"Grovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... convinced me of the absurdity and meanness and insecurity that pervade all human objects, such as wealth, office, power. I was filled with contempt for them, realized that to care for them was to lose all chance of what deserved care, and determined to grovel no more, but fix my gaze upon the great All. Here I found my first problem in what wise men call the universal order; I could not tell how it came into being, who made it, what was its beginning, or what its end. ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... exclaimed. And then quite quietly: "Well, run and tell 'em, then. Shove yourself in front of the curtain, my lad, and make a speech. Say it's nothing serious, but just sufficient to stop the performance. Apologize, grovel, flatter 'em, appeal to ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... which I have already alluded, accounts for the tranquillity that prevails throughout Bihar as compared with the spirit of revolution in Bengal proper. The microbe of anarchy finds an excellent culture-ground in minds which grovel before the goddess Kali. But the unrest cannot be isolated from other manifestations of cosmic energy, which flash from mind to mind and keep the world in turmoil. Every force of nature tends to be periodic. The heart's systole and diastole; alternations ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... sectarian cannot accuse the foregoing with containing the least ingredient of persecution. The free spirit on which the American cause is founded, disdains to mix with such an impurity, and leaves it as rubbish fit only for narrow and suspicious minds to grovel in. Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish together. Had the Quakers minded their religion and their business, they might have lived through this dispute in enviable ease, and none would ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... of lese-majeste in Bismarck's Prusso-German Empire is only an illustration of the way in which the German people have been made to grovel before the Prussian jack-boot. The Prussification of Germany in matters military and in matters bureaucratic has gone on apace since 1870. Prussia, it is not too much to say, has hitherto consisted in a nation of slaves and tyrants and nothing else. It is the Prussian ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... my vexed soul to see Each painted ass in chair of dignity! And yet we grovel on the ground alone, Running through every trade, yet thrive by none: More we must ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... meantime, grew expert in the coarse sporting exercises to which he devoted his energies. He had no pride. He tramped the mud of the fields; he tore his ears in bramble bushes; and I have seen him so far lose all sense of our family's dignity as to grovel at the feet of his master, and raise one of his paws, to indicate that birds were near—common birds; I believe they ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... it," he was thinking. "I must wheedle Dickey into the bank to-morrow. A word from 'im, an' they'll all grovel, d—n 'em!" ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... Curse may be upon us, and condemn us for Eternity To jostle with the ordinary horde; Though we grovel at the shrine of the professional fraternity Who harp upon one solitary chord; Still...we face the situation with an imperturbability Of spirit, from the knowledge that we owe To the witchery that lingers in the Curse of Versatility The ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... last time, to choose the path which you mean to tread; and, once chosen, to tread it with a firm step, prepared to meet danger—to confront destiny. This very hour, this very moment, I call upon you to make your decision; and it shall be a final decision. Will you grovel on in poverty—the worst of all poverty, the gentleman's pittance? or will you make yourself possessor of the wealth which your uncle Oswald bequeathed to others? Look me in the face, Reginald, as you are a man, and answer me, Which is ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... individual cannot fail to be of benefit to the whole community. It is only in offices contingent on election or appointment that the aspirant incurs a heavy risk of failure; but when we consider how meanly men are often compelled to creep into office and to grovel in it, it can hardly be supposed that a genuine desire of superiority holds a prominent place among the motives of these who are willingly dependent on patronage or on ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... are over. I acted rightly, and because I obeyed my passion. The poets are right, and all the prudent people only grovel in their worldly wisdom. It may not be true for every one, but for me to love and be loved, infinitely, with the love that conquers everything, is the sole end of life. It is enough; come what will, if love remain nothing else ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and all the flowers of sentiment!" Aphorisms on ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... Dame Iris straightway thus replied: "Dost dare my beauty to deride? In realms of space God station'd me A type of better worlds to be To eyes that from life's sorrows rove In cheerful hope to Heav'n above, And, through the mists that hover here God and his precepts blest revere. Do thou, then, grovel like the swine, And to the ground thy snout confine, But suffer the enlighten'd eye To ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... yourself? You damned villain!' I broke out. 'Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I am a kinsman of Monsieur de St. Yves—here in his interest. Upon my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn! Come, stand up; don't grovel there. Stand ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... collected in a coach and four, and transmitted to paper in a study overlooking the Green Park; with paper velvet-like, and golden pen ruby-headed, upon rose-wood desk inlaid with ivory, you may find that these essays have been transcribed: you will grovel, you will slaver, you will rub your nose in the pebbles, like a salmon at spawning-time, when this very immortal work shall come out, clothed in purple morocco, our arms emblazoned on the covers, and coroneted on the back, after the manner of publication ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... generous contribution to the Salvation Army the next time they came round. I'm not saying now that there isn't misery enough there and in every like section of every city, but I'll say that in a great many cases the same people who grovel in the filth here would grovel in a different kind of filth if they had ten thousand a year. At that you can't blame them greatly for they don't know any better. But when you learn, as I learned later, ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... rough on me—" Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignation rushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose to stand out, let him. He was capable of running ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... any business to think himself humble," said Father Payne. "The moment you do that, you are conceited. It's not a virtue to grovel. A man ought to know exactly what he is worth. You needn't be always saying what you are, worth, of course. It's modest to hold your tongue. But humility is, or ought to be, extinct as a virtue. It belongs ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hands to intercept her, and Mrs. Kilgour, released, fell upon the floor and began to grovel and cry entreaties. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... tell her all this when she returned home; but in his inmost soul he knew all the time that the words would never be said. He knew that he would grovel before her and whine for her favour; that he would remain her slave and sell her his soul again and again, just as she sold him her body. He knew that that was what he would do, for he was head over ears in love ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... Athene came near to Achilles and spake winged words: "Now, at last, O godlike Achilles! shall we twain carry off great glory to the Achaian ships! He cannot now escape us, though the Far-Darter should grovel at the feet of Zeus with fruitless prayers. But do thou stay and recover thy breath; and I will go and persuade Hector to stand up against thee in fight." And he gladly obeyed her voice, and stood leaning on ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... any liberty, and who are Catholics for the same reason, add to the number of Catholics here, but their children's children will not be Catholics. Their children will not be very good Catholics, and even these immigrants themselves, in a few years, will not grovel quite so low in the presence of a priest. The Catholic Church is gaining no ground in ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,—we who ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... bar with his lieutenants in evil when the note reached him. He read it with a satisfaction he could not conceal. So! He had brought her already to her knees. Before he was through with her she should grovel in ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... to say that, so generous, so wide-minded, taking the hopeful view of everything! How noble he looks! These are days in which we should stick to our colors. I wonder how he can think of such beautiful things. For my part, I think the duty of the true priest is not to grovel to the crowd and call wrong right and right wrong for the sake of a fleeting popularity. How striking! What a lesson to the Bishop, if he were only here. He is so lax about Dissent, as if right and wrong were mere matters of opinion! What a gift he has! I know he will eat nothing for luncheon. ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... the Lady Mary said; 'grovel! grovel! I had thought you would have been shamed thus to crawl ...
— The Fifth Queen Crowned • Ford Madox Ford
... perhaps as fine as anything that Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still the gentleman, with all the pride of gentry;—but not the less is he the humble bedesman, aware that he is living upon charity, not made to grovel by any sense of shame, but knowing that, though his normal pride may be left to him, an outward demeanour ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... beseeched, if it would be best for Shelley, and would make her happy, to send her the Paget man, and to be quick about it. When I had said the last word that came to me, and begged all I thought becoming—I don't think with His face, that Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too dignified to do it Himself—I just stood ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... named Censier, comes in, and does not know whether he ought to salute or to question, to grovel in the dust or to keep his hat on his head. These poor devils of magistrates and local officials were very much exercised in their minds. General Changarnier had been too near the Dictatorship not to make ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... of life, Without some small attempt at strife, Our nature will not grovel; One impulse hadd both man and dame, He seized the tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses fast and fervent; And first burst in the frantic cat, All steaming like a ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... virtue of necessity. He puts us out of conceit with this world, which perhaps a severe divine should do; yet does not, as a charitable divine ought, point to another. His morbid feelings droop and cling to the earth, grovel where they should soar; and throw a dead weight on every aspiration of the soul after the good or beautiful. By degrees we submit, and are reconciled to our fate, like patients to the physician, or prisoners in the condemned cell. We can only explain this by saying, as we said before, that ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... deportment. What mattered it what people thought or said, if it was untrue? he cared not; the world was a wilderness to his excited and irritated fancy, in which there bloomed but one sweet flower, too pure, too beautiful for him to touch. It was his doom he thought to grovel on the earth, hers to shine like a star in ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... at Togiak stands forlornly on a wind-swept Alaskan spit, while huddled around it a swarm of dirt-covered "igloos" grovel in an ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... who spoke in an offensively patronizing way and expected common people to kowtow to and 'Sir' him at every second word. Crass however, seemed to enjoy doing that kind of thing. He did not exactly grovel on the floor, when Sweater spoke to him, but he contrived to convey the impression that he was willing ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... well accept the invitation at once," he said. "Grovel as much as you choose. The more ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Twiddle had a palace; Twaddle said: "I'll grovel Or he'll think I bear him malice"— A sentiment as novel As a ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... sense, then, are we to fear God? Only in the sense of fear to go counter to his will. "Perfect love casteth out fear." The redeemed saints and angels who stand before his heavenly throne in perfect love know no fear of God, "for fear hath torment." But we, who still grovel on earth battling with the world, the flesh and the devil, have cause to fear offending his righteous and holy will. But this only when we are tempted to leave some duty undone or to commit some actual sin. As ...
— Life and Labors of Elder John Kline, the Martyr Missionary - Collated from his Diary by Benjamin Funk • John Kline
... rounds, before an audience, and he is loaded down with pounds, and shillings, crowns and pence. Where'er he goes the brawny Goth is lionized by all, like Caesar, when he cut a swath along the Lupercal. Promoters grovel at his feet, and offer heaps of scads, if he will condescend to meet some other bruising lads. The daily journals print his face some seven columns wide, call him the glory of the race, the nation's hope and pride. And having thus become our boast, the wonder of our age, he battles with his larynx ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... day and the next, her easy injunction, tossed off that way as she turned her beautiful back, was like the crack of a great whip in the blue air, the high element in which Mrs. Lowder hung. He wouldn't grovel perhaps—he wasn't quite ready for that; but he would be patient, ridiculous, reasonable, unreasonable, and above all deeply diplomatic. He would be clever, with all his cleverness—which he now shook hard, as he sometimes ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... scorned—"Every day begins a New Year." Well, every day did begin a New Year! So did every minute. Why not begin a New Year then, in that minute? He had only to say in a cajoling, good-natured tone, "All right, all right! Keep your hair on, my child. I grovel!" He had only to say some such words, and the excellent, simple, unresentful Maggie would at once be appeased. It would be a demonstration of his moral ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... Sea to ply the daring Oar; Nor is it safe, from dread of angry Skies, Closely to press on the insidious Shore. To no excess discerning Spirits lean, They feel the blessings of the golden mean; They will not grovel in the squalid cell, Nor seek in princely domes, with envied pomp, ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth,—and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love. This Frank Greystock must ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... cheerful, contented, ladylike in deportment, and agreeable in manner. What do you say? Silly! I am not silly at all. If you are going to make resolutions at all, you ought to do it properly. Aim at the sky, and you may reach the top of the tree; aim at the top of the tree, and you will grovel on the ground. You are too modest in your aspirations, and they won't come to any good; but as for me—with a standard before ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... dipped His thirsty face, and drank a sea, Athirst with thirst it could not slake. I saw him, drunk with knowledge, take 100 From aching brows the aureole crown— His locks writhed like a cloven snake— He left his throne to grovel down And lick the dust of Seraphs' feet: For what is knowledge duly weighed? Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet; Yea all the progress he had made Was but to learn that all is small Save love, for love is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... them to go quietly away and pretend that nothing has happened and that there never was a fleet. When the Mekinese arrive, the fleet will fight. It doesn't hope to win; it doesn't expect anything—except getting killed honorably when its enemy would like to have it grovel. But it's going ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... he replied. "Oh, must genius ever grovel at the feet of mere physical power—insolent official power! Why are great men so difficult of access! Why, in 1453, did not Constantine in his day of trouble listen to your brainy countryman, and save Europe from the inroads of the Turk? Well, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... The stars, and all the expeditious orbs That in their motions are retributive, Look blindly on, and seem to take no note Of any deep and deadly stab of sin— Let vengeance gorge a gross Cerberean sop, Grovel and snore in swinish sluggardness, Yea, quite forget his dagger and his cup— It is enough, for any retribution, That guilt retain remembrance of itself. Guilt is a thing, however bolstered up, That the great scale-adjusting ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... cried. "Having defied your God so long, shall I grovel to Him at the last? Having hated you so much, shall I seek your forgiveness now? At least of one thing I am glad—it was I who brought you here, and with me and through me you ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... said the unrelenting crone; "hast thou ever spared man in thy hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the dust!—crouch—crouch!—wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and beautiful hues have taught the unwary to be blind to the talons that rend, and the grinders that devour;—crouch, that the foot of the old and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... really dead?" she cried. "Have you no pity for me? Do you think that I have followed you here to grovel at your feet for mere whim? Am I acting like a woman sane and sound? Don't you see that I am mad, and why I am mad? Must I tell you before her? Dick—" She staggered towards him, and the fine cloak slipped from her shoulders; and then it was that Tommy changed from a child into a woman, and raised ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... wretched fellow alive," he said. "If ever there was a child of misfortune, it's me. I can only throw myself on the mercy of the court and grovel—yes, grovel —if you'll show me a place to grovel and ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... bent propels you into fiction, You should clearly and completely understand That your duty in a novel is not to soar, but grovel, If you want it to be profitably banned. So be lavish and effusive in suggesting A malignant and mephitic atmosphere, And you're sure to be applauded as arresting, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 4, 1914 • Various
... to grovel on this earth with our selfish, humbled race, wandering in mystery, and awe, and doubt, when we can communicate with the intelligences above! Does not the soul leap at her admission to confer with superior powers? Does not the proud heart bound at ...
— The Phantom Ship • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of nearly one type, selfish, ignorant, flashy. The wives of his friends were not inspiring to look upon. His own wife had developed a cold, commonplace nature which to him was anything but pleasing. What he knew of that under-world where grovel the beat-men of society (and he knew a great deal) had hardened his nature. He looked upon most women with suspicion—a single eye to the utility of beauty and dress. He followed them with a keen, suggestive glance. At the same time, he was not so dull but that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... turn which the prophet here gives to the thought of the transcendent elevation of God. The heavens are the very type of the unattainable; and to say that they are 'higher than the earth' seems, at first sight, to be but to say, 'No man hath ascended into the heavens,' and you sinful men must grovel here down upon your plain, whilst they are far above, out of your reach. But the heavens bend. They are an arch, and not a straight line. They touch the horizon; and there come from them the sweet influences of sunshine and of rain, of dew and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... historical probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and by so much more dangerous than the Tiger? Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of a Dog? Or is the philanthropist or the saint to give up his endeavours to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... said Andras, "of the delights of its villainy, and grovel in all that is low and base. Life is not worth living unless the air one breathes is pure and free! Man is not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... are, to a great degree, results of inherited tendencies over which we have no control,—accidents of birthplace, in the choosing of which we had no voice. The high in the world do not shine altogether by their own light, not do the lowly grovel altogether in their own debasement,—I felt the excuse for humanity. I was overwhelmed with one feeling,—only God can weigh such circumstantial evidence; we, in our little knowledge of results, pronounce sentence, but final judgment is reserved for a higher court, that sees ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... convinced that self-indulgence is wrong, they conclude that hair-shirts and midnight floggings are right; if convinced that the Church of Rome has too many ceremonies, they resolve that they will have no ceremonies at all; if convinced that it is unworthy to grovel in the presence of a duke, they conclude that it will be a fine thing to refuse the duke ordinary civility; if convinced that monarehs are not much wiser or better than other human beings, they run off into the belief that all kings have been little more than incarnate demons; ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... fairly high, and come down now and again to rest, if one must, than grovel consistently and ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... terrace, where lay the shades of the avaricious, prostrate on the earth, weeping over their sins. They who in life had resolutely turned their gaze from Heaven and fixed it on the things of the earth, must now grovel in the dust, denouncing avarice, and extolling the poor and liberal until the years have worn ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... That's nobly: 'tis to know That God may still be met with, Nor groweth old, nor doth bestow These senses fine, this brain aglow, To grovel and forget with. ...
— Barbara's Heritage - Young Americans Among the Old Italian Masters • Deristhe L. Hoyt
... leaned her swathed head upon her hand and appeared to be lost in thought, while the multitude before her continued to grovel upon their stomachs, only screwing their heads round a little so as to get a view of us with one eye. It seemed that their Queen so rarely appeared in public that they were willing to undergo this inconvenience, ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... possibility of compacts between the devil and mankind; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in their writings of their having been keenly alive to the fact that men horror-stricken at the sight of the destruction of their wives and children by magic would grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of the priest who ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... course, a scrappy game. On such a day good football was impossible. The outsides hardly touched the ball once. But the forwards, covered in mud from head to foot, had their full share of work. Jeffries was ubiquitous; he led the "grovel" (as the scrum was called at Fernhurst), and kept it together. Gordon had very little chance of distinguishing himself; but he did one or two dribbles, and managed to collar Mansell the only time he looked like getting ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... lief be tied up as not I like to play dog;" and Nan put on a don't-care face, and began to growl and grovel ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... self-same common mind that are promoted to dignity and degraded to servitude. And if you sometimes feel that,—you, in whose favor the arrangement tends,—what do you suppose your servants sometimes think upon the subject? It was no wonder that the millions of Russia were ready to grovel before their Czar, while they believed that he was "an emanation from the Deity." But in countries where it is quite understood that every man is just as much an emanation from the Deity as any other, you will not long have that sort of thing. You remember Goldsmith's noble lines, which Dr. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... no exaggeration at all to say that any one who has ever known any soldiers (I can only answer for English and Irish and Scotch soldiers) would find it just as easy to believe that a real Bishop would grovel on the carpet in a religious ecstasy, or that a real doctor would dance about the drawing-room to show the invigorating effects of his own medicine, as to believe that a soldier, when asked for his authority, would point to a lot of shining weapons ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... of that?" said Aucassin. "Who is it that win to heaven? Old priests, and cripples that grovel and pray at altars, and tattered beggars that die of cold and hunger. These only go to heaven, and I do not want their company. So I will go to hell. For there go all good scholars and the brave knights that died ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... best thing you can do," I said, "is to grovel profusely. If you both cast ashes on your heads and let the tears run down ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... we should be neither quite miserable nor quite happy. But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable without making it impossible to be quite happy—that was a discovery in psychology. Any one might say, "Neither swagger nor grovel"; and it would have been a limit. But to say, "Here you can swagger and there you can ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... and dull we grovel, Forgetting that the world is fair; Where no babe we cherish, lest its very soul perish; Where our mirth is crime, our love ...
— Chants for Socialists • William Morris
... heart of a flea-bitten pariah dog. When the time comes he will grovel and squirm ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... way things do turn out. The first thing I know I'll swear myself out of the church. It was my pride, sir—but by all the virtues that man has grouped, must we apologize for our pride? Hah, sir! Must I grovel and beg pardon because I honor my own name? I'll see myself blistered first. It wasn't old Lim's fault. Confound it all, it wasn't anybody's fault. Then, sir, must I go crawling around on my belly like a—like a—like an infernal lizard, sir? I hope not. But it will come out all right, ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... there are enough to make him feel he'd like to leave things straight when he goes. What I want you to let me say is, that the minute I had made a fool of myself the night of the dance, I knew what an ass I had been and I was ready to grovel." ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... me like vultures if I were weak fool enough to let them," she said to Anne. "They cringe and grovel like spaniels, and flatter till 'tis like to make one sick. 'Tis always so with toadies; they have not the wit to see that their flattery is an insolence, since it supposes adulation so rare that one may be moved ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... characteristic of his being is unmasked and stands forth, naked. If he be at heart a coward, even though he may honestly never have suspected himself of cowardice, he will try to flee, or cringe and grovel for mercy; if his soul is stayed upon the immortal and everlasting truths, he will face what Fate may hold with the resigned fortitude which was the martyrs'; but, if he is merely a man, strong with the courage of the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... and brutal Ignorance. European Slavery is indeed a State of Liberty, if compared with that which prevails in the other three Divisions of the World; and therefore it is no Wonder that those who grovel under it have many Tracks of Light among them, of which the others ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... than 6000 men, and we not dead above 200, and wounded about 400; in all about 600. Thence home and to my office till past twelve, and then home to supper and to bed, my wife and mother not being yet come home from W. Hewer's chamber, who treats my mother tonight. Captain Grovel the Duke told us this day, hath done the basest thing at Lowestoffe, in hearing of the guns, and could not (as others) be got out, but staid there; for which he will be tried; and is reckoned a prating coxcombe, and ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... to grovel before a piece of fireworks. There was no firing in our neighbourhood; nothing to indicate a state of war between the British Empire and Germany; no visual evidence of any German army in France except that flare. However, if a guide who knows as much about war as this one says you are to prostrate ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... her wet clothes. Then she snatched her hand away, and covered her face with both hands, and began to rock and moan, and finally turned round and hid her face against the very floor as if she would grovel and burrow into it. ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... spoke; his passion for music and gardens, and other contradictory traits such as no one would have expected in a keen business man. Sometimes Mary had fancied that Peter was a little inclined to fall in love with Jim Schuyler, perhaps because he was one of the few men she knew who did not grovel at her feet. Now Mary looked at the man with intense interest, and could imagine a girl like Molly Maxwell making him her hero, in spite of the difference between their ages. Molly was not twenty-one. He ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the sole refiner of art is human nature. Art rises when men rise, and grovels when men grovel. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... heartless indifference to the general good, he greets the promoted "ladies" with grave courtesy. It is otherwise with the upstart men. His pride of brain and life-long station makes him haughtily indifferent to them. He will not grovel with these ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... desperate fight, His courage ne'er forsook, He javelled at the tiger Until his bayonet broke. One part was in the savage breast, And Turner understood If he could grovel out the steel ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... on his hat, and said to himself: "I will go to the Methodist meeting-house: they work directly upon the conscience, deepen the sense of sin, and preach a quick cleansing as by light shining in. There I may grovel in the sight of men and women and arise redeemed. But, no. It is the Sabbath my daughter's marriage is to be announced in our own church, and it would be cowardly, not to say unseemly, to fly from one worship to another now. If I go to church this morning ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... Milliken, who has married the descendant of the Kickleburys of the Conqueror, marry a dancing-girl off the stage! Horace Milliken! do you wish to see me die in convulsions at your feet? I writhe there, I grovel there. Look! look at me on my knees! your own ...
— The Wolves and the Lamb • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this filth, the chiefs of Odo seldom passed that way and looking round within their green retreats, and pouring out their wine, and plucking from orchards of the best, marveled how these swine could grovel in the mire, and wear such sallow cheeks. But they offered no sweet homes; from that mire they never sought to drag them out; they open threw no orchard; and intermitted not the mandates that condemned their drudges to a life of deaths. Sad sight! to see those round-shouldered ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... a nice girl, certainly," said Fowler Pratt to himself, as he walked home, "and I have no doubt would make a good, ordinary, everyday wife. But she is not such a paragon that a man should condescend to grovel in the dirt ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... myself before her; to grovel at her feet and crave her pardon for my behaviour of last night. What else should I want to ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... those scrolls to herself, sitting in her throne, and spake not a long while; then she said: Come hither, and grovel before Us, and hearken! Even so we did; and she said again: Our sister, who hath been so kind unto you, and saved you from so many pains, here telleth Us, by the message of the two doves, that ye ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... Goddess, with her wand, touched the extremity of our hair (I am both ashamed, and {yet} I will tell of it), I began to grow rough with bristles, and no longer to be able to speak; and, instead of words, to utter a harsh noise, and to grovel on the ground with all my face. I felt, too, my mouth receive a hard skin, with its crooked snout, and my neck swell with muscles; and with the member with which, the moment before, I had received the cup, with the same did I impress ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... he was doing nothing of the sort, for Withers slandered right and left when it wasn't worth his while to grovel, and I had no doubt now that he believed his own dirty tale when he told it; but he had been impressed and thoroughly frightened, even at the time, by the calmness of my bluff, and the little beast was far more afraid of us than we ever could have been of him now. We could henceforth ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... new trouble and distress that we do not deserve. I have never had the remotest thought of injuring you or your property in any way. I am willing to make all the amends I am able for the accidental damage to your property, but I can't and won't cringe to your injustice, nor grovel at ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... everybody. Sometimes it is best to say 'Yes' when people ask you to do certain things, and sometimes a flat-footed 'No' is the thing. Remember that if you agree with everybody who expresses an opinion, you have the respect of nobody. Think for yourself, but think carefully. If you choose to grovel at the feet of those about you, you must expect to get stepped on and run over. Above all, cultivate a habit of being so straightforward and above-board that no one will ever doubt your sincerity. Don't wear a mask of sincerity when the real character is less honorable. To do this is to cheat yourself ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees, grovel before you? Would this ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... venture to insult the intelligence of the reader with these idiotic details but for the reasons stated, and additionally, that they carry conviction with them to thousands of minds, honest doubtless, but which are accustomed to grovel in superstition, and falsehood, which they are unable ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... trained to bend and grovel from the first, Crouching through life forever in the dark, Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark; And no one durst Deny their horrid dream, that ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Highness'? Oh for a thousandth-part of the unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty enough to be anything but discreetly well-mannered. Shall you sit in his presence, or stand and grovel alternately? Does one have to curtsy? Very well, then, make any excuses you like for me, Hilda: say I'm eccentric, say I'm deranged, say I'm a Nihilist. I will hide under the scullery table, fling myself in the moat, lock myself in the keep, let the portcullis ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it is elevated, will steady and animate his motive. It is well to have a high standard of life, even though we may not be able altogether to realize it. "The youth," says Mr. Disraeli, "who does not look up will look down; and the spirit that does not soar is destined perhaps to grovel." ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... identical both in the universe and in himself. He ceases the attempt to dictate to the Spirit, because he does not see in it a mere blind force, but reveres it as the Supreme Intelligence: and on the other hand he does not grovel before it in doubt and fear, because he knows it is one with himself and is realizing itself through him, and therefore cannot have any purpose antagonistic to his own individual welfare. Realizing this he ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... are ever at war, one pulling heavenward, the other, earthward. Nor do they ever become reconciled. Either may conquer, but the vanquished never submits. The higher nature may be compelled to grovel, to wallow in the mire of sensual indulgence, but it always rebels and enters its protest. It can never forget that it bears the image of its Maker, even when dragged through the slough of sensualism. The still small voice which bids ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... remained a Protestant, a filthy thing. In his thirst for comfort he was driven back on dreams of greatness, of buried treasure some day to be found, which would cause the English and the natives of the land alike to grovel in the dirt before him. Warmed by such thoughts he fell asleep ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... French instead of German champagne at a banquet for Prince Henry, and he had allowed the Kaiser's yacht to be christened in French champagne. How could such a blunderer satisfy the diplomatic requirements of the vain and petty Kaiser? And yet! Holleben was utterly devoted and willing to grovel in the mud. He even suggested to President Roosevelt that at the State Banquet at the White House, Prince Henry, as a Hohenzollern, and the representative of the Almightiest Kaiser, should walk out to dinner first; but there was no discussion, for the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... apace—the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be high, and yet, with all this custom and profit, the landlord and his family still grovel. And grovel they will in dirt, vice, low cunning, and iniquity—as the serpent went on his belly in the dust—to the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... Republic call me tyrant! Were I such, they would grovel at my feet. I should gorge them with gold, I should grant them immunity for their crimes, and they would be grateful. Were I such, the kings we have vanquished, far from denouncing Robespierre, would lend me their guilty support; there would be ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... sweet smiles uplit, "And from the darkness awakens it; "But though it whisper of peace and love, "And tell the world of the joys above, "They will not hearken unto the voice "Whose accents faint make the flowers rejoice, "But still grovel on in strife and sorrow, "And make the signal of war, 'the morrow.'" Onward we went through the heavens afar Swift as the course of a shooting star, Until dark shadows began to fall Around our way, like a funeral pall, Deeper and deeper, and then the gloom Grew thick as it were the Night's ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... got him his boots, and would have laced them for him, and kissed them too, if he would have let her, and did grovel at his feet to arrange the roll of his stockings ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... and fantastical doctrines. Think for a moment of a "spiritual faculty," so bright as to anticipate all essential spiritual verities, —the universal possession of humanity,—which yet terminates in leaving the said humanity to grovel in every form of error, between the extremes of Fetichism, which consecrates a bit of stone, and Pantheism, which consecrates all the bits of stone in the universe, in fact, a sort of comprehensive Fetichism;—which leaves man to erect every thing into a God, provided it is none,—sun, moon, stars, ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... son Oddo. Entering the inner room, they found the large distaff flung carelessly upon a bench. They returned yet a third time, and a third delusion was prepared for them; for Katla had given her son the appearance of a hog, which seemed to grovel upon the heap of ashes. Arnkill now seized and split the distaff, which he had at first suspected, upon which Kalta tauntingly observed, that if their visits had been frequent that evening, they could not be said to be altogether ineffectual, since they ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... grain stealing, two crimes particularly associated with their class; they abstain from the practice of infant marriage and concubinage, to which almost all classes of Hindu society are addicted; they lose much of the old servile spirit which led them to grovel at the feet of their social superiors, and they acquire more sense of the rights and dignity which belong to them as men. Where they are able to escape their surroundings they prove themselves in no way inferior, either in mental or in moral character, to the best of their fellow-countrymen. ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... your marvelous opportunity? What, with your stupendous, untried strength? Will ye once more set up the golden calf, and prostrate yourselves before it? Will ye again enthrone ecclesiastical despotism, and grovel before image of Virgin and Saint? Will ye raise high the powers of mediaeval darkness, and bend your necks anew to the yoke of ignorance and stagnation? But think you now that flames and dynamite will break your present bonds? Aye, America may be made a land ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking |
