"Grovelling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cry broke from the poor young creature, who had fallen forward grovelling in the bed. She struggled to get up, but her limbs were numb, and refused to move. She flung her clasped hands wildly out, and the prayer that she strove to utter broke forth in a sound, that bore with it the last sane thought that she was to ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... avowal would be united to the security of concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, everything that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of this ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... great writer, a man with a compelling message to his fellows. It seemed only necessary to reach out his hand in order to grasp a chaplet—a crown. With her the world seemed his debtor. Now he was a thing cast off, a broken boy grovelling at the foot of the ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... is necessarily selfish, contracted, grovelling, anxious. Now and then a poor man's heart, when certain beams and dews visit it, may smell like the budding vegetation in yonder garden on this spring day, may feel ripe to evolve in foliage, perhaps ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... hands with both of his, twisted outward as he grasped two fingers in each hand. Robert's face went putty-grey as the bones snapped. Muldoon no longer cared about fair play. His knee came up where it could do most damage, and Robert sank grovelling ...
— Lease to Doomsday • Lee Archer
... grovelling soul, who know'st not honour's worth, But weigh'st it out in mercenary scales! The secret pleasure of a generous act Is the great ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... your ineffable baseness, you have made me mistress of your lot? While you seemed but a demon of vengeance, you commanded terror, and to good purpose; but such a foul fiend as thou hast of late shown thyself—such a very worthless, base trickster of the devil—such a sordid grovelling imp of perdition, can gain nothing but scorn from ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... and biped animal already alluded to, actuated by an overweening desire of notoriety, and in order to catch the applause of some one, grovelling in the morasses of insignificance and vice, like himself, leaves his native obscurity, and indulges in falsehood, calumny, and defamation. I am convinced that none of the highly respectable Teachers of ———— has had any participation in this scurrilous ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... When they had finished grovelling, he got in again, and Uncle John insisted upon exchanging cards with the stranger. He got out his from some pocket, but the American had not one. "By the living jingo," he said, "I've no bit of pasteboard handy—but ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They show that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their hands. Can we be at a loss in separating ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... to Percy's to try to grovel in the dust before him, but he wouldn't see me. It's no good grovelling in the dust of the front steps for the benefit of a man who's in bed on the second floor, so I withdrew in more or less good order. I then got the present idea. Mark how all things work together for good. When they come to you and say "No title ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... him stolidly, although evidently not without some inward apprehension. It was a piteous sight—the poor distorted reasoning faculty grovelling as a slave to the ...
— A Dozen Ways Of Love • Lily Dougall
... of Cleves had made her unwelcome appearance. One of the most curious and indeed incomprehensible facts concerning Henry VIII., is the admiring awe and grovelling gratitude with which he was adored by most of the women whom he had the privilege of ill-treating. After the year 1527, when he first conceived the desire of raising Anne Boleyn to the throne, and of divorcing Katharine, except for the short period during ...
— Studies from Court and Cloister • J.M. Stone
... this incessant, restless, and, as it were, Sabbathless pursuit of fortune, leaves time for holier duties, and what advantage it is to have a face erected towards heaven, with a spirit perpetually grovelling upon earth, eating dust like a serpent; and finally, he says that it will not be amiss for men, in this eager and excited chase of fortune, to cool themselves a little with that conceit of Charles V. in his ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley
... what he regarded as lasting personal friendship with the Czar! It is all moonshine to say that he broke the friendship. The power of Russia, Prussia, and Austria were hopelessly wrecked more than once, and on each occasion they intrigued him into war again, and then threw themselves at his feet, grovelling supplicants for mercy, which he ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... hung, A cry of horror burst from every tongue: Whilst I, in combat with another foe, Fought on, unconscious of th' impending blow; Your arm, brave Boy, arrested his career— Forward you sprung, insensible to fear; 280 Disarm'd, and baffled by your conquering hand, The grovelling Savage roll'd upon the sand: An act like this, can simple thanks repay? [x] Or all the labours of a grateful lay? Oh no! whene'er my breast forgets the deed, That instant, DAVUS, it ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... devoted adherence to a cause. When King George reached England he dismissed Mar from office, suspecting him of sympathy with the Jacobite movement. Mar had expected something of the kind, and had written an obsequious and a grovelling letter to George, in which he spoke of the king's "happy accession," professed unbounded devotion to the house of Hanover, and promised that "You shall ever find in me as faithful a subject as ever any king had." ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... of matter, which we now see producing only such comparatively meagre and insufficient results, actually caused animalcules to be produced from pure sand, and fishes to be created out of oysters, and birds to be generated by slimy and grovelling reptiles, and men to be born from monkeys;—if he should tell us all this, certainly we could offer no direct confutation of the wonderful tale. In regard to alleged facts of this character, the wisest of men are, and always ...
— A Theory of Creation: A Review of 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' • Francis Bowen
... venerable orders of the hierarchy exist with all their advantages." And shall I tell them, "I reject your just and reasonable petition, not because it shakes the Church, but because there are others, while you lie grovelling upon the earth, that will kick and bite you"? Judge which of these descriptions of men comes with a fair request: that which says, "Sir, I desire liberty for my own, because I trespass on no man's conscience,"—or the other, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... himself with a groan, "it wouldn't amuse me in the least to convulse money markets. Do I want to see the smartest people in London grovelling for anything they think they're likely to get out of me? As I should be perfectly well aware that their homage was not paid to any personal merit of mine, I could hardly consider it flattering. And why should I make kingdoms? The ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... and down the room now, striking his hands together, trampling upon the rich furs that strewed the floor, as if they were his enemies grovelling at his feet, so possessed with the hysterical passion that he seemed to have forgotten the women who watched him ...
— The Proud Prince • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... when enforced as the sine qua non condition of personal intercourse. If England is right, then how clownishly wrong must have been his own previous circles! If England is not ridiculously fastidious, then how bestially grovelling must be the spirit of social intercourse in his own land! But no man reconciles himself to this view of things in a moment. He kicks even against his own secret convictions. He blushes with shame and anger at the thought of his own family perhaps brought suddenly into collision with polished Englishmen; ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... action, and Maignan's heat, were such that the nearest drew back affrighted; and even Gringuet's servants recoiled, while the market people gasped with astonishment. But I knew that the respite would last a moment only, and I stood forward. "Arrest that man," I said, pointing to the collector, who was grovelling on the ground, nursing his foot and shrieking ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... well as the finest Invention, by finding out a Method to supply this natural Defect in his Subject. Accordingly he leaves the Adversary of Mankind, in the last View which he gives us of him, under the lowest State of Mortification and Disappointment. We see him chewing Ashes, grovelling in the Dust, and loaden with supernumerary Pains and Torments. On the contrary, our two first Parents are comforted by Dreams and Visions, cheared with Promises of Salvation, and, in a manner, raised to a greater Happiness than that which they had forfeited: In short, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... fell presently from the pianist's drooping head to the face of the protegee, and the contrast between what was expressed by this young person's gaze and attitude and what he was himself feeling again drew his attention to her. No grovelling and no soaring was here, but an elation almost stern, a brooding concentration almost maternal, a dedicated power. Madame Okraska, he reflected, must be an extraordinary person if she really deserved that gaze. He didn't believe that she quite did. ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... grovelling scenes of night, No more a tenant pent in mortal clay; Now should we rather hail thy glorious flight, And trace thy journey ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... soothed me then, as far as it was possible for anything to soothe me, and I shifted slightly to one side and looked up at him furtively and crossly, my poor face all blubbered with tears and smeared with mire where I had lain grovelling. ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... you, master, who have to navigate the ship, but we are above such grovelling notions," answered Mildmay; "you have nothing Byronic ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... as it were, far above the earth and the sinful creatures crawling on its surface; and I deemed myself as an eagle among the children of men, soaring on high, and looking down with pity and contempt on the grovelling creatures below. ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... is, at any rate, that the cenacle of politicians, whose interests are to be thrown in relief against this mass of grovelling corruption, forms but a feeble contrast, even in the purely artistic sense. We have no right to doubt that Disraeli thought that Coningsby and his friends represented the true solution of the difficulty; yet if anybody had wished to demonstrate that a genuine ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... that I had the mirror, to behold myself in the fulness of my glory! and, oh, that the domineering fop, my master, were in presence, that I might triumph over him! that I might even contemn the wretched wight, the mortal of a grovelling soul, and of a debased understanding. [He looks about him, and sees his master.] How the devil came these three together? Nothing vexes me, but that I must stand bare to him, after such an ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... jolly amusement—the opportunity's too good to be lost! What exhilaration there is on seeing a human soul imbruted and grovelling hopelessly in the dirt or rather to have a body before you, without a soul for the time being—a coarse animal mass, swinish as those whom the wand of Circe smote, but with the human intelligence quenched besides, and the charactery of reason wiped away. Here, ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... Now she could be avenged on all; on the hard-hearted tyrant who had rejected her prayer, on the sleek dames who would point the finger at her child, on the smug town that had looked askance at her all these years—that had set her beyond the pale of its dull grovelling pleasures, and shut her up in that lonely House on the Wall! Now—now she had it in her hand to take tenfold for one. Her face so shone at the thought that the man watching her felt a touch of misgiving; though he was of the boldest or ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... note to strike, and struck with a sure hand. The barricade was torn aside, and the people swept forward, falling on their knees, grovelling at Paul's feet, kissing the hem of his garment, seizing ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Christopher roughly, for the other had dropped upon the floor and was grovelling in drunken hysterics at his feet. "It makes me sick to see a ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... old town-gate, and drew up there for the night, near to another caravan, which, notwithstanding that it bore on the lawful panel the great name of Jarley, and was employed besides in conveying from place to place the wax-work which was its country's pride, was designated by a grovelling stamp-office as a 'Common Stage Waggon,' and numbered too—seven thousand odd hundred—as though its precious freight ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... then violently rebelled against the contrast of this hideous place with the light and colour she had left. She was a rebel. The contrast was too great. How could she live in a room like this? How could anybody live? It was not life at all, but a mere grovelling. And Sally had tasted something that thrilled her. She had come into contact with a life resembling the life led by those who travelled in the motor broughams she so much admired. She was ravenous for such a life. Her natural arrogance was roused and inflamed by the comparison she so ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... His breath was quick and strong, a smile was on his lips, and he looked into the distance with lifted face and flashing eye, as if a glorious vision had arisen there. A touch on his foot brought him to himself. Pepehi was grovelling before him, baring his breast and offering to Kamehameha the poisoned dagger he had but a few moments before aimed at the young king's heart. Lifting him from the ground, Kamehameha comforted the priest with a few words and sent him ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... spring nor mind of its own; or else that it has at least no springy intention and elasticity of purpose, but only a knobby, knotty, prickly, malignant stubbornness, and incoherent opiniativeness; crawling about, and coggling, and grovelling, and aggregating {161} anyhow, like the minds of so many ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... we call a brother poet. "Allen," he writes in 1813, "has lent me a quantity of Burns's unpublished letters.... What an antithetical mind!—tenderness, roughness—delicacy, coarseness— sentiment, sensuality—soaring and grovelling—dirt and deity—all mixed up in that one compound of inspired clay!" We have only to add to these antitheses, in applying them with slight modification to the writer. Byron had, on occasion, more self-control than Burns, who yielded to every thirst or gust, and ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... her alone! If you could see the absorption—hardly do they dare to breathe lest they should miss a point of her beauty! Ah, you would know, could you see it all, upon whose side the glory lies and upon whose the shame! Compare that moment of exaltation with the grovelling life of your Christians! Low-minded, flesh-devouring, Christians, discerning not the difference between clean and unclean! Bah! And you would have my little Sellamal leave all ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... thing began to happen to me at night. Do you know when she lay there asleep beside me (he laughs shrilly) I would hear him, pushing open the door, crawling into the room, coming to me on his hands and knees, grovelling, whining, begging me (he is almost shouting) for her, for her, imagine it! And I, I had to get up and give my place to him. (He covers his eyes with his hands in a. convulsive moment.) Phew! ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... metamorphosis through which we all have passed. What a picture! Look at yourself as you stand there in purple sublimity, trailing clouds of darkness from the middle ages whence you come, planting your imperial foot on all the manly traditions of your own free country, and pleased with the grovelling adulations of your trembling serfs. And now it is not the angels who weep, but the Baboo of Bengal. His pale and earnest brow is furrowed with despair as he turns from you. For whither shall he turn? When his bosom palpitates with ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... a lantern not yet douted [Transcriber's note: doused?] cast its fitful light, a man lay grovelling on the deck. He was praying aloud in an agony of fear, but no sound could be heard from his moving lips. Suddenly there came a crash as of a falling body, the light went out, and I saw the man no more. How long the night lasted I cannot tell; to me it seemed ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... stroke of might, and clave Fair-hands' shield through. When the young knight saw his shield cloven asunder he was a little ashamed of that stroke and of her language, and then he gave the other such a buffet upon the helm that he fell on his knees, and Fair-hands quickly pulled him upon the ground grovelling. Then the Green Knight cried for mercy, and yielded himself unto Sir Fair-hands, and prayed ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... that lifts them up to high degree, And treads us down in grovelling misery, England affords these glorious vagabonds That carried erst their fardels on their backs Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits, And pages to attend their masterships. With mouthing words that better wits have framed, They purchase lands ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... all the paths were grey, And Menelaus from the mountain-side Came, and through palace doors all open wide Rang the wild dirge that told him of the thing That Helen, that the Queen had strangely died. Then on his threshold fell he grovelling, ...
— Helen of Troy • Andrew Lang
... of an evil habit, the rising superior to opposition and attack, the spiritual exaltation that comes from resisting the invasion of the grovelling material side of life. Sometimes when you are worn and weak with the struggle; when it seems that justice is a dream, that honesty and loyalty and truth count for nothing, that the devil is the only good paymaster; when hope grows ...
— The Majesty of Calmness • William George Jordan
... serfs, and every additional bauble with which they bedeck themselves is purchased by the sufferings of their bondsmen; so that the measure of gew-gaw refinement attained by the chiefs is only an index to the actual state in which the greater portion of the population lie grovelling. ...
— Typee - A Romance of the South Sea • Herman Melville
... at him as though he were grovelling stupidity, and then lay back on her cushions with a "You will drive ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... Mrs. Basil, much miffed, "is a man of hereditary ijees, Colonel Reybold. He is now in pursuit of the—ahem!—the Kinvas-back on his ancestral waters. If he should hear that you suggested a pacific life and the grovelling associations of the capital for him, he might call you ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... spoke it when he made that observation. Strange people the Jews—endowed with every gift but one, and that the highest, genius divine,—genius which can alone make of men demigods, and elevate them above earth and what is earthy and what is grovelling; without which a clever nation—and who more clever than the Jews?—may have Rambams in plenty, but never a Fielding nor a Shakespeare; a Rothschild and a Mendoza, yes—but never ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... marvel that ever he might stand, for he had bled so much blood; for Alisander fought wildly, and not wittily. And that other was a felonious knight, and awaited him, and smote him sore. And sometime they rushed together with their shields, like two boars or rams, and fell grovelling both to the earth. Now knight, said Malgrin, hold thy hand a while, and tell me what thou art. I will not, said Alisander, but if me list: but tell me thy name, and why thou keepest this country, or else thou shalt die of my hands. Wit thou well, said Malgrin, that for this maiden's ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume II (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... beam fully upon them. Do not let us undervalue Sunday evening sentiment and sacred music, even though occurring where there was a dance yesterday, and where there will be a revel to-morrow. There must always be a first support on which the grovelling vine ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... slavish fear, 85 Extinguishing all free and generous love Of enterprise and daring, even the pulse That fancy kindles in the beating heart To mingle with sensation, it destroys,— Leaves nothing but the sordid lust of self, 90 The grovelling hope of interest and gold, Unqualified, unmingled, unredeemed Even by hypocrisy. And statesmen boast Of wealth! The wordy eloquence, that lives After the ruin of their hearts, can gild 95 The bitter poison of a nation's woe, Can turn the worship of the servile ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... said. "What is it to be insane? It is to have faculties exalted beyond the comprehension of the multitude; to soar above the grovelling world. Their eyes are too weak to bear the glory, and, because they are blind, they think others cannot see. The fools declared my father was insane. They say the same of you, Holden, and, the next thing, I shall be insane, I suppose. ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... Philip, testily; "don't crouch grovelling on the floor there. Get up and let us know the meaning of this. Good heavens! the lad may be here ...
— A Reputed Changeling • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a sign, and instantly a soldier swooped upon the grovelling figure, twitched him to his feet and drew him apart, ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... air and foul air—gleaming lights, then dense blackness—so the hours passed. Sally after sally the snowplow made, only to withdraw to give way to the pick crews, and they in turn, gasping and reeling, hurried out for the attack of the plow again. Men fell grovelling, only to be dragged into the open air and resuscitated, then sent once more into the cruelty of the fight. The hours dragged by like stricken things. Then—with dawn—the plow churned with lesser impact. It surged forward. Gray light broke through at the end of the tunnel. The grip of at ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... ditches, and through all that's ill. 110 'Twere crime in any man but him alone, To use a body so, though 'tis one's own: Yet this false comfort never gives him o'er, That whilst he creeps his vigorous thoughts can soar; Alas! that soaring to those few that know, Is but a busy grovelling here below. So men in rapture think they mount the sky, Whilst on the ground the entranced wretches lie: So modern fops have fancied they could fly. As the new earl,[59] with parts deserving praise, 120 And wit enough to laugh at his own ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Many have climbed to the top thereof, where they heard the groans more plainly than they could below. One among the rest being a-top, spoke to the tree; but presently came down much astonished, and lay grovelling on the earth speechless for three hours, and then reviving said, Brampton, Brampton, thou art much bound to pray.' The author of this news is one Mr. Vaughan, a minister who was there present and heard and saw these passages, and told Mr. Hildersham of it. The ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 82, May 24, 1851 • Various
... advantages attending this species of intimate direction, when wisely and skilfully managed, cannot be doubted. Grovelling and imperfect natures have often thus been lifted up and carried in the arms of superior wisdom and purity. The confession administered by a Fenelon or a Francis de Sales was doubtless a beautiful and most invigorating ordinance; but the difficulty in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... unconscious of the gigantic scythe wielded by the gigantic dishevelled Death, and which, in a second, will descend and mow them to the ground; but the crowd of beggars, ragged, maimed, paralyzed, leprous, grovelling on their withered limbs, see and implore Death, and cry stretching forth their arms, their stumps, and their crutches. Further on, three kings in long embroidered robes and gold-trimmed shovel caps, Lewis the Emperor, Uguccione of ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... caput mortuum of impotent spite and dulness, till it is varnished over with the slime of servility, and thrown into a state of unnatural activity by the venom of the most rancorous bigotry. The eminent professors in this grovelling department are at first merely out of sorts with themselves, and vent their spleen in little interjections and contortions of phrase—cry Pish at a lucky hit, and Hem at a fault, are smart on personal ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... Nature! by impassioned hearts alone Thy genuine charms are felt. The vulgar mind Sees but the shadow of a power unknown; Thy loftier beauties beam not to the blind And sensual throng, to grovelling hopes resigned: But they whom high and holy thoughts inspire Adore thee, in celestial glory shrined In that diviner fane where Love's pure fire Burns bright, and Genius ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 344 (Supplementary Issue) • Various
... them firmly to the dear old miracle and rub their noses in it. So, and so only, will this electorate of ours rid itself, under a misapprehension, of a real peril, to which, if able to see the thing in its true form and dimensions, it would in all likelihood yield itself grovelling." ...
— Brother Copas • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... deep in philosophy, grovelling through Diogenes Laertius—Plutarch's "Placita" and sich—and often wondering whether the schoolmasters have any better ground for maintaining that Greek is a finer language than English than the fact that they ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... seems that these same gentlemen have actually been appointed by the Government to 'investigate matters' in the district where these Kaffirs live. Poor Toeremetsjani and the unfortunate indunas, as a contemporary remarks, may be expected to give a grovelling welcome. No more High Court ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... mill we fed, That ground the grain for Slavery's bread; With cringing men, and grovelling deeds, We dwarfed our land to Slavery's needs; Till all the scornful nations hissed, To see us ground ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... in favor of a timid and vacillating policy, who would like to negotiate and compromise, who still believe in the possibility of a reconciliation with France, who still think that the pen should smoothen the rugged path before us, or unravel the knot of our difficulties—those cowardly, grovelling hearts are the real enemies of our cause, and more dangerous than Napoleon with all his armies. For they are weighing down our courage, paralyzing our arms, and stifling our enthusiasm. But for them the king, who, in his modesty, is utterly unaware how fiery a soul, how great a heart he ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... themselves so far above us. If you WILL fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you, depend upon it; and if you and I, my dear friend, had Kotow performed before us every day,—found people whenever we appeared grovelling in slavish adoration, we should drop into the airs of superiority quite naturally, and accept the greatness with which the ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... every size, And giving seekers grave and wise, Who came to know their destinies, A rap-turous reception; When unbelievers void of grace Came to investigate the place, (Creatures of Sadducistic race, With grovelling intellects and base,) 620 They could not find the slightest trace To indicate deception; Indeed, it is declared by some That spirits (of this sort) are glum, Almost, or wholly, deaf and dumb, And (out of self-respect) quite mum To skeptic natures ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... his tears with an effort. Beaubocage—Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed that fair young brow; and it was his own son—the son whom he had disowned—whose soft hair was mingling itself now ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... friends of the dead.[63] Now it was surely more worthy of a belief in the natural depravity than in the natural perfectibility of the sons of Adam, thus to assume without parley or proviso a base mercenariness on the one hand, and grovelling terror on the other, as the origin of a doctrine which was obviously susceptible of a kinder explanation. Would it not have been more consistent with belief in human goodness to refer the doctrine to a merciful and affectionate and truly humanising anxiety to assuage the horrors of ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 2 of 3) - Essay 3: Condorcet • John Morley
... victories. But let me not boast. For the present, I have done all that I meant to do in this matter. It is for you, dear reader, now to get a floor, a friend, some soldiers and some guns, and show by a grovelling devotion your appreciation of this noble and beautiful gift of a limitless game that I ...
— Little Wars; a game for boys from twelve years of age to one hundred and fifty and for that more intelligent sort of girl who likes boys' games and books • H. G. Wells
... place where a glory shone that paled even the lustrous constellations of that pure sky. Jacob had thought himself alone; the vision peoples the wilderness. He had felt himself defenceless; the vision musters armies for his safety. He had been grovelling on earth, with no thoughts beyond its fleeting goods; the vision lifts his eyes from the low level on which they had been gazing. He had been conscious of but little connection with heaven; the vision shows ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... earthly objects as insignificant and below our notice, except the pursuit of knowledge and the cultivation of virtue, that is to say, the strict performance of our duty in every relation of society; and it gives a dignity and importance to the enjoyment of life, which the frivolous and the grovelling cannot even comprehend." ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... When the door opened we saw who it was. I knew Marshey. He lived a little beyond Hazen on the same road. Lived in a two-room cabin—it was little more—with his wife and his five children; lived meanly and pitiably, grovelling in the soil for daily bread, sweating life out of the earth—life and no more. A thin man, racking thin; a forward-thrusting neck and a bony face and a sad and drooping moustache about his mouth. His eyes were meek ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... a minute, as he sat grovelling and groaning among the long grass. "I may as well see that I have not killed him. No, he will do as well as ever—which is not saying much.... Now, sir! Go home quietly, and ask Mrs. Trebooze for a little rhubarb and salvolatile. I'll call up in the course of ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... low, grovelling, vindictive, feelings which agitate and disgrace themselves. If Roman Catholic principles are true and undeniable, none but Roman Catholics will be saved from the wrath to come. If Anglo-Catholic principles are true and undeniable, none but Anglo-Catholics ...
— Superstition Unveiled • Charles Southwell
... ludicrous and yet a strangely touching spectacle to see these three poor devils grovelling and pleading before me, and at the same time praying to Allah for protection in the little bala-khana, hoping thereby to save themselves from cruel mutilation and lifelong disgrace. A watchful eye is kept outside by the mirza, who does his groaning and praying near the door, and the sight ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... many birds that dust themselves never wash: and I once thought that those birds that wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequency seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great washers. Does not ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... not dismiss him, and might, perhaps, have been doomed for ever to the grossness of pedlary, and the jargon of usury, had not a fraud been discovered in the settlement, which set me free from the persecution of grovelling pride, and pecuniary impudence. I was afterwards six months without any particular notice but at last became the idol of the glittering Flosculus, who prescribed the mode of embroidery to all the fops of his time, and varied at pleasure ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... of artistic theory and practice she set Cornelia the example of grovelling at the master's feet, as if there could be no question of anything else; but in other things Cornelia sometimes asserted herself against this slavish submission with a kind of violence little short of impertinence. After these moral paroxysms, in which she disputed the most obviously ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... climbed to the top of it, who heard the groans more easily than they could below. But one among the rest, being on the top thereof, spake to the tree; but presently came down much aghast, and lay grovelling on the earth, three hours speechless. In the end reviving, he said: "Brampton, Brampton, thou art much bound to pray!"' The Earl of Lincoln caused one of the arms of the ash to be lopped off and a hole bored through ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... observed before, were gathering like swarms of flies at the door of one of the Chinese guard-houses, which line the enclosing walls of the Palace. They were evidently much excited by some discovery. Wishing to learn what it was, I dismounted and pushed in. Grovelling on the ground lay an elderly Chinese, whose peculiar aspect and general demeanour made it clear what he was. He was a Palace eunuch, left here by some strange luck. The man was in a paroxysm of fear, and, pointing into the guard-house behind him, he was beseeching the soldiery with words ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... put asunder what God has joined by an indissoluble sacrament. The soul must be tainted before the action become corrupt; and there is no self-delusion more fatal than that which makes the conscience dreamy with the anodyne of lofty sentiments, while the life is grovelling and sensual,—witness Coleridge. In his case we feel something like disgust. But where, as in his son Hartley, there is hereditary infirmity, where the man sees the principle that might rescue him slip from the clutch of a nerveless will, like a rope through the fingers of a drowning man, ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... when certain of his private occupations—interviews with personages of wealth or influence, cryptic conversations, resulting always, however defiant the beginning, in the same grovelling pleas and promises—had amused and interested the cynic most mightily: been the cream of his labors, indeed. But latterly even these scenes had palled; and it came to him with a faint shock of surprise that he was beginning ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... together, as they now justified their names, and blundered over one another in a make-believe attempt to bite and worry the foot; Nic looking on amused as they threw themselves down, rolling over and grovelling along on their sides and backs to get close up and feel the black's toes tickle them, and catch hold ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... as if you were a millionaire and I a grovelling pauper. I shall have Lavernac and two thousand a-year when my uncle, Sir Theophilus Parker, dies." Hardy rolled out the title with a certain proprietary unction; his cousin had no share in this enviable relationship. "I give the old bird five years at the very worst, and it's a moral ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... hastily to recover the volumes, and promptly knocking his head against that of Billykins, who was also grovelling for the same purpose, while Nealie plunged into the business of their visit, hoping to divert the attention of the master of the house from the awkwardness of the boys, poor things; but Sylvia giggled in quite ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... from your door, was none other than a fairy prince, who will this very day lift you from the slough of grovelling poverty to the realms of affluence and prosperity. Good ...
— Oh! Susannah! - A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts • Mark Ambient
... and forbore to utter any of those pious commonplaces by which she might have attempted to bring him to a better frame of mind. She had tact enough to divine that he was best left to himself—left to struggle out of this grovelling state by some effort of his own, rather than to be dragged from the slough of despond by moral ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... field in which the artillery experiments were conducted, with an air of knowing all about it, and Schwartz, as usual, pursued her. The gun was sponged and loaded, and the charge was rammed home under Monsieur Dorn's supervision, Lil standing gravely by, and Schwartz grovelling in her neighbourhood. Then the old gendarme himself primed the piece, and taking a torch from a boy who stood near him applied it to the touch-hole. Out at the muzzle sprang the answering flame and roar, and away went Schwartz as if he had been projected by the force of the powder. Panic declared ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... through the ice-floor, as if there were nothing between her and the rock below. I ventured to doubt this, for there was an air of immense thickness about the whole ice; and as soon as A. and I had succeeded in grovelling across the intervening space, and converged upon her, we found that the appearance she had observed was due to a most perfect reflection of the roof, as shown by the candles we carried, which may give some idea of the character of the ice. We did not care to study this effect ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... and staggered half-way up the steep garden path, when Acton happening to tread on a loose pebble brought the whole procession to grief, and caused the noble band of conquering heroes to be seen all grovelling in a ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... Randalin cried in amazement, while the King drew back as though the grovelling figure at his feet were a dog that had ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... sweeten it with fiction, that it can please. Of itself, it is so ugly a thing that society in its refinement will not even hear it, but prefers to employ a corresponding formula. Thus all passion, however vile, is called by the name of 'love,' all superstitious terror and grovelling attempts to conciliate the unseen are known as 'religion,' while selfish greed and the hungry lust for power masquerade as laudable 'ambition.' Men and women, especially women, hate the truth, because, like ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... know that the habit of measuring herself by others, in this way, will hang like a millstone about her neck; and if it do not drown her in the depths of ignorance and imbecility, will at least make her forever a child, in comparison with what she should be. It will keep her grovelling on the earth's surface, when she ought to be exploring the highest heavens. It will keep her a near neighbor to the sisterhood of worms on which she treads, when she ought to be soaring towards those lofty heights which Gabriel once traversed—nay, ...
— The Young Woman's Guide • William A. Alcott
... of mankind to be A guardian god below; still to employ The mind's brave ardor in heroic aims, Such as may raise us o'er the grovelling herd, And make us shine for ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... day thou hast Trampled the Emperor's lands beneath thy feet. Oh, I am but a woman! Were I man, I'd find some better thing to do, than here Lie grovelling in the dust. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... said his uncle, in a more composed tone, 'that it is not deficiency of spirit, but the grovelling habits of a confined education, among the poor-spirited class you were condemned to herd with, that keeps you silent. You scarce yet believe yourself a Redgauntlet; your pulse has not yet learned the ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... supper there," said young Otto. "Marry, lads, let us storm the town; we are thirty gallant fellows, and I have heard the garrison is not more than three hundred." But the rest of the party thought such a way of getting supper was not a very cheap one, and, grovelling knaves, preferred rather to sleep ignobly and without victuals, than dare the assault with Otto, and die, or conquer ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people, 'destroyers,' and to push themselves into the 'new movement,' and this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really new people are very often unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries of grovelling tendencies. But I don't think there is any considerable danger here, and you really need not be uneasy for they never go very far. Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their place, but no more; ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... and though not half grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling, with Gerard ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... resorted to the expediency of grovelling. "Forgive! forgive!" he groaned. "I have done only ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... temple were many priests gathered around the altars, praying, weeping, grovelling in the dust. Impostors in safety, they were not the less superstitious in danger! Calenus passed them, and entered the chamber yet to be seen in the south side of the court. Burbo followed him—the priest struck a light. Wine and viands strewed the table; the remains of ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... trained and influential British opinion would then be found on the side of the champions of Slavery, and against those of Abolition, the prediction would have been universally treated by Englishmen as an emanation and a proof of the most grovelling malignity, not less despicably silly than shamelessly calumnious. The time of trial came; and what no one would have ventured to suggest as conceivable proved to be the actual and positive truth. There must have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... quoted may mean any thing, or nothing, and guides in no degree. That the true result of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles, is a proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd than to the fervid dreams of the man of genius. The negative merit suggested appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate Addison into apotheosis. In truth, while that virtue which consists in the mere avoidance of ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... admiration is more excited by the power of mankind to endure almost preternatural misery, or our indignation more deeply aroused by the cruelty with which the sublimest principles of human nature may be made to serve the purposes of selfish ambition and grovelling superstition, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... but herself, to wander among a few mouldy ruins, that are only imperfect indexes to lost volumes of glory, and meet at every step the more melancholy ruins of human nature—a degenerate race of stupid and shrivelled slaves, grovelling in the lowest ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... him, contemptuous too. The Arab could not find the money, and the little horn now piped its warning of departure. It was absolutely necessary for her to get in at once if she did not mean to stay at El-Akbara. She tried to pass the grovelling Arab, but as she did so he suddenly sprang up, jumped on to the step of the carriage, and, thrusting his body half through the doorway, began to address a torrent of Arabic to the passenger within. The horn sounded again, and the carriage jerked backwards preparatory ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... skies, And round the smiling landscape lies, Whilst you look down with tearful eyes On grovelling man, My sympathetic fancy flies, The scene ...
— Cottage Poems • Patrick Bronte
... carry forth, with foemen's names thereon. Hapless Acoetes, spent with eld, is brought forth; whiles he wears His bosom with the beat of fists, and whiles his face he tears: Then forth he falls, and grovelling there upon the ground doth lie. They bring the war-wain now, o'errained with blood of Rutuli: AEthon his war-horse comes behind, stripped of his gear of state, Mourning he goes, and wets his face with plenteous tear-drops great. 90 Some bring the ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... a coward with my lips Who dare to question all things in my soul; Some men may find their wisdom on their knees, Some prone and grovelling in the dust like slaves; Let the meek glowworm glisten in the dew; I ask to lift my taper to the sky As they who hold their lamps above their heads, Trusting the larger currents up aloft, Rather than crossing eddies ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... name he held out his hand again and flicked his fingers. The dog rose from his grovelling posture and came eagerly forward, wagging his lank tail. He rubbed his nose against the man's hand and ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... John Gunter, the fisherman, preferred the grub-and-grovelling method, and the favourite scene of his grovelling was a low grog-shop in one of the ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... stroke of might, and clave his shield through. When Beaumains saw his shield cloven asunder he was a little ashamed of that stroke and of her language; and then he gave him such a buffet upon the helm that he fell on his knees. And so suddenly Beaumains pulled him upon the ground grovelling. And then the Green Knight cried him mercy, and yielded him unto Sir Beaumains, and prayed him to slay him not. All is in vain, said Beaumains, for thou shalt die but if this damosel that came with me pray me to save thy life. ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... indeed, that the withdrawal from the Indian of the Government's protecting arm, and the recognition of his position, as no longer that of a needy, grovelling annuitant, but as one of equal footing with the white before the law, would—far from bringing blessings in their train—promote, with other evils, a pernicious development, with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct of the white, ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... which had immediately preceded them. Hallucination would have been conscious of a hiatus and not have tried to bridge it over. It would not have developed the idea of our Lord's return to this grovelling and unworthy earth prior to his assumption into glory, unless those who were under its influence had either seen other resurrections from the dead—in which case there is no difficulty attaching ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... no such weakness as civility; he is resolved to let you know that you are in the country of equality, and, in order to do that effectually, he treats you as a grovelling inferior. You ask a civil question, and he flings his answer at you as he would fling a bone at a dog. Every act of service which he performs comes most ungraciously from him, and he usually contrives to let you plainly see two ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... by that tremendous strain, The grovelling world aghast, Should leave its paltry greed of gain, And mend its ways ...
— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson
... are concerned—He would not have been different in essence from other teachers,—though high above them in degree,—who speak to us of the shining heights of duty that we are to scale, but leave us grovelling ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... he paused, thoroughly spent On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went, Yielding himself up as to an embrace. The moon came out; like features of a face, A querulous fraternity of pines, Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines Also came out, made gradually up The picture; 'twas Goito's ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... know, nor whether some words she spoke, unintelligible to me, had to do with what followed, but instantly there came over this man, this pleasant-looking, respectable American citizen, such a change as is not made by death worms gnawing in a grave. Now there was a fiend grovelling at her feet, a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... ungenial visitation of winter. To escape these evils was the aim and scope of all our exertions. Families late devoted to exalting and refined pursuits, rich, blooming, and young, with diminished numbers and care-fraught hearts, huddled over a fire, grown selfish and grovelling through suffering. Without the aid of servants, it was necessary to discharge all household duties; hands unused to such labour must knead the bread, or in the absence of flour, the statesmen or perfumed courtier must undertake the butcher's office. Poor and rich were now equal, or rather ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... thousand human beings were permanently crowded together in dwellings centuries old, built upon ancient drains and vaults that were constantly exposed to the inundations of the river and always reeking with its undried slime; a little, pale-faced, crooked-legged, eager-eyed people, grubbing and grovelling in masses of foul rags for some tiny scrap richer than the rest and worthy to be sold apart; a people whose many women, haggard, low-speaking, dishevelled, toiled half doubled together upon the darning and piecing and smoothing of old clothes, whose many little ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... the prurient taste which gave us the Parisian operatic versions of the stories of Phryne, Thais, and Messalina. Richard Strauss's "Josephslegende" stands alone in musical literature. There is, indeed, only one reference in the records of oratorio or opera to the woman whose grovelling carnality is made the foil of Joseph's virtue in the story as told in the Book. That reference is found in a singular trilogy, which was obviously written more to disclose the possibilities of counterpoint than to set forth the story—even if it does that, ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... vows of fidelity, expressed himself ready to die, to sell himself into slavery over again, to do anything to rescue his beloved Master Harry from this calamitous position. Harry was touched with the lad's expressions of affection, and told him to get up from the ground where he was grovelling on his knees, embracing his master's. "All you have to do, sir, is to give me my clothes to dress, and to hold your tongue about this business. Mind you, not a word, sir, about it to ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this subject; which I shall endeavour to do in a manner suitable to it, that I may not incur the censure which a famous critic bestows upon one who had written a treatise upon "the sublime," in a low grovelling style. I intend to lay aside a whole week for this undertaking, that the scheme of my thoughts may not be broken and interrupted; and I dare promise myself, if my readers will give me a week's attention, that this great city will be very much changed for the better by next ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... Shakspeare, Massinger, and the elder dramatic poets—the sickening adulation bestowed upon Sheridan Knowles and Talfourd, among the moderns—and the base, malignant, and selfish partiality of theatrical managers, who insist upon performing those plays only which are adapted to the stage—whose grovelling souls have no sympathy with genius—whose ideas are fixed upon gain, have hitherto smothered those blazing illuminati, George Stephens and his syn—Syncretcis; have hindered their literary effulgence from breaking through the mists hung before the eyes of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... horseman who had come to their assistance so opportunely was none other than Count Ferralti, whom they had such good reason to distrust. He was sitting upon his horse and staring with amazement at Beth, at whose feet the driver was grovelling while tears flowed down his bronzed cheeks and he protested in an absurd mixture of English and Italian, by every saint in the calendar, that the girl had saved him from a frightful death and he would devote his future life ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... writhed in a paroxysm of agony; his veins swollen almost to bursting. Whether real or imaginary, whether a victim to insanity or of some supernatural agent, its influence was not the less terrible in its effects. Starting suddenly from his grovelling posture, he cried, fixing his eyes on De Vessey with a ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... golden circle was dazzling. It was set at a point well above the smooth floor, and up to it there led a sloping pathway of gold. It was as if they had indeed captured their god, these worshipers of the sun, had captured and held it for the adoration of the grovelling people. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... minds, and among them in some of the most estimable in feeling and purpose, inveterate dislike. To suppose that life has (as they express it) no higher end than pleasure—no better and nobler object of desire and pursuit—they designate as utterly mean and grovelling; as a doctrine worthy only of swine, to whom the followers of Epicurus were, at a very early period, contemptuously likened; and modern holders of the doctrine are occasionally made the subject of equally polite comparisons by its German, ...
— Utilitarianism • John Stuart Mill
... enlightened, there are always minds inclined to grovelling superstition—minds fond of eating dust and swallowing clay—minds never at rest, save when prostrate before some fellow in a surplice; and these Popish emissaries found always some weak enough to bow down before them, astounded by their ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... How have you deceived me! That mind which I esteemed so great and valiant, proves to be feeble, puerile, and grovelling, a slave to vulgar errors, and weaker ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis |
