"Downtrodden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... over-seas, whose presence had brought the movement to a head, would disperse; either amid the peals of Homeric laughter that in Ireland greet a monster jest, or, in sadder mood, cursing the detested Saxon for one more added to the many wrongs of a downtrodden land. ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... The downtrodden McNulty disappears, with his traducers. But Bobby Little's eyebrows have not been altogether thrown ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... divine character more distinctly, than when He was surrounded by the hosannas of the thoughtless and fickle mob. So, in like manner and at a humble distance, Arthur Tappan reached his highest point of honor as a patriotic Christian man when, for the sake of the poor and downtrodden slaves, he was willing to bear reproach and jeopardize ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 3, March, 1896 • Various
... conditions before described must cause the steadily increasing degradation of the masses. (c) The catastrophic theory; the final and inevitable result of this movement must be a revolution, when the downtrodden workers will throw off their chains and expropriate the expropriators. There is no doubt that Marx, when he first formulated this philosophy, believed that such a revolution, most violent in nature, would occur within ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... gentle Sage whose renunciation typified the greater Sacrifice offered by the Saviour of the World. Who that reads the story of Sakya Munyi can doubt that through the Prince who gave up kingdom, throne, and earthly ties for the sake of downtrodden humanity, a prophetic gleam of heavenly light pierced the darkness of the future, and pointed to the distant Cross? Twenty-five centuries have rolled away since Prince Siddartha closed his unique career, and twelve ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... himself, his nieces, and Joe Beecher ever knew exactly what happened, what was the aspect of the door-mat erected to human life, of the worm turned to menace. It must have savored of horror, as do all meek and downtrodden things when they gain, driven to bay, the strength to do battle. It must have savored of the god-like, when the man who had borne with patience, dignity, and sorrow for them the stings of lesser things because they were lesser ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... practically to increasing the supply. The results of this 'custom' were such that in 1764, a quarter of a century before the Revolution of 1789, the king intervened, but in vain, to put a stop to it. The 'oppressed and downtrodden peasant' of Picardy under the ancien regime did what he liked with his neighbour's property—that neighbour being a landlord—as cheerily as the manacled Celt of Mayo or Tipperary in our own times. Two years before the Revolution, in 1787, the assembly ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... what influence causes the downtrodden blade to raise itself once more! Is it the vivifying breath of the west wind, or a mysterious power sent forth from the bosom of Mother Earth? It was a touching sight to see how those two children, crushed as they were ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... brought with it ignoble and repulsive associations only. He was not the man to reach a hand across Shylock and the old-clothes man, to grasp that of the poet-king of Israel; or Esther, the avenging queen of a downtrodden nation; or Joab, strong in valor and fidelity; or Deborah, inspired to rule a people from beneath the shelter of her ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... procure more than 1 pound 2s. 6d. from an intelligent pawnbroker to whom I stated the circumstances and with whom I pledged the ring, my sympathies with the cause of a downtrodden and chivalrous people were at once enlisted. I could not help wondering that in rich England, the home of the oppressed and the free, a young and lovely woman like the fair author of those pages should ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... great cities. My heart has bled at the sufferings of the poor people who are wearing their wretched lives away in toil for a most wretched sustenance. The friends I once knew have turned from me and called me a socialist, an anarchist. They call us anarchists because we sympathize with the downtrodden masses—because we prophesy the coming of the great struggle that shall emancipate these masses. We are not anarchists, but we are proud to be called socialists. Anarchy is disorder and ruin. Socialism is order ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... courtesy, curtsy, kowtow. pocket the affront; make the best of, make a virtue of necessity; grin and abide, grin and bear it, shrug the shoulders, resign oneself; submit with a good grace &c. (bear with) 826. Adj. surrendering &c. v.; submissive, resigned, crouching; downtrodden; down on one's marrow bones; on one's bended knee; unresistant, unresisting, nonresisting; pliant &c. (soft) 324; undefended. untenable, indefensible; humble &c. 879. Phr. have it your own way; it can't be helped; amen &c. (assent) 488; da locum ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... around me leads me to suppose that my companions are not downtrodden in any way, nor that they intend letting work interfere with happiness. They have in their favour the most blessed of all gifts—youth. The tragic faces one meets with are of the women breadwinners whose ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... deep political thinker, Burke holds a foremost place among those of all time who distinguished themselves in the British parliament. His keen intellect, his powerful imagination, his sympathy with the fallen, the downtrodden, and the oppressed, and his matchless power of utterance of the thoughts that were in him have made an impression that can never be effaced. His wise and statesman-like views on questions affecting the colonies ought to endear him to all Americans, although, if his counsels had been hearkened ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... at a word, there appeared in every part of the downtrodden country bands of mysterious horsemen. They rode by night, wearing long white garments with hoods that hid their faces, and to the terror-stricken Negroes who encountered them they declared themselves—not without symbolic truth—the ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... the downtrodden?" Nancy asked, with a faint reflection of what Billy referred to as her ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... woman has played an honorable part in the making of our country, and for this part she should have full credit. If she had been as poor a stick, as downtrodden and ineffective as sometimes painted, she would not be a fit mate for the man beside whom she has struggled, and she would be as utterly unfit for the larger life she desires as the most bigoted ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... first class laundryman, but I'm not a fancy laundryman yet. Since they've put us in whites I go around with the washer-woman's complaint most of the time. Terrible shooting pains in my back! My sympathy for the downtrodden is increasing by leaps and bounds. I can picture myself without any effort of the imagination bending over a tub after the war doing the family washing while my wife is out running for alderman or pulling ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... bother about what he was saying. It was very strange, but I could not believe that my sister was in love, that she had just been walking with her hand on the arm of a stranger and gazing at him tenderly. My sister, poor, frightened, timid, downtrodden creature as she was, loved a man who was already married and had children! I was full of pity without knowing why; the doctor's presence was distasteful to me and I could not make out what was to ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... Gandhi occupies for India's unlettered millions. Their spontaneous tribute is his famous title-MAHATMA, "great soul." {FN44-1} For them alone Gandhi confines his attire to the widely-cartooned loincloth, symbol of his oneness with the downtrodden masses ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the wolves that prey on those that preyed on them ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... missionary. The earlier faiths of Greece and Rome had not sought to extend themselves, because they did not recognize the brotherhood of man. The new faith insisted upon this, insisted on our duty to our fellows; and so under Paul's leadership every Christian became a missionary, teaching, uplifting the downtrodden, giving them hope, not of this world, but of an infinitely brighter one. The faith spread faster than ever world conquest had been spread before. Scarce a generation after the Crucifixion it had permeated the Empire, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... action has come. From ind to ind of the land, the downtrodden serfs of Ireland are rising in their millions. Too long have dey been juped by false pretences; too long have the hirelings of England chated and decaved them. We know now what a shimmera,[2] what a fraud, was Home ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... resist; they only drag down. The people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtrodden finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... War was the most widespread and most bloody of the mediaeval forerunners of the French Revolution. Like the rebellion of the Jacquerie and many another ferocious, desperate outburst of the downtrodden common folk, it foretold a day of vengeance to come. These early uprisings were all hopeless from their start, because the untrained and naked bodies of the people, however numerous, could not possibly hold an open battlefield ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... begged them to wait a while for her; said that she would lie down for just a minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and passed on into another world—with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile smile upon her lips. Isaiah Savvich—her faithful comrade on the path of life, a trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary, subordinate role—survived her ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... these children again a month afterwards upon our return, and they ran across the fields to meet us, at once opening their mouths to show that they had not forgotten the lesson, and that their teeth were properly attended to. I pitied all these poor people: they are downtrodden and miserable in mind and body. Instead of squeezing them for taxes they should be supported and encouraged by government assistance in every manner possible. Centuries of oppression and neglect in addition to a deceptive climate have rendered them the mere slaves of circumstances, ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... conclave here, some twoscore or so at first, the rabid patriots of this poor, downtrodden France. They talked of Liberty mostly, with many oaths and curses against the tyrants, and then started a tyranny, an autocracy, ten thousand times more awful than any wielded by ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... good, and by their own free choice, would control the institutions and destiny of nations. The wise men of the East may then journey westward again, to see the rising star of a regenerated humanity, the fall of thrones and dynasties, the lifting up of the downtrodden masses, and the political redemption of our race, not by a new dispensation, but by the fulfilment thus of the glorious prophecies and blessed promises of Holy Writ. And can we not lift ourselves into that serene atmosphere of love of country and of our race, above all selfish schemes or mere party ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... of Dostoevski's novels, characteristic in its occasional passages of wonderful beauty and pathos, characteristic in its utter formlessness and long stretches of uninspired dulness, is "Downtrodden and Oppressed." Here the author gives us the life he knew best by actual experience and the life best suited to his natural gifts of sympathetic interpretation. Stevenson's comment on this story has attracted much attention. Writing to John Addington Symonds in 1886, he ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... trouble is," said my companion to me. "This company is a part of the United States Steel Corporation, and in the old muckraking days it was thoroughly raked. They think that we have come down here full of passionate feeling over the poor, downtrodden workingman and the great, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... every soul that crossed his path, so that he looked on life with new eyes. The common crowd had a new interest for him, the suffering poor, the downtrodden slave, the heathen in his ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... or would have thanked me for, any sort of sympathy. But it came about in these ways, and without the least help that I can trace, that by the time I was 19 years of age I was keenly interested in all kinds of questions: pity for downtrodden women, suffrage questions, marriage laws, questions of liberty, freedom of thought, care of the poor, views of Nature and Man and God. All these things filled my mind to the exclusion of individual men ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Hundreds of millions of poor miserable barbarians. And"—he shouted—"what else are the Russians, if you come to that? Can they civilise China? A filthy, ignorant nation, frozen into stupidity, and downtrodden ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... downtrodden peoples in Austria and Germany have been emancipated is a moral triumph. But why has the beneficent principle that is said to have inspired the deed been restricted in its application? Why has the experiment been tried only in the enemies' countries? Or are ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... and hatred among the civilized nations, and religious prejudice is giving way to good will and tolerance, Rome is, from the Vatican point of view, the stumbling-block of every honest effort in the purification of the individual heart and the uplifting of the millions of souls that are downtrodden under the sandals of hyenical monks. When the Pope, a few months ago, rejected Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Fairbanks, two models of manhood and virtue, he made it clear to the world that he is suffering incurably, from barbaritis, ...
— Conversion of a High Priest into a Christian Worker • Meletios Golden
... were being given. The man who had fired the shot was arrested, handcuffed and marched away. The people were ordered right and left, and the officer's horses rode ruthlessly through the masses. Law and order had arrived and there was nothing for the downtrodden but to flee. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... began his speech. He told of the money that had to be raised, but he did not stop at the narrative of what may be called ordinary expenditure. He told how the primary duty of a rich nation was to help those who had been exhausted, to give a chance to the downtrodden. He related some of the things he had in his mind—the insurance of workmen against illness and unemployment, the payment of pensions for persons over a certain age. He told of how unemployment might be largely eliminated ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... society. A people has been conquered like the Saxon nation, and the new political structure has imposed on its customs, capacities, and desires which it did not possess. The nation has established itself permanently in the midst of downtrodden and threatening subjects, as with the ancient Spartans, while the necessity of living, as in an armed encampment, has violently turned the whole moral and social organization in one unique direction. At all events, ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... and sweetened by heart-training, make the high-souled, useful, productive, patriotic, law-loving, public-spirited citizen, of whom any nation might well be proud. The outcome of such education will be that, instead of the downtrodden child of ignorance, shiftlessness, and moral weakness, we shall generate the thoroughly rounded man of prudence, foresight, responsibility, and financial independence. He will cease to be the gullible victim of the sharper who plays upon vanity, credulity, ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... there were several long and tiresome errands to be done—there always were on days like this—and Sara was sent out again and again, until her shabby clothes were damp through. The absurd old feathers on her forlorn hat were more draggled and absurd than ever, and her downtrodden shoes were so wet that they could not hold any more water. Added to this, she had been deprived of her dinner, because Miss Minchin had chosen to punish her. She was so cold and hungry and tired that her face began to have a pinched look, and now ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... his sympathies have always been interested in behalf of his downtrodden countrymen. I won't admit that they are downtrodden, Josie, even to you; but Cragg thinks they are. His father was an emigrant and Hezekiah was himself born in Dublin and came to this country while an infant. He imagines he is Irish yet. Perhaps ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... political and statesmanlike life, not an event has equaled your manly and heroic conduct in Birmingham, Alabama, in respect to the persecuted, proscribed and downtrodden black citizens, on account of their race, color and proscription in this city ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... coming from a village some eighty miles away, was a stranger and an alien. I was her only friend. It ended in my inviting her to come to England, the land of the free and the refuge of the downtrodden and oppressed, and become my housekeeper. She accepted, with smiles and tears. And they were great big smiles, that went into creases all over her fat red face, forming runnels for the great big ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... the improved methods of treating lunacy; "Chimney-Sweepers," "Game-Laws," "Spring-Guns," "Prisons," and "Counsel for Prisoners." Each of these essays shows a deliriously warm sympathy with the sufferings of the downtrodden and the friendless; and a curiously intimate knowledge of matters which lie quite outside the scope of a clergyman's ordinary duties. As an appreciation of character, friendly but not servile, nothing can be better than his paper on Sir James Mackintosh,[136] with the illustration from Curran, ...
— Sydney Smith • George W. E. Russell
... the bridges, and then rode hastily away. During three days the Grand Army filed over the river and melted away into the sandy wastes. No foe at first contested their march, but neither were they met by the crowds of downtrodden natives whom their fancy pictured as thronging to welcome the liberators. In truth, the peasants of Lithuania had no very close racial affinity to the Poles, whose offshoots were found chiefly among the nobles and the wealthier townsfolk. Solitude, the sultry heat of a Russian mid-summer, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... against their magistrates. At another time he became the spokesman for the most pronounced absolutism and despotism. He turned suddenly against the very people whose cause he had so signally championed, and who hailed him as their prophet and leader. When the poor, downtrodden people needed him most, Luther cowardly deserted them, and by frenzied utterances excited the nobility to slay the common people without mercy in the most ruthless fashion, and even promised the lords whom he had denounced as tyrants heaven for enacting the barbaric cruelties ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... it shall learn of this, will deem that Rustem is fled before the face of this Turk; and when men shall believe that Tehemten is afraid, they will cease to combat, and Iran will be downtrodden at his hands. Turn thee not, therefore, at this hour from thy allegiance to the Shah, and tarnish not thy glory by this retreat, neither suffer that the downfall of Iran rest upon thy head. Put from thee, therefore, the words that Kai ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... has always been strong sympathy for the poor, meek, downtrodden slave—the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and overbearing masters. Could ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... to life restoring, Death downtrodden 'neath His feet, Lo! the Victor mounts triumphant to the Father's judgment-seat, Bringing back to heaven the glory by His passion ...
— The Hymns of Prudentius • Aurelius Clemens Prudentius
... the only—opponents of long close seasons on game birds are the gunners. Whenever and wherever you introduce a bill to provide such a season, you will find that this is true. The gun clubs and the Downtrodden Hunters' and Anglers' Protective Associations will be quick to go after their representatives, and oppose the bill. And state senators and assemblymen will think very hard and with strong courage before they deliberately resolve to do their duty regardless ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... Joan. "I should have done the same, and so would Nancy. We thought of putting up 'Don't be Downtrodden,' but we were afraid mother wouldn't like it, so we put up 'No Popery' instead. It comes to ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... a statement of facts, but an oration on the rights of workers, their downtrodden condition and their beggarly wages. He said they had not enough to keep body and soul together, and that right well did their employers know it. He said there should be an increase of a half-dollar a day, or ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... diminished, people were becoming familiarized to the idea of women speaking in public, and the way was gradually being cleared for the advance-guard of that noble army which has brought about so many changes favorable to the weak and downtrodden ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... left absolutely unexplained, and it presents the conduct of Scipio Aemilianus in quite a different light from the one in which it has commonly been regarded. He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as their champion. [Sidenote: Attitude of Scipio Aemilianus.] In reality he was a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... spoken to her, and everybody loved her. But she did not suspect that she was the object of such general regard, as she had not before suspected that she was the object of dislike. Does the violet, hidden in the downtrodden grass, think how ...
— The Broken Cup - 1891 • Johann Heinrich Daniel Zschokke
... Sweetflower. It is one that satisfies the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which he displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... should have been its friends, it proved itself more faithful to human progress and liberty than any of its predecessors. The outraged and oppressed found in these congressional halls champions and friends. Its key-note of policy was protection to the downtrodden. It quailed not before the mightiest, and neglected not the obscurest. It lifted the slave, whom the nation had freed, to the full stature of manhood. It placed on our statute-book the Civil Rights Bill as our nation's magna charta, grander than all the enactments that ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... reputed, that he was a magistrate, and in all respects a gentleman. Indeed, she had formed an idea of him as quite a pearl among men. Now that she saw him, she could not repress a feeling of disappointment. He was badly dressed, and bore a sad, depressed, downtrodden aspect. His whole appearance was what the world now calls seedy. And he seemed to be almost unable to speak. Miss Marrable knew that Mr. Gilmore was a man disappointed in his love, but she did not conceive that love had done him all these injuries. Love, however, had ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... the habitants of New France as downtrodden or oppressed, dispirited or despairing, like the peasantry of the old land in the days before the great Revolution, as some historians have done, is to speak untruthfully. These people were neither serfs nor peons. The habitant, as Charlevoix puts it, "breathed from his ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... Mr. Wister has happily put it, "to leave out any facts which spoil the political picture of the Revolution they chose to paint for our edification; a ferocious, blood-shot tyrant on the one side, and on the other a compact band of 'Fathers,' downtrodden and martyred, yet with impeccable linen ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various |
