"Fawning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... men. She descended from the window with haste, but with caution also, for the stones crumbled from beneath her feet as she moved along. She had scarcely set her foot on the grass turf, when the dog was at her side, whining and fawning with delight at again meeting with her friend and mistress. Barbara crossed the wild country, and gained the park-wall without encountering any danger. When there, she paused breathlessly under an oak, and would have ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... they happened to be famous—the people being myself, as you may easily imagine. On the other hand, now that I look back on those days without prejudice and without any sense of wounded vanity, I am certain that these women had a way of fawning on public favourites which was much more like childish conceit than sincere admiration or candid sympathy. They became editors, as it were, of the conversation, listening with all their might and making peremptory signals ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... fawning on the lower class. Everyone went after the working-men. People intrigued for the favour of being associated ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... the Attorney and Solicitor General, was brought in and read a first time. The House was full and the debate sharp. John Manley, member for Bossiney, one of those stanch Tories who, in the preceding session, had long refused to sign the Association, accused the majority, in no measured terms, of fawning on the Court and betraying the liberties of the people. His words were taken down; and, though he tried to explain them away, he was sent to the Tower. Seymour spoke strongly against the bill, and quoted the speech which Caesar made in the Roman Senate against the motion ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... nature so supine That I must ever quarrel with revenge? From vales and rivers which were once our own The pale hounds who uproot our ancient graves Come whining for our lands, with fawning tongues, And schemes and subterfuge and subtleties. O for a Pontiac to drive them back And whoop them to their shuddering villages! O for an age of valour like to his, When freedom clothed herself with solitude, And one in heart the scattered ...
— Tecumseh: A Drama • Charles Mair
... happiness consisted in unbounded liberty, shocks my nature. There is I confess something so amiable in gentleness, that I could be pleased with seeing a tiger caress its keeper, if the cruel means by which the fiercest of beasts is taught all the servility of a fawning spaniel, did not recur every instant to my mind; and it is not much less abhorrent to my nature, to see a venerable lion jumping over a stick, than it would be to behold a hoary philosopher forced by some cruel ...
— A Description of Millenium Hall • Sarah Scott
... the hour; I am occupied upon it myself," answered Victorine, with a fawning manner, very different from that by which the banker's wife had been ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... crept into that infernal court, that infernal torture chamber, they were just finishing the case of the child. This solicitor chap—chap with a humped back and a head as big as a house—was just finishing fawning round a doctor man in the box, putting it up to him that there was nothing to suggest deliberate suffocation of the baby. Oxalic acid poisoning—was it not the case that the girl would have died in great agony? Writhed ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... reward. Michael would be a murderer were he not a coward. Greene is a revengeful sleuth-hound, tracking his victim down relentlessly from place to place. Arden is a miser in business, and a weak, gullible fool at home, alternately raging with jealous suspicion, and fawning with fatuous trustfulness upon the man who is wronging him. Mosbie is a cold-blooded, underhand villain whose pious resolutions and protestations of love could only deceive those blinded by fate, and whose preference for crooked, left-handed methods is in ...
— The Growth of English Drama • Arnold Wynne
... deceits he gained their easy hearts, Too prone to credit his perfidious arts. What Di'omed, nor Thetis' greater son, A thousand ships, nor ten years' siege, had done— False tears and fawning words the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Mentorians! How can they do it? Fawning upon the Lhari that way, yet they're as human as we ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... places of the beach, I helped her up the precipitous bank, where steps had been carefully cut in the rock or laid upon the crumbling sods. She took me to the stables, and I saw the horses, her pony and the blooded colt in training for her: her dogs had followed us about, leaping and fawning upon her and smelling suspiciously at me. Mr. Raymond disliked animals, and it was to the stables or the gardener's cottage that the child came to pet her hounds, her sheep-dog and her snowy Pomeranian: not even Beppo, the Italian greyhound, was domesticated at the house. Some shy ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... her daughter-in-law against me, because, between that lady and herself there was a mutual dislike— chiefly shown by her in secret detractions and calumniations; by the other, in an excess of frigid formality in her demeanour; and no fawning flattery of the elder could thaw away the wall of ice which the younger interposed between them. But with her son, the old lady had better success: he would listen to all she had to say, provided she could soothe his fretful temper, and refrain from irritating him ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... detecting historical errors. VI. Another coin shows an error about Cornatus. VII. Suspicion of spuriousness from mention of the Quinquennale Ludicrum. VIII. Account of cities destroyed by earthquake contradicted by a monument. IX. Bracciolini's hand shown by reference to the Plague. X. Fawning of Roman senators more like conduct of Italians in the fifteenth century. XI. Same exaggeration with respect to Pomponia Graecina. XII. Wrong statement of the images borne at the funeral of Drusus. XIII. Similar kind of error committed by Bracciolini ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... shall not do't: I'll throw myself, Like a young fawning spaniel, in your way So often, you shall never move a step, But you shall tread ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. II • Edited by Walter Scott
... Mr. Ellacombe, was to old writers "the emblem of constancy in affection and sympathy in joy and sorrow," though it was also the emblem of the fawning courtier, who can only shine when everything is right. Anyhow, the so-called heliotrope was the subject of constant ...
— The Folk-lore of Plants • T. F. Thiselton-Dyer
... Lyre his feeble Pow'rs attend, Nor sweeter Musick of a virtuous Friend, But everlasting Dictates croud his Tongue, Perversely grave, or positively wrong. The still returning Tale, and ling'ring Jest, Perplex the fawning Niece and pamper'd Guest, While growing Hopes scarce awe the gath'ring Sneer, And scarce a Legacy can bribe to hear; The watchful Guests still hint the last Offence, The Daughter's Petulance, the Son's Expence, Improve his heady Rage with treach'rous Skill, And mould his Passions ...
— The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) • Samuel Johnson
... spread— The board that groans with shame and plate, Still fawning to the sham-crowned head That hopes front brazen turneth fate! Drink till the comer last is full, And never hear in revels' lull, Grim Vengeance forging arrows fleet, Whilst I gnaw at the crust Of Exile in the dust— But Honor ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... Emperor, "I'll take care." And then came fawning on Napoleon all the kings of Europe,—Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Poland, Italy,—all flattering us and going along with us. It was splendid! The French eagles never cooed as they did on ...
— Folk-Tales of Napoleon - The Napoleon of the People; Napoleonder • Honore de Balzac and Alexander Amphiteatrof
... but one man, who was deaf, and stood on the piazza, anxious and eager to know everything that had been and was still occurring, and yet sorry to give trouble, and so compromising the matter and making it worse, as compromisers generally do, by questioning everybody with a deprecating, fawning air. ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... talking a step was heard outside, and the Eskimos looked intelligently at each other. They knew that the comer must be a friend, because, had he been a stranger, the dogs would have given notice of his approach. Besides, these animals were heard fawning round him as he ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... so think I—by Jove, I would despise the man, who could but wish to rise again to earth, unless we were to lord there. What! sneaking pitiful in bondage, among vile money-scrapers, treacherous friends, fawning flatterers—or, still worse, deceitful mistresses. Shall we who reign lords here, again lend ourselves to swell the train of tyranny and usurpation? By my old father's memory, I'd rather be the blindest mole that ever skulked ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... a scene! Yon rosy mists on high careering,— The Moorish cavaliers who fleet With hawk and hound and distant cheering,— The dipping sail puffed to the gale, The prow that spurns the billow's fawning,— How can they fade to dimmer shade, And how this day ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... agreeing to all, and heard from her voluble lips nothing but the lie,—that lie which is the mental action and inmost grain of the Romany, and especially of the diddikai, or half-breed. Anything and everything—trickery, wheedling or bullying, fawning or threatening, smiles, or rage, or tears—for a sixpence. All day long flattering and tricking to tell fortunes or sell trifles, and all life one greasy lie, with ready frowns or smiles: as it was in India in the beginning, as ...
— The Gypsies • Charles G. Leland
... were either wearisome or repugnant Dreaded the monotonous regularity of conjugal life Fawning duplicity Had not been spoiled by Fortune's gifts Hypocritical grievances I am not in the habit of consulting the law It does not mend matters to give way like that Opposing his orders with steady, irritating inertia ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Immortals of the French Academy • David Widger
... if one or two quick tears Dropp'd upon his glossy ears, Or a sigh came double, Up he sprang in eager haste, Fawning, fondling, breathing fast In ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... great distance from the temple. She had not left the precincts of the place when a person in the robes of a Brahmin fearlessly approached her, and patting her head, offered her something which he held in his hand. She took it, and fawning on him, followed as he led the way to a distant part of the ruin. Here was a high tower with some winding steps leading to the summit. The Brahmin, for such he was, began to ascend, the tigress still following. When on the summit, the stranger opened a door and ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... to the description and the enumerating of my features, he was more obnoxious than I can express. Peering across the table to see whether my eyes were brown or black, or my hair black or brown, he never lost an opportunity to make a fawning remark before writing it down. He described my teint as pale; I felt pale, and think I must have looked very pale, for he said: "Vous etes bien pale, Madame. Voudriez-vous quelque chose a boire?" Possibly he may have meant to be kind; but I saw ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... Here Pomp is out of place, And fawning Flattery finds no home With Simper and Grimace, But Nature, in her artless dress, (A greenwood nymph is she,) With eyes so wild and flowing ...
— The Knight of the Golden Melice - A Historical Romance • John Turvill Adams
... excellent performance. Was it quite right, however, that the morning after the murder he should appear so completely unruffled? (I admit I don't know my Ulster intimately). I rather think that Mr. MILES MALLESON'S well-studied "Clutie" might have been a little less coherent, with more fawning in his manner. He seemed something too normal for his purpose in the piece. The way in which the other characters staved off his piping was beyond all praise. I should guess, from specimens submitted, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... said; 'False glory hath my youth misled; For beasts of prey, a servile train, Have been the flatterers of my reign. You reason well: yet tell me, friend, Did ever you in courts attend? 80 For all my fawning rogues agree, That human heroes ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... difference, tell me where, Betwixt a Merry Andrew and a player? The strolling tribe—a despicable race!— Like wandering Arabs, shift from place to place. Vagrants by law, to justice open laid, They tremble, of the beadle's lash afraid, And, fawning, cringe for wretched means of life 210 To Madam Mayoress, or his Worship's wife. The mighty monarch, in theatric sack, Carries his whole regalia at his back; His royal consort heads the female band, And leads the heir apparent in ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... upon which the young Emerson's eyes opened. The South was a plantation. The North crooked the hinges of the knee where thrift might follow fawning. It was the era of Martin Chuzzlewit, a malicious caricature,—founded on fact. This time of humiliation, when there was no free speech, no literature, little manliness, no reality, no simplicity, no accomplishment, ...
— Emerson and Other Essays • John Jay Chapman
... fellow—and now see! He's as friendly with you as you could wish. They do say that dogs know when people are all right. Look at him trying to get into your lap again." And indeed the beast was again fawning upon me in the most abject manner, licking my hands and seeming to express for me some hideous admiration. Seeing that I repulsed his advances none too gently, his ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... debasing oppression suffered by these people at the hands of their native rulers, they come legitimately by the attitude and language of fawning and flattery, and one must remember this in mitigation when passing judgment upon the native character. It is common in these letters to find the petitioner furtively trying to get at the white man's soft religious side; even this poor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Louis moved from him with a shuddering abhorrence of the fawning, creeping manner of his school-fellow. Seeing that Ferrers still loitered near him, he asked if there were any thing ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... men, who took them up in a decorated robe and carried them in state to the council-house. There the pipe of peace was smoked, a ceremonious dog-feast was prepared; the chieftains delivered themselves of speeches, divided between fawning adulation and flamboyant boasting; and then came a sort of state ball, which continued until midnight. The next morning the ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... something of your sloppy record," he continued, still shaking him; "I know about your lap-dog fawning around Miss Seagrave. It is generally understood that you're as sexless as any other of your kind. I thought so, too. Now I know you. Keep clear of me and mine, Dysart.... And ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... sheets of shame, frightened at the pleasure with which she had listened to that sham great poet, these three bold minds were trampling with jests over the tender flowers of her dawning love. Ah! if women only knew the cynical tone that such men, so humble, so fawning in their presence, take behind their backs! how they sneer at what they say they adore! Fresh, pure, gracious being, how the scoffing jester disrobes and analyzes her! but, even so, the more she loses veils, the ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac
... may seem Masters. Because an uncontroulable Command of their own Actions is a certain Sign of entire Dominion, they wont so much as recede from the Government even in one Muscle, of their Faces. A kind Look they believe would be fawning, and a civil Answer yielding the Superiority. To this must we attribute an Austerity they betray in every Action: What but this can put a Man out of Humour in his Wife's Company, tho he is so distinguishingly pleasant every where else? The Bitterness of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... says that Purbeck's marriage was celebrated amid the gratulation of the fawning courtiers, but stained by the tears of the reluctant bride, who was a sacrifice to her father's ambition of the alliance ...
— The Curious Case of Lady Purbeck - A Scandal of the XVIIth Century • Thomas Longueville
... moment when without warning boy and puppy instantaneously pass into the consciousness of manhood. With the young canine it comes with the first deep-throated defiance of the intruder, the instinct that the wriggling, fawning days are over and that the moment to attack and accept attack has arrived. With the human puppy the change is more elusive. To some it comes with the first clinging splendor of long trousers, to others with the first ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... if I were to speak my mind, which I do not hesitate to do in confidence to you, Miss Graves, I really should say that she is the most jealous, irritable, malicious, meddling, and at the same time fawning, disposition that I ever met with in the whole course of my life, and ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... off its contamination. Could he escape from the odium of his more immediate personal delinquencies; his fawning sycophancy of Nicholas Biddle; his dirty work in behalf of that man for money, not for love; could he deluge with Lethean ocean the public memory, his malpractices as attorney-general; his venal career as a member of the Legislature; could he induce the public ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... you did, with wonderous care, Against his rebels prosecute the war, While he secure in your protection slept; For him you took, but for yourself you kept. Thus, as some fawning usurer does feed, With present sums, the unwary spendthrift's need, You sold your kindness at a boundless rate, And then o'erpaid the debt from his estate; Which, mouldering piecemeal, in your hands did fall, Till now at last you come to swoop ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... stranger whom they would like to intimidate and send about his business. Manette Sejournant, who was always talking about going, still remained in the chateau, and was evidently exerting her influence to keep her son also with her. The fawning duplicity of this woman was unbearable to Julien; he had not the energy necessary either to subdue her, or to send her away, and she appeared every morning before him with a string of hypocritical grievances, and opposing ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... confess I have not been sneering fulsome lies and nauseous flattery; fawning upon a little tawdry whore, that will fawn upon me again, and entertain any puppy that comes, like a tumbler, with the same tricks over and over. For such, I guess, may have been ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... noticeably, more pretentiously, than the rest does a certain "needy" native of Tula named Konev salute each Cossack. A hardbitten muzhik as sunburnt as a stick of ergot, he has a black beard distributed irregularly over a lean face, a fawning smile, and eyes ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... Vulture). His Rabbi Zadok, the miracle-worker, who exploits superstition for his own aggrandizement; Rabbi Gaddiel, the honest but mistaken henchman of Rabbi Zadok; Ga'al, the parvenu, who seeks to obliterate an unsavory past by fawning upon both; the Shadkan, or marriage-broker, who pretends to be the ambassador of Heaven, to unite men and women on earth,—in these and similar types drawn from life and depicted vividly, Mapu held up to the execration of the world ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... "'Tis written that to spurn A suppliant equals in offence to slay A twice-born; wherefore, not for Swarga's bliss Quit I, Mahendra, this poor clinging dog,— So without any hope or friend save me. So wistful, fawning for my faithfulness; So agonized to die, unless I help Who among men was called steadfast ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... cannot endure her! I, while my heart smote me for the profanity, tried to compare her with my Clarinda. 'Twas setting the expiring glimmer of a farthing taper beside the cloudless glory of the meridian sun. Here was tasteless insipidity, vulgarity of soul, and mercenary fawning; there, polished good sense, heaven-born genius, and the most generous, the most delicate, the most tender passion. I have done with her, and ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... yesterday, and today he received an appointment as major! It dries the blood in my veins to think of it!—that black dog a major! Good God! am I never to hear the last of him? Cummings wrote it, the fool, the lying, fawning, slobbering fool; he ought to be shot for it! Neither he nor his paper ever enter my doors again! And I took the dirty sheet from her hands and tore it ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... laid open! and to drop my metaphor what a character of our mistaking friend might an angry enemy draw and expose! particularizing that unnatural conjunction of vices and follies, so inconsistent with each other in the same breast: Furious and fawning, scurrilous and flattering, cowardly and provoking, insolent and abject; most profligately false, with the strongest professions of sincerity, positive and variable, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... First, which had risen as one man to support Monmouth, and which had been turned into a shambles by Kirke and Jeffreys, seemed to have suddenly succeeded to the place which Oxford had once occupied in the royal favour. [241] The King constrained himself to show even fawning courtesy to eminent Dissenters. To some he offered money, to some municipal honours, to some pardons for their relations and friends who, having been implicated in the Rye House Plot, or having joined the standard of Monmouth, were now wandering on the Continent, or toiling among the sugar ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... That fain would be the biggest at Whitehall. The He that does for Justice Coin postpone, As on Account may be hereafter shown. If this plain English be, 'tis far from Trick, Though some Lines gall, where others fawning lick; Which fits thy Poet, Amiell, for thy Smiles, If once more paid to blaze thy hated Toils. Of Things and Persons might be added more, Without Intelligence from Forreign Shore, Or what Designs Ambassadors contrive, Or how the ...
— Anti-Achitophel (1682) - Three Verse Replies to Absalom and Achitophel by John Dryden • Elkanah Settle et al.
... over the Neck of a Passion she thought might have hurried her into Ruin. But when by his Artifices, and the Cruelty of her Friends, she was driven into his Power, had he not, to use her own Words, treated her with an Insolence unbecoming a Man, and kept her very Soul in suspence; fawning at her Feet to marry him, whilst, in the same Instant, he tried to confuse her by a Behaviour that put it out of her Power to comply with him; there was nothing that she would not have done to oblige him. Then indeed she plainly saw that her Principles and his Profligacy, her ...
— Remarks on Clarissa (1749) • Sarah Fielding
... which this setting sun put forth. Once more lord Timon proclaimed a feast, to which he invited his accustomed guests, lords, ladies, all that was great or fashionable in Athens. Lords Lucius and Lucullus came, Ventidius, Sempronius, and the rest. Who more sorry now than these fawning wretches, when they found (as they thought) that lord Timon's poverty was all pretence, and had been only put on to make trial of their loves, to think that they should not have seen through the artifice at the time, and have ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... intrusted to people who could by no possibility know anything about it, instead of being invested in plain, business, practical hands—if it hoarded when it ought to spend—if it got by cringing and fawning what it never deserved, I might possibly impress you very much by my indignation. If its managers could tell me that it was insolvent, that it was in a hopeless condition, that its accounts had been kept by Mr. Edmunds—or by "Tom,"—if its treasurer had run away with the ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... verses to her memory found in his pocket after his death: in the same volume of Old Mortality is that lone figure, like a figure in Scripture, of the woman sitting on the stone at the turning to the mountain, to warn Burley that there is a lion in his path; and the fawning Claverhouse, beautiful as a panther, smooth-looking, blood-spotted; and the fanatics, Macbriar and Mucklewrath, crazed with zeal and sufferings; and the inflexible Morton, and the faithful Edith, who refused to "give her hand to another while her ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Pantheon municipality, and lived in Thuillier's house, rue Saint-Dominique d'Enfer. He was a bachelor and had all the vices which, however, he religiously concealed. He kept in with his superiors by fawning. He was concerned with the villainous intrigues of Cerizet, his copy-clerk, and with Theodose de la Peyrade, the tricky lawyer. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... him charitably; him—a fashionable, fawning, seducing hypocrite!" burst from Percy, in a tone of renewed passion. "No! the gall he has created within me cannot yet be turned to sweetness; forget him—that at least is impossible, when Caroline's coldness and reserve remind me disagreeably of him every day. It is plain ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... of Eurylochus leapt out. So he went, and comrades twenty and two with him. And in an open space in the wood they found the palace of Circe. All about were wolves and lions; yet these harmed not the men, but stood up on their hind legs, fawning upon them, as dogs fawn upon their master when he comes from his meal, because he brings the fragments with him that they love. And the men were afraid. And they stood in the porch and heard the voice of ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church
... when the word was first adopted into the English language, it was in this meaning: thus an old English poet speaks of "the railing route of sycophants"; and Holland: "The poor man that hath nought to lose, is not afraid of the sycophant". But it has not kept this meaning; a 'sycophant' is now a fawning flatterer; not one who speaks ill of you behind your back; rather one who speaks good of you before your face, but good which he does not in his heart believe. Yet how true a moral instinct has presided over the changed ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... saw in Montesquieu only erudite, ingenious, and systematical dissertations; Fenelon seemed to me divine, but chimerical; Rousseau, more impassioned than inspired, greater by instinct than by truth; while Bossuet, with his golden eloquence and fawning soul, united, in his conduct and his language before Louis XIV., doctoral despotism with the complaisance of a courtier. From these studies of history and oratory I naturally passed on to politics. The remembrance of the ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... admiration at him. "When was the time that Price's Left Wing surrendered?" asked the orator. "Nevuh! Others have, be it said to their shame. We have not toiled these thousand miles fo' that! Others have crooked the pliant hinges of the knee that thrift might follow fawning. As fo' myself, two grandfathers who fought fo' our libuhties rest in the soil of Virginia, and two uncles who fought in the Revolution sleep in the land of the Dark and Bloody Ground. With such blood ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... a few rational words!" said Heinrich, with a constrained, fawning voice. "If you will give to me fifty rix-dollars, then you shall never have any more annoyance with us! See, that would be a great deal ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... their liberators. He received with flattering distinction the chief artists and men of letters, and also sought to quicken the activity of the University of Pavia. Political clubs and newspapers multiplied throughout Lombardy; and actors, authors, and editors joined in a paean of courtly or fawning praise, to the new Scipio, Caesar, Hannibal, ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... feet soft streaming, Gentler grown its murmurs be, And with greeting full of fawning Speaks to the ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... conducted? Practically, by raising a party cry; by exciting every species of evil passion of which man is capable; by tickling the cupidity of one man and flattering the ambitions of another; by intimidating the weak, and groveling before the strong; by every species of fawning sycophancy on the one hand, and brutal overbearing ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... within the hut had kindled a fire, and were making ready breakfast at the dawn, and had sent forth the herdsmen with the droves of swine. And round Telemachus the hounds, that love to bark, fawned and barked not, as he drew nigh. And goodly Odysseus took note of the fawning of the dogs, and the noise of footsteps fell upon his ears. Then straight he spake to ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... big guns get big pay, and the higher up the office the more the pay and the less the work. To be sure, we can go out of the prison to sleep, but otherwise we are bound as closely as you are." Yet these very warders, the moment any superior authority appears on the scene, are as obsequious and fawning as whipped dogs, and recoup themselves for this forced humiliation by taking it out of such of the convicts as fail to curry their favor, or offend, or make them trouble. Surely their office is a very responsible ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell
... stultified and stupefied, staggered under the blow; the other part showed its utter degradation by fawning on Scott and attacking the Congress, or its best part. The Evening Post staggered not; its editors are genuine, laborious students, and, above all, students of history. The editors of the other papers are politicians; some of them are little, others are big villains. All, ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... understand that this was an act of condescension on her part as a Congressman's wife, whose important social status was beyond question. She was so thoroughly imbued with this sense of her indisputable superiority that she readily mistook Flossy's affability for fawning; whereas that young woman's ingenuous friendliness was the result of a warning sentence from Gregory when Selma and her husband were seen approaching—"Keep a check on your tongue, Floss. This statesman with a beard like a goat is likely ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... was the eldest of the three, in tones of ice. But it needed a great wariness on Laura's part. And, in the beginning, she made a mistake. She was a toadeater here, too, seeking to curry favour with M. P. as with the rest, by fawning on her, in a way for which she could afterwards have hit herself. For it did not answer; M. P. had only a double disdain for the cringer, knowing nothing herself of the pitfalls that lie in wait for a temperament like Laura's. Mary's ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... nobler tasks than fawning upon princes and squandering life and fortune in gluttony and debauchery, blushed for shame, and abandoned forever the company of sensualists and parasites. Potitianus, a young officer of rank, read the life of Anthony, and cried to his ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... him while I was in the World; his whole Discourse always ran on Liberty, Trade, Free Elections, &c. and constantly inveigh'd against all corrupt and self-interested Practices. I saw Persons descended from the ancient Nobility fawning on Valets who were arrived to great Preferment for Pimping; I beheld others contriving Schemes, to bring their Wives and Daughters into the Company of Persons in Power, and aiming to gain Preferment for themselves, at the Expence of the Vertue of their Families; nor was there a Vice, a ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... to Flattery's fawning face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, proud world! I'm ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... few paces in the rear, and never presumed to sit unless asked by her to do so. He was a lonely person, with his delicate, well-bred features and his simple dark robes, and in the midst of these fawning eunuchs, brilliant court ladies, and bejewelled Empress Dowager he was an inconspicuous figure. No minister of state touched forehead to floor as he spoke in hushed and trembling voice to him, no obsequious eunuchs knelt ...
— Court Life in China • Isaac Taylor Headland
... who did him the honours of the town was a little Abbe of Perigord, one of those busybodies who are ever alert, officious, forward, fawning, and complaisant; who watch for strangers in their passage through the capital, tell them the scandalous history of the town, and offer them pleasure at all prices. He first took Candide and Martin to La Comedie, where they played a new tragedy. Candide happened ...
— Candide • Voltaire
... we are told in this stanza, had at first 'fled' from Byron's arrow; afterwards they 'fawned on his proud feet.' In order to do this, they must have paused in their flight, and returned; and, in the act of fawning on Byron's feet, they must have crouched down, or were 'lying low.' (Mr. Forman, in his edition of Shelley, pointed this out.) With the words 'as they go' the image was not self-consistent: for the critics could not ...
— Adonais • Shelley
... shapes and visages" which men had worn in the old bad days float away through the air like chaff on the wind. They were no more than masks. Thrones are kingless, and forthwith men walk in upright equality, neither fawning nor trembling. Republican sincerity informs ...
— Shelley, Godwin and Their Circle • H. N. Brailsford
... infamous desperadoes that infest Rome at present, closed around the doomed Caesar. Then Metellus Cimber knelt down and begged that his brother might be recalled from banishment, but Caesar rebuked him for his fawning conduct, and refused to grant his petition. Immediately, at Cimber's request, first Brutus and then Cassius begged for the return of the banished Publius; but Caesar still refused. He said he could not be moved; that he was as fixed as the North Star, and proceeded to speak in the most complimentary ...
— Editorial Wild Oats • Mark Twain
... where I was, and struck the man between the eyes, partially stunning him. He stepped down from the platform at once, and, cringing and fawning and weeping and attempting to embrace my feet, led me round to the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... tastes of his own. Before he was well out of his teens, he began writing history. This was under the patronage of a great noble. Froissart was all his life a natural courtier. He throve on the patronage of the great. It was probably not a fawning spirit in him that made him this kind of man; it was rather an innate love of splendor and high exploit. He admired chivalry, then in its last days, and he painted it with the passion of an idealizer. His father had been an heraldic painter, so it was ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... thanks—almost obsequious, in truth—and I discovered another defect in his character—a defect which, as his friend in former days, I had guessed nothing of. I saw that very little encouragement would make him a toady—a fawning servitor on the wealthy—and in our old time of friendship I had believed him to be far above all such meanness, but rather of a manly, independent nature that scorned hypocrisy. Thus we are deluded ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... gilded den of sin, playing poker with body-snatchers. Pa Rearick simply cut loose and bombarded the neighborhood with red-hot adjectives. That he should have brought up a son to do him honor and should have found him dawdling his college moments away with loafers; fawning on the idle sons of the rich; tinkling a mandolin instead of walking with Homer; wasting time and money instead of trying to earn his way to success—"Bah," likewise "Faugh," to say nothing of other picturesque expressions ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... you are pleased to save." Sylla answering, that he knew not as yet whom to spare, he asked: "Will you then tell us whom you will punish?" This Sylla said he would do. These last words, some authors say, were spoken not by Metellus, but by Afidius, one of Sylla's fawning companions. Immediately upon this, without communicating with any magistrates, Sylla proscribed eighty persons, and notwithstanding the general indignation, after one day's respite, he posted two hundred and twenty more, and on the third again, as ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... them, but in broken English make reply. They were a fine set of men, physically—tall, broad-chested, erect; and, wrapped in their white and red blankets, they made a formidable appearance. There was no touch of fawning or crouching in their manner. They demanded the articles given them, rather than begged. You would have thought them lords of the soil, come to collect rent of ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... with enthusiasm, and I am sorry to say there were both Dutch and German residents, here and there, mean-spirited enough to accept these reflections upon their ancestry, and strive to atone for their assumed lack of birth by aping the manners, and fawning for ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... virtue of which children hide each other's peccadilloes, and which early teaches them the principles of honor, was null and void in my case; more than that, I was often punished for my brother's faults, without being allowed to prove the injustice. The fawning spirit which seems instinctive in children taught my brother and sisters to join in the persecutions to which I was subjected, and thus keep in the good graces of a mother whom they feared as much as I. Was this partly the effect of a childish love of imitation; was it from a need of testing ...
— The Lily of the Valley • Honore de Balzac
... poet through his whole life was, in the main, such as to excite great admiration in after generations. He was no sycophant in that age of fawning courtiers. He was simple and manly. He was always melancholy and cared little for the vanities of life. Though poor in early life, he cared but little about money. The king gave him a pension of two thousand francs, which at that time ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... but minded not, as us'd To such disport before her through the Field, 520 From every Beast, more duteous at her call, Then at Circean call the Herd disguis'd. Hee boulder now, uncall'd before her stood; But as in gaze admiring: Oft he bowd His turret Crest, and sleek enamel'd Neck, Fawning, and lick'd the ground whereon she trod. His gentle dumb expression turnd at length The Eye of Eve to mark his play; he glad Of her attention gaind, with Serpent Tongue Organic, or impulse of vocal Air, 530 His fraudulent temptation thus began. ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... Coriolanus' indomitable pride and horror of mob popularity when he offended Beaufort and his kingdom in the halles, when, though as 'Louis de Bourbon' he refused to do anything to shake the power of the throne, he would not submit to be patronized by the mean fawning Mazarin. Not that the hard-hearted Conde would have listened to his wife and mother, even if he had loved them as Coriolanus did, or that his arrogance did not degenerate into wonderful meanness at last, such as Coriolanus would have scorned; but the parallel was very amusing, and gave me a ...
— Abbeychurch - or, Self-Control and Self-Conceit • Charlotte M. Yonge
... courage for a young man to stand firmly erect while others are bowing and fawning for praise and power. It takes courage to wear threadbare clothes while your comrades dress in broadcloth. It takes courage to remain in honest poverty when others grow rich by fraud. It takes courage to say "No" squarely ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... walked briskly along with our new friend. We soon reached a low shingle-roofed slab hut, from which a couple of dogs issued, barking furiously on hearing the footsteps of strangers. The hut-keeper's voice quickly silenced them, when they came fawning up to him, licking even our hands when they discovered that we were whites. Our companion ushered us into his hut, which consisted of one smoke-begrimed room, containing a clay fireplace, two rough bunks in the corner, and ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... and everywhere, To find an easy place to lay her. At length to Music's house[2] she came, And begg'd like one both blind and lame; "My only friend, my dear," said she, "You see 'tis mere necessity Hath sent me to your house to whelp: I die if you refuse your help." With fawning whine, and rueful tone, With artful sigh, and feigned groan, With couchant cringe, and flattering tale, Smooth Bawty[3] did so far prevail, That Music gave her leave to litter; (But mark what follow'd—faith! she bit her;) Whole baskets ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... rubies and sapphires and emeralds. There rise row after row of jewelled scymitars, and vases and salvers of gold, and old saddles studded with diamonds, and with stirrups of gold,—presents of frightened Asiatic satraps or fawning European allies. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... virtue, is to be carefully distinguished from the mean spirit of cowards and the fawning ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... To his caressing tones. The patient ox, With branching horns, and the full-udder'd cow Grew sleek and flourish'd and in happiest guise Reveal'd his regency. The noble dog, O'erflowing with intelligence and zeal, Follow'd him as a friend; even the poor cat Oft scorn'd and distanc'd, till her fawning love Turns into abjectness, crept to his knee Without reproof, and thro' her half-shut eyes Regarding him, ere into sleep she sank With song ...
— Man of Uz, and Other Poems • Lydia Howard Sigourney
... foster child one reared, While still it loved the teats; In life's preluding dawn Tame, by the children loved, And fondled by the old, Oft in his arms 'twas held, Like infant newly born, With eyes that brightened to the hand that stroked, And fawning at the hest of hunger ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... when you go? Besides, if you could, it would all melt where you're going." This hoarding of wealth, this craving for it, is only another form of luxury, the luxury of growing rich. Some like to be thought rich, and called rich, and treated with a fawning respect on account of their riches; others love to hide their riches, but to hug their money in secret, and seem to enjoy the prospect of dying rich. I was engaged in a singular case some time ago, in which an old lady ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... grounded also in innocence; but when the innocence is received by them, it is entwined around their own love, and consequently the love of their infants from the latter, and at the same time from the former, kissing, embracing, and dangling them, hugging them to their bosoms, and fawning upon and flattering them beyond all bounds, regarding them as one heart and soul with themselves; and afterwards, when they have passed the state of infancy even to boyhood and beyond it, in which state innocence is no longer operative, they love them not from any fear of God ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... "presented a tedious petition to King James, so that it is questionable whether his Majesty ever graced it with his perusall, wherein they endeavoured to cleare themselves from some misrepresentations, and by fawning expression to insinuate themselves into ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 34, June 22, 1850 • Various
... 'Tis so: and heere's the Ladder for the purpose. Why Phaeton (for thou art Merops sonne) Wilt thou aspire to guide the heauenly Car? And with thy daring folly burne the world? Wilt thou reach stars, because they shine on thee? Goe base Intruder, ouer-weening Slaue, Bestow thy fawning smiles on equall mates, And thinke my patience, (more then thy desert) Is priuiledge for thy departure hence. Thanke me for this, more then for all the fauors Which (all too-much) I haue bestowed ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... apartments of the Pope, and rarely. Thus Ippolito and Alessandro entered upon their teens with no judicious, kindly, or formative influences around them. It was said that each boy threw in the other's face the fact of his illegitimacy, which fawning dependants had revealed to them. Their environment and associates were most undesirable, and nothing was done to instil and encourage sentiments of honour, self-control, truthfulness, and charity. Their initiation into the hypocrisies of spiritual life and ecclesiastical duty produced ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... noise of sorcerers' drums beaten across the snow. One night Kotuko the dog, who had been unusually sullen in harness, leaped up and pushed his head against Kotuko's knee. Kotuko patted him, but the dog still pushed blindly forward, fawning. Then Kadlu waked, and gripped the heavy wolf-like head, and stared into the glassy eyes. The dog whimpered and shivered between Kadlu's knees. The hair rose about his neck, and he growled as though a stranger were at the door; then he barked joyously, ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... their lashes were blue pools Fringed round with lilies; her bright hair unfurled Clothed her as sunshine clothes the summer world. Her robes were gauzes—gold and green and gules, All furry things flocked round her, from her hand Nibbling their foods and fawning at her feet. Two peacocks watched her where she made her seat Beside a fountain in Broceliande. Sometimes she sang. . . . Whoever heard forgot Errand and aim, and knights at noontide here, Riding from fabulous gestes beyond the seas, Would follow, tranced, and seek . . . and find ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... almost have seemed to be asleep, so much were the lids lowered, suddenly grew alert again. A man appeared on the bridge—a lank, lean, yellow-skinned man, with a face that seemed carved out of old ivory, with furtive eyes and a fawning mouth. The new-comer was gorgeously, over-gorgeously, dressed, and his every movement affected the manners of a grand seigneur. He carried a tall cane with a jewelled knob, on which his left hand rested affectionately, as if it pleased ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... Alexander the Great had fallen to the Roman commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome to congratulate her; and they showed that fawning is never more abject than when kings are in the antechamber. King Massinissa, who only desisted from presenting himself in person on being expressly prohibited from doing so, ordered his son to declare that he regarded himself as merely the beneficiary, and the Romans as the true ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... infamous, yet it is so only with them that are more taken with words than things. They think truth is inconsistent with flattery, but that it is much otherwise we may learn from the examples of true beasts. What more fawning than a dog? And yet what more trusty? What has more of those little tricks than a squirrel? And yet what more loving to man? Unless, perhaps you'll say, men had better converse with fierce lions, merciless tigers, and furious leopards. For that flattery ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... stoop to denying or even repeating what he said; far less to justify myself. Yet I should like to mention, in passing, that his coarse gibe concerning my fawning on a rich man is the most unjust ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... you in earnest when you say, I have made Henry III. "fearful, weak, bloody, perfidious, hypocritical, and fawning, in the play?" I am sure an unbiassed reader will find a more favourable image of him in the tragedy, whatever he was out of it. You would not have told a lie so shameless, but that you were resolved to second it with a worse—that I made a parallel of that prince. And now it comes to my turn, ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... was about to befall humanity. Nature herself made the people anxious and uncomfortable. There were showers of falling stars, it rained blood in various places, death-headed moths flew about in the evenings, wolves, tame and fawning like dogs, appeared in the village and let themselves be beaten to death before the thresholds of ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... welfare. In other words, and in very colloquial language, I never had useless friends hanging about me. From this crude statement of a signal fact, the thoughtless reader will at once judge me rapacious, egotistical, false, fawning, mendacious. Well, I may be all this and more, but not because all who have known me have rendered me eminent services. I can say that no one ever formed relationships in life with less design than myself. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... giving way to cold condemnation and now to a consciously evoked obliteration of thought and feeling. Then the sacristan, Father Nicodemus—also a great stumbling-block to Sergius who involuntarily reproached him for flattering and fawning on the Abbot—approached him and, bowing low, requested his presence behind the holy gates. Father Sergius straightened his mantle, put on his biretta, and went circumspectly ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... to behold:- All these were form'd the guiding taste to suit; The beast well-manner'd and the fishes mute. A widow'd Aunt was there, compell'd by need The nymph to flatter and her tribe to feed; Who veiling well her scorn, endured the clog, Mute as the fish and fawning as the dog. As years increased, these treasures, her delight, Arose in value in their owner's sight: A miser knows that, view it as he will, A guinea kept is but a guinea still; And so he puts it to its proper use, That something more this guinea ...
— The Parish Register • George Crabbe |
