread the nation, and swept away all, even the very dregs of the people. Every upstart of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at Bath, as in the very focus of observation — Clerks and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters, negro-drivers, and ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... celebrate his marriage with the king's niece, the new-made earl, with a party of valiant knights, challenged a troop, which included the Earls of Hereford, Warenne, and Arundel, and utterly discomfited his rivals.[1] The victory of the upstart over magnates of such dignity was accounted for by treachery, and the prohibition of a coronation tournament, probably a simple measure of police, was ascribed to the unwillingness of Peter to give his ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... suspended from a wing in the ledge, and in mid-air the impotent captive swung, none daring or willing to say a good word for him; and not for any offence against God's law, not for wronging his neighbor, or shedding blood, or making his kind miserable, but for standing in the way of an upstart organization, which his impulse and his judgment alike impelled him to oppose. This little yard, bullet-marked, close, and shut from all sympathy, is to us the ghastliest spot in the world. Can Mr. Davis visit ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... in this London paper by my mortal enemy, Bunting, who had been introduced to old Stiffelkind's acquaintance by my adventure with him, and had his shoes made regularly by that foreign upstart. ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar, he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to condemn or praise this self-made ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... street, and the whole site now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present court-yard, was laid out in grass-plats overshadowed by trees and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now the old aristocratic edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses sewing and chatting and laughing, with now and then a careless glance toward the balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tuft-hunters are necessarily of lowly birth and of inferior social position, as it is to believe them all to be offensive in manner and shallow in artifice. The coarse but honest Snob still perhaps exists, and here and there he thrusts and pushes in the old familiar way; but more often than not the upstart who has won his way to wealth and consideration finds himself to his own surprise courted and fawned upon by those whose boots his abilities would have fitted him to black, and his disposition prompted him to lick. Noble sportsmen are proud to be ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, Sept. 27, 1890 • Various
... attention whatever to this rough stuff, being already engaged in courting the Hammersmith dame for the good of her social importance. I make no doubt before the maid finished rubbing in the complexion cream that night she had reduced this upstart to the ranks and stepped into her place as leader of the most exclusive social set between South San Francisco and old Henry Miller's ranch house at Gilroy. Anyway, she kept talking to herself about it, almost over the mangled ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... death-bed, in 1592, a warning to his co-mates not to trust to the puppets 'that speak from our mouths.' He then goes on in these remarkable words, which we believe every critic thinks were intended for Shakspeare: 'Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.' Again: ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... is an upstart Crow, beautified in our feathers that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you, and, being an absolute Johannes fac totum, is, in his own conceit, the only ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... keep these absurd pretensions at bay while we live, and after us the deluge." I have no doubt that to some persons it appears an extravagant joke for women to aspire to political equality with the negro. King George thought it a very good joke when his upstart colonists steeped their tea in the salt water of Boston harbor, but the laugh was on their side in the long run. History has no precedents for the elevation of woman to a civic status, but we are ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... been browbeaten and threatened; and he had swallowed it all, and almost turned to lick the hand that administered the dose. Dame! What manner of cur was he become? And the man who had done all this—a vulgar upstart out of Paris, reeking of leather and ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... Who was this upstart, anyway, to come setting signs and marks in the land that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered the little copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that he was beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... was detested as an upstart, and detested still more as a latitudinarian; he could form no party, and the queen made use of him only to support her in her choice of the Prince of Spain, as in turn she would use Gardiner to destroy the Protestants; ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... it necessary to notice this remark. He went on with his tirade against the prospective "supply:" "Why can't Elder Simpson preach hisself, I 'd like to know, instead o' puttin' up that young upstart to talk to his betters? Why, I mind the time that that boy had to be took out o' church by the hand fur laffin' at me,—at me, mind you," the old man repeated, shaking his stick; "laffin' at me when I was ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... professional you must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?—tell people that he hasn't a diploma—that he doesn't know anything—that he couldn't reduce that hernia and had to call ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... thy fame Shine bright, when thou art gone; as thou shalt tell, If courtesy and valour, as they wont, Dwell in our city, or have vanish'd clean? For one amidst us late condemn'd to wail, Borsiere, yonder walking with his peers, Grieves us no little by the news he brings." "An upstart multitude and sudden gains, Pride and excess, O Florence! have in thee Engender'd, so that now in tears thou mourn'st!" Thus cried I with my face uprais'd, and they All three, who for an answer took my words, Look'd at each other, as men look when truth ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... department of Literature. The Society was dissolved in 1853, but during the thirteen years of its existence it produced a singularly interesting series of publications. The number of separate works registered in Bohn's Appendix to Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual is 94, besides "Quippes for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen by Stephen Gosson," which was suppressed, and "Rhyming Satire on the Pride and Vices of Women Now-a-days, by Charles Bansley," 1540, which was reprinted in 1841, but not issued. The set is much sought after, and ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... the abominable Cambaceres!" I cried, stung with rage. "To wear a duchess's coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to prison—to be exchanged—to die—anything rather than be a traitor, and the tool of a traitress!" Taking up my hat, I left the room in a fury; and flinging open ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saluting the emperor Constantius as their lawful sovereign. The contagion of loyalty and repentance was communicated from rank to rank; till the plain of Sardica resounded with the universal acclamation of "Away with these upstart usurpers! Long life and victory to the son of Constantine! Under his banners alone we will fight and conquer." The shout of thousands, their menacing gestures, the fierce clashing of their arms, astonished and subdued the courage of Vetranio, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... sicken at the sun. Wound up at twelve at noon, his clock goes right; Mine better goes, wound up at twelve at night. Then in oblivion's grateful cup I drown The galling sneer, the supercilious frown, The strange reserve, the proud, affected state Of upstart knaves grown rich, and fools grown great. No more that abject wretch[93] disturbs my rest, Who meanly overlooks a friend distress'd. 90 Purblind to poverty, the worldling goes, And scarce sees rags an inch beyond his nose; But from a crowd can single out his ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... evidently a rural parson of the good old high-and-dry sort; but as I happened to speak of the sermons of the day, he burst out in a voice gruff with theological contempt and hot toddy: "Did you hear that young upstart this afternoon? Did you ever hear such nonsense? Why couldn't he mind his own ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White Volume II • Andrew Dickson White
... big for the fellow's limited resources, and yet—it might be well to study the maps. Yes, and it was like Gray's effrontery to pay deliberate court to "Bob" Parker, knowing his rival's feelings toward the girl. Another insult! The upstart certainly possessed an uncanny dexterity in pricking armor joints. But what if Gray were in earnest? "Bob" had become a wonderfully desirable creature, she was the most attractive girl in ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... exceeding all belief! Summer, my lord, this saucy upstart Jack, That now doth rule the chariot of the sun, And makes all stars derive their light from him, Is a most base, insinuating slave, The sum[44] of parsimony and disdain; One that will shine on friends and foes alike, That under brightest ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... teach this young upstart a lesson," fumed Josiah Crabtree. He saw that Tom's coming had greatly lessened his ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... set up the standard of terror against the nobles. In a few days he sacked and burned their strongholds, and the high and mighty lords who had made the reigning Pope, and had fought to an issue for the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire, were conquered, humiliated and imprisoned by an upstart plebeian of Trastevere. The portcullis of Monte Giordano was lifted, and the mysterious gates were thrown wide to the curiosity of a populace drunk with victory; Giovanni degli Stefaneschi issued edicts of sovereign power from the sacred precincts ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... to break Away the evil weeds which will not flower. A thousand years and more! and gallant men There fix'd her seat in beauty and in power; The breed of patriot hearts has fail'd since then! And, in their stead, upstart and haughty now, A race, which ne'er to her in reverence bends, Her husband, father thou! Like care from thee and counsel she attends, As o'er his other works the Sire of ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... conciliated. Well! It was the error of a noble heart, unsuspicious of fair words. And fair words enough had Frederick for the occasion. To think of such a man as HE, flaunting the banner of Germany in my face—he who, not many years ago, was under the ban of the empire as an ambitious upstart! He thought to scare me with the rustling of his dead laurel-leaves, and when he found that I laughed at such Chinese warfare, lo! he ran and hid himself under my mother's petticoats; and the two old crowns fell foul of one another, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... which only your life-blood can atone for,' exclaimed the pirate, as he drew a pistol from his belt, and presented it to the young man's breast. 'Die, upstart, die!' ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... this stoical thought of the half-pagan Christianity of the Renaissance, and does it satisfy religious souls? The upstart, the rogue, the tyrant, the rake, and all those haughty sinners who make an ill use of life, and whose steps are dogged by Death, will be surely punished; but can the reflection that death is no evil make amends for the long hardships of the blind man, the ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... mind Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort him in his failure. His only solace ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... upstart," growled Teerswell, forgetting Stillings' birth-place. "Do you mean to say he's ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... aristocracy if no distinction is to be made, and our daughters are to marry Tom, Dick, and Harry?" But Amelia took the matter sorely to heart; she kept her love, yet fell into a consumption, and so wasted away; or, as one of the neighbors said, "she was executed on the scaffold of an upstart's vulgarity." Nathan loved no woman in like manner afterwards, but after her death went to India, and remained years long. When he returned and established his business in Boston, he looked after her relations, who had fallen into poverty. Nay, out of the ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker
... about Amelia's white cashmere shawl, and having attended under the gilt cockle-shell, while Mrs. Salmon performed the Battle of Borodino (a savage cantata against the Corsican upstart, who had lately met with his Russian reverses)—Mr. Dobbin tried to hum it as he walked away, and found he was humming—the tune which Amelia Sedley sang on the stairs, as she came ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... an upstart. Also, the merry-thought of a fowl. Also, a small fish of the bonito kind, which frequently jumps out of the water. A name ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... wasting time, Lactu!" exclaimed one of the men suddenly. "Settle with this upstart later. Now let us take a vote on the issue before us. The ship is waiting to blast off for Mercury. Do we ask for ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... A RICH upstart once asked a poor person if he had any idea of the advantages arising from riches. "I believe they give a rogue an advantage over an honest ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... sheer naught; With his All-might could bind not you and me. For tho He pressed us heart to burning heart And set then to the passion that enthralls His sanction, still our souls stood e'er apart, As aliens beating fierce against the walls Of dark unsympathy that would upstart. Stood aliens, aye! and would tho we should meet, Beyond the oblivion of unnumbered births, Upon some world where Time cannot repeat The feeblest ...
— Nirvana Days • Cale Young Rice
... a touch of bitterness in her tone, the instinctive resentment (the colonel thought) of the born aristocrat toward the upstart who had pushed his way above those no longer strong enough to resist. It did not occur to him that her feeling might rest upon any personal ground. It was inevitable that, with the incubus of slavery removed, society should readjust itself in due time upon a democratic basis, and that ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... care a dang about your law!" Webb broke in. "I'm law-abidin', but when a law is passed givin' an upstart like you the right to make a decent man jump out of your way, like a frost-bitten grasshopper, I'll break it. The minute a skunk like you buys a machine on credit an' starts out he thinks he owns ...
— The Desired Woman • Will N. Harben
... question of allegiance. Of the pamphleteers and preachers who now denounced the Association as a revolutionary measure, Samuel Seabury perceived the issue most clearly and stated it most effectively: "If I must be enslaved, let it be by a King at least, and not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen." Whether to submit to the king or to the committee—this was, indeed, the fundamental question during those crucial months from November, 1774, to July, 1776. For extremists on either side, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... "heed not the mawkish cries of this upstart stripling. Obey my bidding and spare ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... wrath).—"You precious puppy! I think I'm as good a gentleman as you any day, and I should like to know when you ever saw me ride to call on a neighbour with a fellow jingling at my heels, like that upstart Ned Spankie, whose father kept a cotton mill. First time I ever heard of a Hazeldean thinking a livery coat was ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... it? A new-comer only needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rush blindly to him. A pupil of Liszt?—bah! Who was Liszt? A barrel-organ of execution; a perverter of taste; a worthy ally of that upstart who ruined melody, harmony, and form. Don't ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... was blazing with wrath over the tidings that a new foreign prince was coming to America, and that Mrs. Ridgely-Clieveden had stolen a march upon her and grabbed him. He was to be under her tutelage the entire time, and all the effulgence of his magnificence would be radiated upon that upstart house. Mrs. Robbie revenged herself by saying as many disagreeable things about Mrs. Ridgley-Clieveden as she could think of; winding up with the declaration that if she behaved with this prince as she ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... the works a vain young upstart," Mrs Parkyn said to her husband. "I cannot think how you keep your temper with such a popinjay. I hope you will not allow yourself to be put upon again. You are so sweet-tempered and forbearing, that ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... her heart Angie despised her as an upstart and bitterly resented her small success in the social world, beside blaming her for the episode with Starr Wiley. She remembered, too, how Angie had betrayed her to him. In her maddening anxiety for Tia Juana's safety, Willa had given no thought to the means Wiley ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... washerwoman's daughter, and would not associate with her, which made her very uncomfortable; and she used to tell me on the Sundays, when we walked out, how she had been treated during the week. But it was all for her advantage, and tended to correct the false pride and upstart ideas which in time must have been engendered by my mother's folly. Neither, after a few weeks, was my sister unhappy; she was too meek in disposition to reply, so that she disarmed those who would assail ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat
... pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they felt no anxiety. They were anxious, in their way. They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart—in their own language, "this fellow—of whom every man knew whence he was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... not to say 'ain't'? He came here because he isn't that kind of a fellow at all. He explained about that. It seems that he and that young upstart of a Farwell, the lawyer, had had some words and Farwell had a grudge against him. He thinks it was largely owing to those lawyers' influence that Aunt Lavinia treated him as she did in her will. But he doesn't hold any grudge. I never ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... last of all the litter scap'd by chance, And from Geneva first invested France. Some authors thus his pedigree will trace; But others write him of an upstart race, Because of Wickliffe's brood no mark he brings But his innate antipathy ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... Yet many an upstart, with thousands of the most marvelous contrivances in his own body, is ready to shout that there is no God and no design, or that there has been no interference since creation, and that our bodies have reached the dizzy ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams
... could not be exceeded in the history of human eloquence.[98] In Chalmers' fulminating energy, the mechanical polemics of an appropriation clause in a parliamentary bill assume a passionate and living air. He had warned his northern flock, 'should the disaster ever befall us, of vulgar and upstart politicians becoming lords of the ascendant, and an infidel or demi-infidel government wielding the destinies of this mighty empire, and should they be willing at the shrines of their own wretched partizanship to make sacrifice of those great and hallowed institutions which were consecrated ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... 13th, he marched us a few miles, and then halted for a day at Serriomsa (alt. 2,820 feet), at the bottom of a hot valley full of irrigated rice-crops and plantain and orange-groves. Here the Gangtok Kajee waited on us with a handsome present, and informed us privately of his cordial hatred of the "upstart Dewan," and hopes for his overthrow; a demonstration of which we took no notice.* [Nothing would have been easier than for the Gangtok Kajee, or any other respectable man in Sikkim, to have overthrown the Dewan and his party; but these people are intolerably ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... very old Barotse living here who were the companions of the old chief Santuru. These men, protected by their age, were very free in their comments on the "upstart" Makololo. One of them, for instance, interrupted my conversation one day with some Makololo gentlemen with the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" and it was taken in quite a good-natured way. It is remarkable ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... should be the partner of his soul. Yet is Marzak passed over for this foreign upstart; yet does this Nasrani of yesterday hold the place in thy heart and at thy side ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... together as she regarded the letter with malice glittering in her heavy eyes. He was writing to her, then, the little upstart, ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... Dene—fell into poverty and a humble place in life. However, he married a lady of even more distinguished race than his own, a direct descendant of a noble Saxon family, far more ancient in blood than the upstart Normans. At this point, while Peter and Margaret listened amazed, at a hint from the queen, the bewildered court interfered through the head alcalde, praying her to cease from the history of her descent, which they took for granted was as noble ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... and murmured that it was built upon the discarded hoopskirts and umbrellas of the true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being carefully, almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to lose their rightful place in the general life of ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... said that he did not age until he stopped to conquer a planet and replenish his ship's energy. It was thirty years ago when he first spoke to us. He looks like a man of forty-five now. Could he have been an upstart of fifteen when he first spoke ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... discovered that he was making more money than was Carl, and asked Carl, in her presence, if he'd like a loan, then she hated Martin, and would give no reason. She became unable to see him as anything but a boor, an upstart servant, whose friendship with Carl indicated that her husband, too, was an "outsider." Believing that she was superbly holding herself in, she asked Carl if there was not some way of tactfully suggesting to Martin that he come to the flat only once in two weeks, instead of two or three times ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... London. He had a fling at other subjects—a dozen books or so—but his graver hours were given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square or street, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret to him. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may have had no gossip for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and the personages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sour temper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts and pretenses they practiced. He ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... arrived from Scotland; but nothing had come from thence for either the princesses, Sir Patrick, or Geordie of the Red Peel, so that the strange situation of the latter must needs continue as long as he insisted on being beholden for nothing to the English upstart, as he scrupled not to call Lord Suffolk, whose new-fashioned French title was an ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge |
