"Backstairs" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... time not change the world. You will find Socialists about, or at any rate men calling themselves Socialists, who will pretend that this is not so, who will assure you that some odd little jobbing about municipal gas and water is Socialism, and backstairs intervention between Conservative and Liberal the way to the millennium.... Socialism aims to change, not only the boots on people's feet, but the clothes they wear, the houses they inhabit, the work they do, the education they get, their places, their honors, and all their possessions. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... craftiness &c. adj.; subtlety, artificiality; maneuvering &c. v.; temporization; circumvention. chicane, chicanery; sharp practice, knavery, jugglery[obs3]; concealment &c. 528; guile, doubling, duplicity &c. (falsehood) 544; foul play. diplomacy, politics; Machiavelism; jobbery, backstairs influence. art, artifice; device, machination; plot &c. (plan) 626; maneuver, stratagem, dodge, sidestep, artful dodge, wile; trick, trickery &c. (deception) 545; ruse, ruse de guerre[Fr]; finesse, side ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... open and he and Aimee slipped within. The place, whatever it was, appeared deserted, a dark, bare, backstairs region—for he stumbled over a bucket—from which to the right he could just discern a hall leading into the forward part of the palace, wanly lighted some distance on, with the pale flicker of an ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... up a prominent man for a father, and instead of his losing so many marks on the score of that advantage, it was counted to him for righteousness! And while Hill had to introduce himself and talk to Miss Haysman clumsily over mangled guinea-pigs in the laboratory, this Wedderburn, in some backstairs way, had access to her social altitudes, and could converse in a polished argot that Hill understood perhaps, but felt incapable of speaking. Not, of course, that he wanted to. Then it seemed to Hill that for Wedderburn to come there day after day with cuffs unfrayed, neatly tailored, precisely ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... one, and her mother had been obliged to have it made by a dress-maker, and had paid three dollars for that, beside the trimmings, which were lace and ribbon. Maria wore the gown without her mother's knowledge. She had in fact stolen down the backstairs on that account, and gone out the south door in order that her mother should not see her. Maria's mother was ill lately, and had not been able to go to church, nor even to perform her usual tasks. She had always made Maria's gowns herself ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and, like another Samson, bore it away on my shoulders. It was not an easy thing to manage, as any one may find by trying,—nor would I advise young ladies, as a general thing, to adopt that form of exercise,—but the end, not the means, was my object, and by skilful diplomacy I got it up the backstairs and through my window, out upon the roof of the porch directly below. I then took the ash-pail and the fire-shovel and went into the field, carefully keeping the lee side of Halicarnassus. "Good, rich loam" I had observed all the gardening books to recommend; but wherein the virtue or the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... whispered that a near relation of the philosopher's was lady's-maid to the priestess who delivered the oracle, and the Puritan party declared that the strangely unequivocal answer of the oracle was obtained by backstairs influence; but whether this was so or no, the response as nearly as I can ...
— Erewhon • Samuel Butler
... if withstood by Mr. Pitt, it would certainly have been rejected. We see therefore, that the loyalty of the minister, who was then generally regarded as the most heroic champion of his prince, was lukewarm indeed when compared with the boiling zeal which filled the pages of the backstairs and the women of the bedchamber. Of the Regency bill, Pitt's own bill, Miss Burney speaks with horror. "I shuddered," she says, "to hear it named." And again, "Oh, how dreadful will be the day when that unhappy bill takes place ! I cannot approve the plan of it." The truth is that ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... may believe report, She holds the golden key Of the backstairs, and can command A potent influence in the land, But K———N best can tell; Tis most clear, no ill betide us, Near the Georgium sidus This planet likes to dwell. Lovely as light, when morning breaks{51} Above the hills in golden streaks, Observe yon blushing rose, Uxbridge, the theme of ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle |
