"Toady" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old disguster, Boswell. Bah! I have no patience with the toady! I suppose "my mind is not yet thoroughly impregnated with the Johnsonian ether," and that is the reason why I cannot appreciate him, or his work. I admire him for his patience and minuteness in compiling such trivial details. He must have been an amiable man, to bear Johnson's brutal, ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... sermon on the Duties of Royalty. The "Quarterly," "so savage and tartarly," came down upon him in the most contemptuous style, as "a joker of jokes," a "diner-out of the first water," in one of his own phrases; sneering at him, insulting him, as nothing but a toady of a court, sneaking behind the anonymous, would ever have been mean enough to do to a man of his position and genius, or to any decent person even. If I were giving advice to a young fellow of talent, with two or three facets to his mind, I would tell him by all means to keep his wit in the background ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... by the innumerable paragraphs of personal and literary abuse with which I have been latterly assailed. This matter, however, will remedy itself. At the very first blush of my new prosperity, the gentlemen who toadied me in the old, will recollect themselves and toady me again. You, who know me, will comprehend that I speak of these things only as having served, in a measure, to lighten the gloom of unhappiness, by a gentle and not unpleasant sentiment of mingled pity, merriment ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... obsequiousness &c adj.; subserviency; abasement; prostration, prosternation^; genuflection &c (worship) 990; fawning &c v.; tuft- hunting, timeserving^, flunkeyism^; sycophancy &c (flattery) 933; humility &c 879. sycophant, parasite; toad, toady, toad-eater; tufthunter^; snob, flunky, flunkey, yes-man, lapdog, spaniel, lickspittle, smell-feast, Graeculus esuriens [Lat.], hanger on, cavaliere servente [It], led captain, carpet knight; timeserver, fortune hunter, Vicar of Bray, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... audiences." Mr. Marzials quotes this expression "hovering" as admirably descriptive. It is. By judicious selection, by innuendo, here a pitying aposiopesis, there an indignant outburst, the charges are heaped up. Swift was a toady at heart, and used Stella vilely for the sake of that hussy Vanessa. Congreve had captivating manners—of course he had, the dog! And we all know what that meant in those days. Dick Steele drank and failed ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... up one jot in attacking the intolerant Government. It was a hot contest, but the common people, true Americans, rallied to our support, and left the aristocratic officials to toady ...
— From Boyhood to Manhood • William M. Thayer
... folks! Wonder you didn't tell her you drove a fish-cart and wanted her trade! As for me, I'm independent. Don't make no difference to me how well-off a person is. They're human, just the same as I am, and I don't toady to 'em. If they want to talk they can send for me. I'll wait ...
— The Rise of Roscoe Paine • Joseph C. Lincoln
... having the best sort of a time. That was Zaidos' luck, thought Velo. He stared at the bent head of "John Smith," bending over the "second son of the Prince of Teck." For a plain "John Smith" he seemed exceedingly chummy with the young nobleman. Velo was a natural-born toady. True worth, real nobility of mind and soul meant nothing to him. But he did not lack assurance. After a moment he braced up and joined the group where Zaidos and Lord Craycourt, who answered willingly to the nickname ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... understanding. But in his sober moments the radical had the most supreme contempt for his tory associate, and, sometimes, could not suppress its manifestation. The other, however, was too great a toady to be too thin skinned. It was not convenient for him to be over-sensitive. In fact he was willing to swallow such insults ad infinitum if their donors would only furnish the wherewithall to wash ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter
... slender purse were open to all beggars, but for herself she asked nothing, and was constantly a willing sufferer from her own inability to toady a patron or to make a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... a hero, like the first man wounded in a war. The town rallied to his support. Emma was a heartless wretch, who had insulted a faithful lover because he would not become as abject a toady to the hateful East as she was. Her new name became a byword. Her pronunciations were heard everywhere in the most ruthless parody. She was accused of things that she never had said, things ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... and fortunes of deserving men has been, among the vulgar, a common imputation upon the man of fashion, of which class most frequently is the man of power. He is accused of lavishing his favours only upon the toady and the tuft-hunter, and leaving men of independent mind to the caprice ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... rest. Well, though we did grant the trainer, as you say, two thousand plethra of the ager Leontinus, we still learned nothing adequate from it.[15] But who should not admire your system of instruction? And what is it? You are ever jealous of your superiors, you always toady to the prominent man, you slander him who has attained distinction, you inform against the powerful and you hate equally all the excellent, and you pretend love only for those through whom you may do some mischief. This is why you are always inciting the younger against their elders ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... husband a quahaug, Mrs. Knowles? That's what they used to call him round here—'The Quahaug.' They called him that 'count of his keepin' inside his shell all the time and not mixin' with folks, not toadyin' up to the summer crowd and all. I always respected him for it. I don't toady to nobody neither." ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a thing that no sanctimonious Brahman would have dreamed of doing, for fear of being defiled by the touch of a casteless foreigner; so he was either above or below the caste laws, and it is common knowledge how those who are below caste cringe and toady. So he evidently reckoned himself above it, and the Indian who can do that has met and overcome more tyranny and terrors than ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... anything else aboard that ship. Cummin's was a bully and a sneak to everybody but the old man, and a toady to him. He never struck me or anybody else when the skipper was around, but there was nothin' too mean for him to do when he thought he had a safe chance. And he took pains to let me know that if I ever told a soul at home he'd kill me. I'd learned by experience, not only ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... is somehow warped out of the beauty of the perpendicular. His ideal Gentleman is the frigid product of a rigid mechanical drill, with the mien of a posture master, the skin-deep graciousness of a French Marechal, the calculating adventurer who cuts unpretentious worthies to toady to society magnates, who affects the supercilious air of a shallow dandy and cherishes the heart of a frog. True, he repeatedly insists on the obligation of truthfulness in all things, and of, honor in dealing with the world. His Gentleman may; nay, he must, sail with the stream, gamble in moderation ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... a new governor visited Bourke the Giraffe happened to be standing on the platform close to the exit, grinning good-humouredly, and the local toady nudged him urgently and said in an awful whisper, "Take off your hat! Why don't you take ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... Rosseter, discussing the Saturday Westminster. Did they not compete regularly for prizes? Had not Mr. Benson three times won a guinea, and Miss Rosseter once ten and sixpence? Of course Everard Benson had a weak heart, but still, to win prizes, remember parrots, toady Miss Perry, despise Miss Rosseter, give tea-parties in his rooms (which were in the style of Whistler, with pretty books on tables), all this, so Jacob felt without knowing him, made him a contemptible ass. As for Miss Rosseter, she had nursed cancer, and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... notoriety, if not fame, and the bodkin used for fastening the "back hair" was called "Glorvina" in her honor. Like many attractive women of decided character, she had her full share of faults and foibles. Superficial, conceited, sadly lacking in spirituality and refinement, a cruel enemy, a toady to titles, a blind partisan of the Liberal party,—that is her picture in shadow. Her style was open to severe criticism, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth suggests mildly that Maria, in reading her novel aloud in the family circle, was obliged to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... various Sweethearts who now inhabit their nurseries, to read Sir Walter with the same breathless eagerness as they used to do—how many years agone? It is chiefly for their sakes that I have added several interludes, telling how Sweetheart, Hugh John, Sir Toady Lion, and Maid Margaret received my petty larcenies from the full ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... of Morsfield, and all swore to secrecy. As it is, it 'll go badly against poor Chiallo. Taste for fencing won't be much improved by the affair. They quarrelled in the dressing room, and fetched the foils and knocked off the buttons there. A big rascal toady squire of Morsfield's did it for him. Morsfield was just up from Yorkshire. He said he was expecting a summons elsewhere, bound to await it, declined provocation for the present. May filliped him on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a sharp reply to Antipater, who asked him to perform some disgraceful service for him. "I cannot," said he, "be Antipater's friend and his toady at the same time." ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... adequate quantity those of us who can afford the expense go swarming over sea to struggle for front places in his attention. In this blind and brutal scramble for social recognition in Europe the traveling American toady and impostor has many chances of success: he is commonly unknown even to ministers and consuls of his own country, and these complaisant gentlemen, rather than incur the risk of erring on the wrong side, take him at his own valuation and ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... prepared this ordeal for him, and he was vexed, not only because she had done it, but because his sense of discomfiture might afford a kind of triumph to that party in the connection which was disposed, as he expressed it, to "toady the Church." ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the air. Drawn by the bright lights, Jeff entered a saloon and sat down in an alcove with his arms on the table. Why did they hammer him so because he told the truth as he saw it? Why must he toady to the ideas of Bland as everybody else at the University seemed to do? He was not respectable enough for them. That was the trouble. They were pushing him back into the gutter whence he had emerged. Wild fragmentary ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... bubbles, bubbles, Riding on the little brook; See the spiders try to catch them, And old Mr. Toady Frog sings 'Po-dunk!' and jumps down deep. Oh, green ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... one of those senseless persons who are very well capable of looking after their worldly affairs, and, apparently, after nothing else. Fyodor Pavlovitch, for instance, began with next to nothing; his estate was of the smallest; he ran to dine at other men's tables, and fastened on them as a toady, yet at his death it appeared that he had a hundred thousand roubles in hard cash. At the same time, he was all his life one of the most senseless, fantastical fellows in the whole district. I repeat, it was not stupidity—the majority of these fantastical fellows are shrewd and ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Like we acted through spite makes me appear contemptible Black is a toady will do ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... he had asked Steele, especially, to introduce him as Mr. Somers. He had given no reason for this, and Steele had thought little of it. Randolph Schuyler was a man whom his friends obeyed, often without question. I understood this. Steele was no more of a toady to the millionaire than most men would be; but a request of Randolph Schuyler's was not to be thoughtlessly ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells |
