"Cringing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... self, can there be anything so inclusive as being true to your manhood? Stand upright and do not be either cringing or vulgarly self-assertive. Be righteous. Let your words and deeds correspond. Lead no double life. ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the cart,—his ears down, and as much as he had ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... and with faded grins make allusions to the feeling of despair occasioned by the absence of the beloved works of art. Bah! I would offer them a pinch of snuff out of my box as I walked along my gallery, with their Excellencies cringing after me. Zenobia was a fine woman and a queen, but she had to walk in Aurelian's triumph. The procede was peu delicat? En usez vous, mon cher monsieur! (The marquis says the "Macaba" is delicious.) What a splendor of color there is in that cloud! What a richness, what a freedom of handling, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sandbags, mattresses, or little heaps of earth piled over cellar windows; streets in which the only sound was that of one's own feet, where the loneliness was made more lonely by some forgotten dog cringing against the closed door and barking nervously as one ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... even in that he had gained the form if not the substance, for the world regarded him as a man of proven courage. It seemed to him a grim and hideous joke, and he wondered what his friends would think if they knew that the very commonplace adventure planned for this evening filled him with a cringing horror. The prospect of this trip into the Italian quarter with the probability of encountering Narcone turned him cold and sick. His hands were like ice and the muscles of his back were twitching nervously; he could feel his heart pound as he let his thoughts have free play. ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... seemed, was the speaker's name—a strong-voiced; confident man in his thirties. As J.W., soon discovered, Hightower was a distinctively modern Negro. Where King Officer had been almost cringing, Hightower's thought, however diplomatically spoken, was that of an up-standing mind; where Officer accepted as part of the social order the colored man's dependence on the white, Hightower spoke of something he called racial solidarity. It was plain ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... melted. It never broke. Alvina felt that the very force of the sullen, silent fearlessness and fury in the Tawaras had prevented its bursting. Once there had been a weakening, a cringing, they would all have been lost. But their hearts hardened with black, indomitable anger. And the cloud melted, it passed away. There ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... the same sense of equality is noticeable. Shopkeepers and their assistants are not the cringing, obsequious slaves that we know so well in England. There is none of that bowing and smirking, superfluous "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing, and elaborate deference to customers that prevails at home. Here we are all freemen and equals; and the Auckland shopman meets his customer with a shake of the hand, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... narrow silk sarong about his waist, he was dressed in the English clothes of a Lieutenant of his Highness's artillery. In the front of his rimless cap shone the arms of Johore set in diamonds, exactly as his father, the Governor, wore them. He paused and smiled as he thanked the cringing Tuan Hakim. ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... propounded a theory that gave a shock to their natural affections, they submitted with a kind of heroic pride, however much their hearts might make silent protest, and the grounds of such a protest they felt a cringing unwillingness to investigate. There was a determined shackling of all the passional nature. What wonder that religion took a harsh aspect? As if intellectual adhesion to theological formulas were to pave our way to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... speak, when suddenly a shadow fell upon them. It was that of the head eunuch, Mesrour, a fat, cunning-faced man, with a cringing air. Low he ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... Athens is not commendable. It puts a stigma upon the glory of honest manual labor. It instills domineering, despotic habits into the owners, cringing subservience into the owned. Even if a slave becomes freed, he does not become an Athenian citizen; he is only a "metic," a resident foreigner, and his old master, or some other Athenian, must be his patron and representative in every ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... sun went down like a shield of burning brass over the gray line of the prairie on the morrow, a cringing, stealthy-looking man might be seen riding a sorrel pony towards the verge of Alka Swamp, near which were camped the painted warriors of Tall Elk. As he drew near the squaws began to clap their hands, and the lean, ugly dogs gave several short yelps. Tall Elk came to the door of his wigwam, wherein ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... leave their children to sink or swim in this sea of race prejudice. They neither shield nor explain, but thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as they may from brutal fact. Out of this may come strength, poise, self-dependence, and out of it, too, may come bewilderment, cringing deception, and self-distrust. It is, all said, a brutal, unfair method, and in its way it is as bad as shielding and indulgence. Why not, rather, face the facts and tell the truth? Your child is wiser ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Ha!" His lordship looked at the cringing jury and uttered a short, stabbing laugh. "Yet in spite of that you ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... among the Celts, the personal freedom of the lowest clansman was the rule, deprivation of individual liberty the exception. Hence the manners of the people were altogether free from the abject deportment of slaves and villeins in other nations—a cringing disposition of the lower class toward their superiors, which continues even to this day among the peasantry of Europe, and which patriarchal nations have never known. The Norman invaders of Ireland, in ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud
... Her light blue dress trimmed with white lace floated about the table like an air-balloon and filled almost half the room. She smelt of scent. But she was obviously embarrassed at filling half the room and smelling so strongly of scent; and though her smile was impudent as well as cringing, ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... him, as he came in, speaking with horrid rapidity, cringing and holding out her hands, "Mac, listen. Wait a minute—look here—listen here. It wasn't my fault. I'll give you some money. You can come back. I'll do ANYTHING you want. Won't you just LISTEN to me? Oh, don't! I'll scream. I can't help it, you ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... when my husband is absent Napoleon invasion of States of the American Commonwealth Not only portable guillotines, but portable Jacobin clubs Procure him after a useless life, a glorious death Should our system of cringing continue progressively Sold cats' meat and tripe in the streets of Rome Sufferings of individuals, he said, are nothing Suspicion is evidence United States will be exposed to Napoleon's outrages Who complains is shot as ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Court Memoirs of France • David Widger
... our experiences, instead of hiding it. That would be a real service to humanity, for this composite truth, assembled and studied, must lead to wisdom; but men and women are such pitiful cowards, such cringing toadies to convention. It makes ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... much of everything, even the dog or the cat, if they came in my way, of him who can have access to the ear of men in power. I made my reflections upon the miseries I had already undergone, and was calculating how long it would take me to go through a course of cringing and flattery to be entitled to the same sorts of attention myself, when I perceived, by the bows of those near me, that the doctor had seated himself at the window, and that the business ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... through the perforated vessel, the young man's wealth passed away; one month found him a cringing debtor, another found him a beggar, a third found him dying in a public institution, ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly
... hostilities. The signal for the fray would be the defiant reply of a chief to the Americans' message demanding submission, or a voluntary throwing down of the gauntlet to the invader, for the Moro is valiant, and knows no cringing cowardice before the enemy. Troops would be despatched to the cotta, or fortress, of the recalcitrant ruler, whence the lantaca cannon would come into action, whilst the surging mob of warriors would open fire in squads, or rush forward ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... her, his small pig-eyes hating and cringing, while in her eyes, turned to Smoke, the anger melted into ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... to make a show of mastering his aversion, is there any thing mean or cringing in the way he does it: his language is not only reluctant and reserved, but is even made severe with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... am right glad to see you," said the King, cringing away from the fierce eyes of the soldier. "We were good friends in the past, were we not, and I cannot call to mind that I have ever done you injury. When you made your way to England by swimming to the Levantine there was none more glad ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... have been out long before, but the change from this man's humility of the moment before, his almost cringing meekness, to his present defiance was so startling that Larrimer was ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... into a high, appreciative cackle. Le ffacase turned the deathray of his left eye on him. "Youre a syncophant, Gootes," he stated flatly, "a miserable groveling lowlivered cringing fawning mealymouthed ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... long in public memory. In his dealings with his people the Emperor is neither arrogant—"high-nosed" is the elegant German expression: "arrogant" is no German word, Prince Buelow would doubtless say— towards his subjects, nor are they cringing towards him, though this statement does not exclude the excusable embarrassment an ordinary mortal may be expected to feel in the presence of a monarch. The Emperor himself desires no "tail-wagging" from his subjects, and though there is something of the ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... every respect, such an inferior creature to the Indian—he was so vulgar, so ugly, so cringing, and so prosy—that he is quite unworthy of being reported, at any length, in these pages. The substance of what he had to tell me may be fairly ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... because, by separating ourselves from the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, it affords an opportunity never given to man before of carrying their favourite principle of peace into general practice, by establishing governments that shall hereafter exist without wars. O! ye fallen, cringing, priest-and-Pemberton-ridden people! What more can we say of ye than that a religious Quaker is a valuable character, and a ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... first man within reach of him, and then slipped back into the tower. He shouted almost immediately, for Grigosie was already at the door, and had seen that it was in working order. At the shout Ellerey and Anton made a dash out as if in a last attempt for freedom. A slash to right and left, a cringing back of those in front gave them the opportunity and the time they wanted. In another instant they were within the tower, the door was shut, and the great bolts in it ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... Shelton caught the cringing glance of the girl's eyes; in the droop of her lip there was something sensuous, and the conviction that the young man's words were true ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thus disposed of, the cavalier advanced into the room, with the calm assurance of a man who feels perfectly at his ease; his spurs ringing against the stone floor at every step. The landlord followed him obsequiously, cap in hand, cringing and bowing in most humble fashion—having entirely laid aside his boasting air and evidently feeling very ill at ease—this being a personage of whom he stood in awe. As the gentleman approached the table he politely saluted the company, before turning ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... then there broke from his lips the long, weird cry of ape calling to ape and he was away through the jungle toward the sound of the booming drum of the anthropoids leaving behind him an awakened and terrified village of cringing blacks, who would forever after connect that eerie cry with the disappearance of their white prisoner and ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... fear, the fear of death, reduces all other considerations to their proper values. The actual fear of death is always present, but this fear itself cannot be sordid when men can meet it of their own free will and with the most total absence of cringing or of cowardice. ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... miserable a specimen of the whining, cringing beggar as could have been met with in any of the beggar-camps where these unhappy outcasts of society live. She was dressed in rags which seemed to be held together only by some invisible force. Her hair was tied up in disjointed knots, and looked as if no comb had ever tried ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... mill we fed, That ground the grain for Slavery's bread; With cringing men, and grovelling deeds, We dwarfed our land to Slavery's needs; Till all the scornful nations hissed, To see ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... sent him scurrying back to his hiding- place, where he sank on the floor, shivering and cringing. Nearer and nearer roared the thunder, and the wind seemed as anxious to get into the house as he was eager to get out of it. Gradually his arms and legs ceased jerking, his head relaxed against an empty box, he laid his hand against ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... budge. No sooner were lightning-like instructions rapped out upstairs than down flew the irate captain, rapped at the door, demanded admission, and—in the absence of steam upon the wall—sentenced the cringing truant to ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... It is this cringing to a social law That I despise, these changing, senseless forms Of fashion! And until a thousand storms Of God's impatience shall reveal the flaw In man's pet system, he will weave the spell About his heart and dream ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... Hampton stared at the cringing figure. Then suddenly he rose to his feet in decision. "Stand up! Lift your hands first, you fool. Now unbuckle your gun-belt with your left hand—your left, I said! Drop ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... was bland to cringing before my father did not give me hope that I should escape his direst revenge; and the expression of Lorraine's face showed me, by its sympathy, what he expected. But we were both wrong, and for reasons which we ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... was delightful—a wild-dog puppy from the Ysabel bush, being taken back to Malaita by one of the Meringe return boys. In age they were the same, but their breeding was different. The wild-dog was what he was, a wild-dog, cringing and sneaking, his ears for ever down, his tail for ever between his legs, for ever apprehending fresh misfortune and ill-treatment to fall on him, for ever fearing and resentful, fending off threatened hurt with lips curling malignantly ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... by the door, wonderful because she saw her King of Men cringing like a footboy before a shorter than himself. True, it was case of a duke; but she had not known such dealings in Wapping. There men doffed caps to my Lord or his Grace; they gave and took their due, but did not writhe ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... conquered race, and this position to such a people who are naturally proud, cunning and overbearing must be awful. One notices this much even among the few old men, boys and women who are left on the farms; they display a certain air of dejection and are even cringing till they see that they are not going to be robbed or hurt when their self-confidence soon reasserts itself. There is a typical old Boer farmer and his family living at the foot of Grass Kop; a few presents ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... of the last and the most awkward letters of the whole alphabet. When I tell you stories, you are always saying Why. Why should my Lord Bishop be cringing to that lady? Look at him rubbing his fat hands together, and smiling into her face! It's not a handsome face any longer. It is all painted red and white like Scaramouch's in the pantomime. See, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be chaffed by every boy one meets, especially if one is not to be allowed to fight." It was, therefore, with a feeling of satisfaction that he turned into the tailor's shop. The proprietor came up bowing, as Harry thought, in a most cringing sort of way to his companion. M. du Tillet gave some orders, and the tailor unrolled a variety of pieces of cloth and other materials ...
— In the Reign of Terror - The Adventures of a Westminster Boy • G. A. Henty
... footsteps, turned towards Mr. Thornton, and for an instant their eyes met. There was a mutual recognition; astonishment and scorn were written on Mr. Thornton's face, while the stranger cowed visibly and, with a fawning, cringing bow, made as speedy an exit ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... falsehood, spleen, and pride; Positive and overbearing, Changing still, and still adhering; Spiteful, peevish, rude, untoward, Fierce in tongue, in heart a coward; When his friends he most is hard on, Cringing comes to beg their pardon; Reputation ever tearing, Ever dearest friendship swearing; Judgment weak, and passion strong, Always various, always wrong; Provocation never waits, Where he loves, or where ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... tumult of man and dog in a weird and savage beauty that hushed all sound; and life about him became like life struck suddenly dead. With his head bowed Jan saw nothing—saw nothing of the wonder in the faces of the half- cringing little black men who were squatted in a group a dozen feet away, nothing of the staring amazement in the eyes that were looking upon this miracle he was performing. He knew only that about him there was a deep hush, and after a while his violin sang a lower ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... to Chichester. There was something, though, that was almost deadly about it. It pierced like a lancet. It seared like a red-hot iron. It humbled almost too much. Here was no exaggerated humility, no pleading to be borne with, no cringing, and no doubt. A man who knew was standing up, and, with a sort of indifference to outside opinion that was almost frightening, was saying some of the things he knew ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... was always uppermost in his mind. Not from any feeling of personal pride, for of a truth vanity is a mortal sin, but because Mistress Charity had of late cast uncommonly kind eyes on that cringing worm, Master Courage Toogood, and the latter, emboldened by the minx's favors, had been more than usually ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... the Right and of the Extreme Left. Parliament was dissolved and during the ensuing November were held national elections in which, by exercise of the grossest sort of official pressure, the Government was able to win a substantial victory. The period covered by Giolitti's ministry—marked by a cringing foreign policy, an almost utter breakdown of the national finances, and the scandals of 1893 in connection with the management of state banks, especially the Banca Romana—may well be regarded as the most unfortunate in Italian ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... a pedestrian light, and a sports model bounced jauntily to a stop beside it. The driver cocked an eyebrow at Marlowe and chuckled. "Say, Fatso, which one of you's the Buick?" Then the light changed, the car spurted away, and left Marlowe cringing. ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys
... too lamentable a face for a man, Some abject louse asking leave to be, cringing for it, Some milk-nosed maggot blessing what lets it wrig ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... it known that ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... chiefly Turks. When they reached Cezarades, a distance of not more than nine miles, which had taken them five hours to travel, they were agreeably accommodated for the night in a neat cottage; and the Albanian landlord, in whose demeanour they could discern none of that cringing, downcast, sinister look which marked the degraded Greek, received ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... at Kabul accurate information as to our numbers and movements. That he felt pretty sure of our discomfiture was apparent from his change of manner, which, from being at first a mixture of extreme cordiality and cringing servility, became as we neared Kabul ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... tall, meagre man, with a nose like a wen, a protruding forehead, retreating eyes, and hair of a deep red. He wore a long black surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short black trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a bluish grey. He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that he might ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... have been writing just as I felt in those fervent days of my youth, when the quick blood would throb at my heart and burn in my cheek at any slight to the real manhood and worth I saw in him, and preference for the poor cringing courtiers I despised. The thought of those old days has brought me back to the story as all then seemed to me—the high-spirited, hot-tempered maiden, who had missed all her small chances of even being mild and ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... once more gave way to indignation:—"What a damned oaf! to be thus creeping and cringing to an idiot—a child—an ape! Nothing but necessity, cruel necessity, would have put me on this task." Then turning to me, he said, in a tone half supplicating, half threatening, "Let me ask you once more: will you sign this ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... then turned back to his companion, who had not dismounted, but sat on his horse cringing and frightened, trying, with fluttering fingers, to roll a cigarette. A moment the big man surveyed his trembling follower; then, taking a heavy quirt from his saddle, he said with a contemptuous sneer, "Well, why don't you get ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... they are in no way responsible. And factions flourish, because there is always a third party to whom to resort, who may be flattered if his rank be high, bribed if it be low, whose favour can be gained in either case by cringing and by subservience and tale-bearing. As regards the condition of agriculture in India and the poverty of the agricultural population, the ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... they'd take him away! I wish they'd take him away!" the girl moaned, cringing against the counter, covering her ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... very suggestive of a dog in the cringing attitude of the creature. It retreated a little way, very like a dog being sent home, and stopped, looking at me imploringly ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... all right," he said in a cringing tone. "You'll only make things worse by interfering. It's not your business. If Nellie and I like to have a quarrel, we can make it up our ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... his last shirt in betting against one of his own prophecies. Others again aver, and probably with equal accuracy, that he was at no time other than what he is when the world first becomes aware of his existence—the blatant, cringing, insolent, able and disreputable wielder of a pen which draws much of its sting and its profit from the vanities and fears of his fellow-creatures. Be that as it may, he somehow becomes a power. He attaches himself to many journals, the editors ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 12, 1890 • Various
... away from the white chief." Masirewa, was a character, and evidently had no respect for chiefs and princes, etc., as he treated all the "Bulis" as his equals, which was very different from the generally cringing attitude of the Fijians to their chiefs. Even the high and mighty "Buli" of Nabukaluku [10] seemed to like his cheek. Masirewa liked to show off his English, though no one understood a word, and his favourite way of addressing them when he was annoyed was "You all black devil pigs." Whilst ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... meantime Gamaliel Ives was conducting Miss Lucretia toward, the town hall, and speaking in no measured tones of indignation of the cringing, truckling qualities of that very Mr. Dodd. The injustice to Miss Wetherell, which Mr. Ives explained as well as he could, made his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... another they quailed. All their plottings, their threats, their dangerousness dissipated like mist before the command of this one resolute man. These pirates who had seemed so dreadful to me, now were nothing more than cringing schoolboys before ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... staring at Birdalone and moved not a while; and she stood with her hands before her face cringing before him. Then he raised his arm and cast the weapon far into the bushes of the bank- side, and then came forward and stood before Birdalone, and drew down her hands from her face and stared in the eyes of her, holding her by ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... as in war, he cannot retrieve it by cringing to party purposes. The desire that actuates our masses and demands able and earnest leaders has long since ...
— Red-Tape and Pigeon-Hole Generals - As Seen From the Ranks During a Campaign in the Army of the Potomac • William H. Armstrong
... you that are women's asses bear greater burdens: are forced to undergo dressing, dancing, singing, sighing, whining, rhyming, flattering, lying, grinning, cringing, and the ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... Parliament was prorogued, he would have seen the palaces of these lordly proprietors of innumerable acres filled with a retinue of servants that would have called out the admiration of Cicero or Crassus,—all in imposing liveries, but with cringing manners,—and a crowd of aristocratic visitors, filling perhaps a hundred apartments, spending their time according to their individual inclinations; some in the magnificent library of the palace, some riding in the park, others fox-hunting with the hounds or shooting ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... "He's a cringing sort of miscreant," Moore said as Carp rode off. "He was even afraid to speak up for himself—thought maybe the boys would pass sentence on him before he could get out of sight. I expect Carp is poor ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... then halted and faced him. The hideous creature crept toward me, cringing and fawning, making signs of humble goodwill and servile obeisance. Again I recoiled— wrathfully, loathingly, turned my face homeward, and fled on. I thought I had baffled his chase, when, just at the mouth of the thicket, he dropped from a bough in my path close behind me. Before ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... upon the craven souls Of those who trembling stood, And would not—dare not—lend a hand To stay this feast of blood! Whose cringing spirits lowly bowed Before the despot-glance Of him whose star now pales before Brave England! Mighty France! Ring out, rejoice, and clap your hands, Shout, patriots, everyone! A burst of joy let rend the ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... also am asked to a wedding at a relation of Choslullah's. It was quite a pleasure to hear the kindly Mussulman talk, after these silent Hottentots. The Malays have such agreeable manners; so civil, without the least cringing or Indian obsequiousness. I dare say they can be very 'insolent' on provocation; but I have always found among them manners like old-fashioned French ones, but quieter; and they have an affectionate way of saying 'MY missis' when they know ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... much inward perturbation. The eating of humble pie—as Mrs. Roy had been kind enough to suggest—would not cost much to a man of his cringing nature; but he entertained a shrewd suspicion that no amount of humble pie would avail him with Mr. Verner; that, in short, he should be discarded entirely. While thus standing, the centre of a knot of gossipers, for the news had caused Deerham ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... tensely. "Is it for want of something better that you give so much affection to that cringing beast"—he pointed to the poodle who was crawling abjectly on his stomach toward her from the bureau where he had taken refuge—"is it a child that your arms are wanting—not a dog?" His face was drawn, and he stared at her with ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... too. We know that wealth well understood, Hath frequent power of doing good: Then fancy that the thing is done, As if the power and will were one. Thus oft the cheated crowd adore The thriving knaves that keep them poor. 20 The cringing train of power survey: What creatures are so low as they! With what obsequiousness they bend! To what vile actions condescend! Their rise is on their meanness built, And flattery is their smallest guilt. What homage, rev'rence, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... was through his little grating, Simon quickly opens the door, and with fawning humility entreats her to step into his poor room, and there he stands, cringing and mopping his eyes, in dreadful apprehension, as having doubtless gathered from some about the house how matters stood ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... everything in their determination to make the unreal, real. He did not now desire to be a drivelling repentant; he wanted, God knew he really wanted, a chance to be decent and live; but in order to live he must go on acting a part and cringing and hiding. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... Charges we are at for Cloaths, To tempt the Fancies of our cringing Beaus, We Pimps and Bullies keep to be our Bail, When Sharping Bailiffs nabb us ...
— The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony: Responses From Women • Various
... the individual whom Duncan had observed to stand forth with his friend, previously to the desperate trial of speed; and who, instead of joining in the chase, had remained, throughout its turbulent uproar, like a cringing statue, expressive of shame and disgrace. Though not a hand had been extended to greet him, nor yet an eye had condescended to watch his movements, he had also entered the lodge, as though impelled by a fate to whose decrees he submitted, seemingly, without ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... were always the most polite of the regular clergy, or, indeed, I may say the only polite men amongst them; but during the crisis in which they were then involved, they were simply cringing. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... fast, my friend: d-n it, gentlemen, don't be rude. That's coming the thing a little too familiar. There is a medium: please direct your moist appropriations and your improper remarks in their proper places." The girl, cringing beneath the ruffian's hand, places the ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... veto. In refusing, also, to reassemble the Legislature, for the repeal of the Small Bills act, the passage of which he had recommended in 1835, he gave the Evening Post opportunity to assail him as "a weak, cringing, indecisive man, the mere tool of a monopoly junto—their ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... out, with Benedict filling the doorway, so he had to stand a cringing second prisoner, looking this way and that, like a rat searching for a hole, while the big Westerner read calmly through the letter which had been written out for me. That moment amply repaid me for much that I had suffered at ...
— Branded • Francis Lynde
... He drew a deep breath. Within him he felt a ferocious eagerness take fire, for it seemed to him that the day of reckoning had come. Henry's behavior was now easily understandable; the fellow was cringing, cowering in anticipation of a second blow. Well, the whip was in Gray's hands, and he proposed to use it ruthlessly—to sink the lash, to cut to the bone, to leave scars such as Henry had left upon him. Nor was that his only weapon. There was, for instance, Old Bell ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... times his fare," Arnold said, austerely, "and he deserved nothing—but a fine, perhaps." The man was suppliant before them, cringing, salaaming, holding joined palms open. Hilda lifted her head and looked over the shoulders of the little rabble, where the sun stood golden upon the roadside and two naked children played with a torn ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... afternoon. A boy crawled underneath and dragged him forth. He who had started life favoured of the gods, who that morning had been full of high spirit and pride, who had circled his first field like a champion, was a shrinking, cringing ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... Cringing at another's cry In the hollow world of grief Stills the anguish of our pain For the fate that made us die To our hopes as sweet as vain; And our ...
— Along the Shore • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... mental and spiritual attitude. Reverence is seldom found except in an atmosphere of reverence, and sincerity grows among those who are sincere. It is a moral necessity that some men should be earnest and enthusiastic, and impossible for their neighbors to be other than cringing and mean. The largest element in environment is atmosphere, and in the development of character environment is quite as potent as heredity. Indeed, in the sphere of the spirit, as in that of the body, heredity is always modified by environment. The chief factor in nurture, ...
— The Ascent of the Soul • Amory H. Bradford
... a prey to the more Christianized people within whose sphere of influence and exploitation he fell. I have always been struck by the differences, moral, economic, and even physical, between the debt-ridden, cringing conquistas, and his manly, free, independent, vigorous pagan compeer. One-half of the conquista's time is consumed in contracting debts to the Bisya trader, and the other half in paying them. His rice is sold before it is harvested. His abak patch often is mortgaged before the planting ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... Month, a Little Month—the Dudish Roderick Dhu was a cringing devotee at the Vestal Shrine of the Maiden Priestess, Praying that she should receive all his Suppliant Love, and "right smart" of his devotion. He would never leave Her Side. He would Never, never Smile on other Maidens. He would Sacrifice ...
— Love Instigated - The Story of a Carved Ivory Umbrella Handle • Douglass Sherley
... six feet long. The inhabitants of Sorrento are very superior to the Neapolitans, both in looks and character; they are cleanly, honest, less cruel to animals, and have pleasant manners—neither too familiar nor cringing. As the road between Sorrento and Castellamare was impassable, owing to the fall of immense masses of rock from the cliffs above it, we crossed over in the steamer with our servants and our pet birds, for I now have a beautiful long-tailed parroquet called Smeraldo, who is my ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... on Holmes, as he stood there looking down at the dying little lamiter: a powerful figure, with a face supreme, masterful, but tender: you will find no higher type of manhood. Did God make him of the same blood as the vicious, cringing wretch crouching to hide his black face at the other side of the bed? Some such thought came into Lois's brain, and vexed her, bringing the tears to her eyes: he was her father, you know. She drew their hands together, ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... going at an exhilarating gait, that raises our spirits out of the Marshy Hope level. The perfection of travel is ten miles an hour, on top of a stagecoach; it is greater speed than forty by rail. It nurses one's pride to sit aloft, and rattle past the farmhouses, and give our dust to the cringing foot tramps. There is something royal in the swaying of the coach body, and an excitement in the patter of the horses' hoofs. And what an honor it must be to guide such a machine through a region of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... was speeding to the open gate. He turned sharply in between the cypresses, and was met by a white-clad, cringing figure that bowed to ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... first stunned it with a blow of his closed hand, seized it by the middle, and repeatedly dashed its head against the rocky sides of its retreat. He then performed for the third time the ceremony enjoined by the Mandarin, and having cast upon the cringing and despicable forms concealed in the surrounding woods and caves a look of dignified and ineffable contempt, set out upon his homeward journey, and in the space of three days' time reached the town ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... himself facile princeps in a circle of the highest nobility in the land. Thus it is that in the clubs of the day we find title and wealth mingling with wit and genius; and the writer who had begun life by a cringing dedication, was now rewarded by the devotion and assiduity of the men he had once flattered. When Steele, Swift, Addison, Pope, and Congreve were the kings of their sets, it was time for authors to look and talk big. Eheu! ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... from the Archbishop, and caused much alarm to the opposing party by the manner in which he rebuked the Primate's traducers. The circumstances deserve special notice because they show that Cranmer was not the mere cringing time-server that he is sometimes represented to have been; and also as proving that the King himself was for once capable of feeling ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... for the words spoken by the 'father,' when he took that stick in his hand, were as the laws of the Medes and Persians. 'I shall wait for two hours before I touch my stick,' he said to a trembling, cringing chief, who had tried to stir up rebellion against the English rule. 'I must be quite cool; Englishmen are generous, but they ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... the neighborhood, never accustomed to look below the externals of appearance and manner, saw in his shrinking face and awkward motions only the signs of a cringing, abject soul. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... now empty save for the single sentry before the emperor's door. He glanced up as I emerged from the room, the occupants of which had not seen me. I walked straight toward the soldier, my mind made up in an instant. I tried to simulate an expression of cringing servility, and I must have succeeded, for I entirely threw the man off his guard, so that he permitted me to approach within reach of his rifle before stopping me. Then ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... negroes, if not in the kingdom of Dahomey, certainly in the United States of America. If it can be for a moment attributed to the beneficent influence of slavery on their natures (and I think slaveowners are quite likely to imagine so), it is curious enough that there is hardly any alloy whatever of cringing servility, or even humility, in the good manners of the blacks, but a rather courtly and affable condescension which, combined with their affection for, and misapplication of, long words, produces an exceedingly comical effect. Old-house Molly, after congratulating ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... or conduct, (45) may well be honoured, even as Cheiron and Phoenix (46) were honoured by Achilles. But what can he expect, who stretches forth an eager hand to clutch the body, save to be treated (47) as a beggar? That is his character; for ever cringing and petitioning a kiss, or some other soft caress, (48) this sorry ...
— The Symposium • Xenophon
... of guilty embarrassment upon their vis-a-vis' face had begun to swell into the cringing leer familiarly precedent to an appeal for leniency, when the fellow leaned forward, stared fearfully at the Judge, and, dropping the pullet with a screech, recoiled ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... oneself upon, hang on the sleeve of, avaler les couleuvres [Fr.], keep time to, fetch and carry, do the dirty work of. go with the stream, worship the rising sun, hold with the hare and run with the hounds. Adj. servile, obsequious; supple, supple as a glove; soapy, oily, pliant, cringing, abased, dough-faced, fawning, slavish, groveling, sniveling, mealy-mouthed; beggarly, sycophantic, parasitical; abject, prostrate, down on ones marrowbones; base, mean, sneaking; crouching &c v.. Adv. hat ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... he is not likely to die," sternly replied Frank, looking full into the Frenchman's cringing face, "do ...
— The Boy Aviators' Treasure Quest • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of that hovel of death, preached to the cringing, terrified people, many of whom knelt and crouched in the down-trodden grass and quag. He threw up his arms, and turned his blind, anguished face ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless
... why gold and velvet bind The temples of that cringing thief? Is it so strange a thing to find A ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... new anguish of pain, and fear, and humiliation, compared with which the kicks and stranglings of the early part of the night were as nothing at all. In a few seconds of time the proudest of princes in the dog world was reduced to a shuddering, cringing object, cowering in one corner of a ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... safekeeping of Jase Burrell, who was to hold it, in ignorance of its contents, and only to produce it under certain given conditions. Now Bas stood glaring at Sim Squires with eyes that burned like madness out of a face white and passion distorted, and Sim gave back a step, cringing before the man whose ungoverned fury ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... an instantaneous change in Horace Lansing's demeanour. From a blustering braggart, he became a pale and cringing coward. But with a desperate attempt to bluff it out, he exclaimed, "What do you mean?" but even as he spoke, he shivered and staggered backward, as if dreading ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... told him; but no time was given him to speculate, for Naoum broke the silence at once. With an easiness that astonished Helmar, he addressed the Pasha as though talking to his equal. There was no cringing in his manner, and at times George thought he even detected a slight tone of command ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... of this William righted himself and came cringing to Meg to try and lick the hand that a few minutes ago ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... well-directed artillery, do much execution. With what becoming severity does the bold Caricature lay open to public censure the intrigues of subtle Politicians, the 243chicanery of corrupted Courts, and the flattery of cringing Parasites! Hence satirical books and prints, under temperate regulations, check the dissoluteness of the great. Hogarth's Harlot's and Rake's Progress have contributed to reform the different classes of society—nay, it has even been ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... most children, she had always dreamed of a mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her, far from making her feel like cringing before the world in gratitude for its tolerance of her bar sinister, seemed a fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic longings and beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that had attracted Sam to her; and this difference would ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... fer me sweetheart," whined the man, with a cringing attitude. "She has a room in here, an' I saw her go ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... Britannic Majesty had made haste to exonerate the great criminal from all complicity in the crime; and had ever since been fawning upon the Catholic king, and hankering for a family alliance with him. Conduct like this the prince denounced in plain terms as cringing and cowardly, and expressed the opinion that guarantees of Dutch independence from such a monarch could hardly be ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... his back upon his past life, and threw himself into the arms of the slave-holders. The old party had gone astray too long and too far to return, and now determined to seek its fortunes in the desperate effort to outdo the Democrats in cringing servility to the South. The platform of the Convention expressed the reliance of the Whigs "upon the intelligence of the American people," but in its eighth resolution declared their acquiescence in the Compromise Acts of 1850 "as ...
— Political Recollections - 1840 to 1872 • George W. Julian
... of half-hewn marble. Uncovering her fountain, she looked at it again. It was good work; she knew it was good; she could be certain it was good. It should justify her yet, and some day the stupid people who were sheering away from her now would come cringing ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... strange now. She is grasping the rope firmly—she is cringing. She looks like a spider ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... confess'd, the ape Comes nearest us in human shape. Like man he imitates each fashion, And malice is his ruling passion; But both in malice and grimaces, A courtier any ape surpasses. Behold him humbly cringing wait Upon the minister of state; View him soon after to inferiors Aping the conduct of superiors: He promises with equal air, And to perform takes equal care. He in his turn finds imitators, At court, the porters, lacqueys, waiters, Their master's manners still contract, ...
— English Satires • Various
... to meet his visitors with a cringing air, the cat, less of a hypocrite than its master, retreated to the far end of the table, and began to ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... said I, looking up at him rather impatiently, "how goes it?" He was looking to-day more miserable, more cringing and haggard and downtrodden than I had ever seen him. He was at that stage of misery where he drew your pity so fully that you longed ...
— Options • O. Henry
... "Have pity, Sylvia? Cringing at thy door Entreats with dolorous cry and clamoring, That mendicant who quits thee nevermore; Now winter chills the world, and no birds sing In any woods, yet as in wanton Spring He follows thee; and never ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... they belong to you, Hugh?" continued the officer, with a stern look at the cringing culprit near by, who weakly leaned against the table for support after his ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... his office. Crawley, who instantly guessed his errand, and had no instructions from Meadows, promised himself the satisfaction of refusing the young man. He asked, with a cringing manner and a treacherous ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of hideous scenes. Alternate drunkenness and inordinate affection for me, or sullen silence and cringing fear. Oh, of all the frightful moments there are in life, there can be none so dark as those that some women have to suffer from the drunken ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... change in him, from what he was before the operation, is shocking. Imagine a young dare-devil of twenty-two, who had no greater fear of danger or death than of a cold, now a cringing, cowering fellow; apparently an old man, nursing his life with pitiful tenderness, fearful that at any moment something may happen to break the hold of his aorta-walls on the stiletto-blade; a confirmed hypochondriac, peevish, ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... two children representatives of the two extremes of society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor. They stood the representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation, command, education, physical and moral eminence; the Afric, born of ages of oppression, submission, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... spasm of ruthlessness that passes Down cringing HOLLWEG'S compromising spine, Boost the pretensions of the ruling classes And hail the Hohenzollerns as divine, And never hesitate to tell the masses They are and will continue to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 23, 1917 • Various
... time when he was cringing before you and making protestations of devotion! Oh, the mean wretches! I will have nothing to do with your Pushkin, and your daughter shall not set foot in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... concoctions of these Locustas and Borgias; then he unsheathes that dagger-like Neanderthal manner which he carries about with him for rare occasions of self-defence; and it warms the cockles of one's heart to hear how pertinently he discourses damnation to the cringing host. For we non-Frenchmen, be it understood, are all "des desequilibres" who demand toast, hot water and such-like exotics; our complaints need not be taken seriously; besides, foreigners are bound to pay in any case. But when a countryman begins to find fault there is not only a ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... ushered us through the crowd, to our hotel-breakfast. And, it seemed, he must have filled up his time at Dover with trumpetings of our importance: for the landlord welcomed us on the perron, obsequiously cringing; we entered in a respectful hush that might have flattered his Grace of Wellington himself; and the waiters, I believe, would have gone on all-fours, but for the difficulty of reconciling that posture with efficient service. I knew myself at last for a Personage: a great English land-owner: ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... money-loving to the last degree, full of absurd pride of pedigree, clannish and cold-blooded, vindictive as a Corsican, and treacherous as a modern Greek. An Englishman was to the North a bullying, arrogant coward,—purse-proud, yet cringing to rank,—without loyalty and without sentiment,—given over to mere material interests, not comprehending the idea of honor, and believing, as the fortieth of his religious articles, that any injury, even to a blow, could be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... matter, could he reasonably detect in the fellow's bearing anything but a spirit of conciliation almost servile. None the less he held himself wary and alert, and was instant to halt the babu when he, with the air of a dog cringing to his master's feet for punishment, would ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... war! But independence will be ample compensation. Our posterity will thank us for our sacrifices and sufferings. Yet all do not suffer. The Gil Blases, by their servility and cringing to their patrons, the great men in power, and only great because they have patronage to bestow, which is power, are getting rich. Even adroit clerks are becoming wealthy. They procure exemptions, discharges, and contracts for the speculators for heavy ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... thoughtful, anxious and somewhat crafty expression of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long continuance in high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. A few steps behind came an officer in a scarlet and embroidered uniform cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn by the duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubicund tinge, which, together with the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Mr. Shadrach, in room Z 94, the fourth court," said Mendoza good-naturedly. "Leave me at peace, Count: don't you see it is Friday, and almost sunset?" The Calmuck envoy retired cringing, and left an odor of musk ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Converted slave Cooking for slaves Correction moderate Corrupting influence of slavery Cotton-picking Cotton-plantations Cotton seed mixed with corn for food Council of Nice Courts, decrees of Cowhides, with shovel and tongs Crack of the whip heard afar off Crimes of slaves, capital Criminals condemned Cringing of Northern Preachers Cropping of ears Crops for exportation Cruelties, common " inflicted upon slaves " of Cortez in Mexico " Ovando in Hispaniola " Pizarro in Peru " of slave-drivers incredible Cruel treatment of slaves the masters' interest Cultivation of rice Cutting of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... studded with iron nails; and before this door another small company of soldiers was drawn up in two rows of six, with their backs to either wall of the corridor. Between them the prisoners were forced to defile, still cringing and weeping, as the small door opened and they passed into ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... hideous and tragic picture we have here of the ferocity of the hatred, which turned the very fountains of justice and guardians of a nation into lying plotters against innocence, and sent these Jewish rulers cringing before Pilate, pretending loyalty and acknowledging his authority! They were ready for any falsehood and any humiliation, if only they could get Jesus crucified. And what had excited their hatred? Chiefly His teachings, which brushed aside the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... see the Queen. The King spoke of him as a puppy and a scoundrel; jeered at his impudent, affected airs of duty and affection, declared that neither he nor the Queen was in a condition to see him act his false, whining, cringing tricks now, and sent him orders to get out of the place at once. His Majesty continued all through the dying scenes to rave against the Prince of Wales, and call him rascal, knave, puppy, and scoundrel. The Queen herself, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... will allow me to drink his health?" said Contenson, with a manner at once cringing ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... we look for any spirit of independence among the Christian members; and this not more in consequence of the domineering spirit of the Turks, than from the natural disposition of the Christians, which is cringing and corrupt. Time and education can alone effect a change for the better. The government may, by the promulgation of useful edicts, and by the establishment of schools common to all religions, materially hasten this desirable ...
— Herzegovina - Or, Omer Pacha and the Christian Rebels • George Arbuthnot
... substitution of the co-operative, for the competitive system, will make the weak strong; make them financially independent! Soldiering as a trade, is made possible by poverty! Whenever a people are emancipated from the cringing slavery of want, naturally averse to being slaughtered, they will rise en masse, and refuse to be apprenticed to the brutal trade of killing their kind. Thus it will happen, that armies will melt away and disappear, for ...
— Solaris Farm - A Story of the Twentieth Century • Milan C. Edson
... draws up arguments for and against this act. He is in the dawn of his days and in four months' time he will see "la patrie," which he has not seen since childhood. What joy! And yet—how men have fallen away from nature: how cringing are his compatriots to their conquerors: they are no longer the enemies of tyrants, of luxury, of vile courtiers: the French have corrupted their morals, and when "la patrie" no longer survives, a good patriot ought to die. Life among the French ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose |
