"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... night wind strokes the meadow grasses And, breathing music, through the woodland passes! Now that the upstart day is dumb, One hears from the still earth a whispering throng Of forces animate, with murmured song Joining ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... 1592, a warning to his co-mates not to trust to the puppets 'that speak from our mouths.' He then goes on in these remarkable words, which we believe every critic thinks were intended for Shakspeare: 'Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide, supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... upon our councils, And each event has answer'd to my wish; The queen and all her upstart race are quell'd; Dorset is banish'd, and her brother Rivers, Ere this, lies shorter by the head at Pomfret. The nobles have, with joint concurrence, nam'd me Protector of the realm: my brother's children, Young Edward and the little York, are lodg'd Here, safe within the Tower. How say you, sirs, ...
— Jane Shore - A Tragedy • Nicholas Rowe
... The love of years Is wasted like the snow, And the fine fibrils of its life By the rude wrong of instant strife Are broken at a blow— Within the heart Do springs upstart Of which it doth now know, And strange, sweet dreams, Like silent streams That from new fountains overflow, With the earlier tide Of rivers glide Deep in the heart whose hope has died— Quenching the fires its ashes hide,— Its ashes, whence ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... Jack, standing erect in his particolored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing,, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, her lovely white robe corresponding to his striped ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... some very old Barotse living here who were the companions of the old chief Santuru. These men, protected by their age, were very free in their comments on the "upstart" Makololo. One of them, for instance, interrupted my conversation one day with some Makololo gentlemen with the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" and it was taken in quite a good-natured ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... advance? Hath Fortune promised so much hope at first, To make thy conquest of a prince's child? And should I stand to question, how thou durst To leave to think she might be so beguil'd? But words may not suffice to wreak this wrong, Hid under cloak of over-hardy[74] love. Thou[75] upstart fondling, and forborne too long, To give such cause thy ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... treated. Whether he read my thoughts in my countenance, or not, I can't say; but, after most of the passengers had got out, he moved up to me and said, "Good boy—good boy—wasn't he? My dear, (and here his voice sunk to a confidential whisper,) I have got money enough to buy out all the upstart people that filled this omnibus, twenty times over, but I like this old coat and hat. They are as good as a crucible. Help me to find out the true metal. Good morning, my dear. Thank you for your pity, just as much as if I needed it"—and the old man pulled ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... cheeks and caught at her throat. The hand which held her dainty parasol of lace shook, and an indescribable thrill ran through her veins. She could no more think of this man as a clodhopper, a coarse upstart without manners or imagination. In many ways he fell short of all the usual standards by which the men of her class were judged, yet she suddenly realised that he possessed a touch of that quality which lifted him at once far over their heads, The man had genius. Without education ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Bagnore. The former was exasperated against Lorenzo for the reckless sack of Volterra, and because he had taken possession of a valuable alum-pit belonging to his family. The latter was Vicario of Monte Murlo, an upstart Papal precis-writer, whose family was plebeian and employed upon Pazzi property in that locality; he was "a man steeped in crime and a creature of Cavaliere Giacopo ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... interview with the erstwhile Mademoiselle Folly. His quick eyes commended the charming figure that the lady made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had to make ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... ONE PART OF HIS TIRADE, 'an upstart crow beautified in our feathers,' probably refers to Shakespeare as an actor only, but Greene goes on to insult him as a writer. Judge Webb will not recognise him as a writer, and omits that part of Mr. ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... although they did not relish, him or his treatment of them, once here they stayed. Walking or running or idling about with them one could always hear from one or another that Culhane was too harsh, a "bounder," an "upstart," a "cheap pugilist" or "wrestler" at best (I myself thought so at times when I was angry), yet here they were, and here I was, and staying. He was low, vulgar—yet here we were. And yet, meditating on him, I began to think that he was really one of the most remarkable men I had ever known, for ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... the best friend of the Republic, the French king, men looked coldly at the upstart commonwealth. Francis Aerssens, the keen and accomplished minister of the States, resident in Paris for many years, was received as ambassador after the truce with all the ceremonial befitting the highest rank in the diplomatic service; yet Henry could not yet persuade himself to look ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... Saville Row, Stonehouse reflected rapidly and contemptuously, must have been bribed to have turned out such perfection at such short notice. Too much perfection and too new. An upstart young rake. No, not quite that, either. Pain had lent an elusive beauty to the plain and freckled face, and happiness had made it lovable. It was obvious that he was trying to suppress his pride and astonishment at himself and ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... would at least have deigned to exchange glances with me, friendly or otherwise; but being what he was, he looked everywhere except at me, as if he had been some haughty aristocrat conscientiously snubbing an offensive upstart. Joseph appeared to be the one human being of more importance for Finois than the moving bough of an inedible tree, bush, or shrub, and even Molly could win him to no change of facial expression, though he ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... ceiling seemed, was that dim panel-portrait blistering there above the fire or peeling off with mouldy flakes in past days,—for she had still many a longing for the old family-pictures that once her shiftless father, when put to his trumps, had sold to adorn the halls of some upstart with forefathers. ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... single inducement to stay longer in this place, weighed anchor in the morning of the 31st and put to sea. In the prosecution of the voyage, when the Endeavour was close under Cape Upstart, the variation of the needle, at sunset, on the 4th of June, was 9 east, and at sunrise the next day, it was no more that 5 35'. Hence the lieutenant concluded, that it had been influenced by iron ore, or by some other magnetical ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... mais qui enfin n'est qu'une policonnerie qui n'a ete bon a rien. It was on this occasion also that the deputies received from the imperial ruffian one of those insults which are so common with him, and which might indeed be naturally expected from such an upstart; for, when they assured him of the submission of the city, he dismissed them with these remarkable words: Allez vous en! than which nothing more contemptuous could be addressed ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)
... younger members of the Chamber of Commerce and the Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, the best people of the city, those who were saving the country, and charging no more than the service was worth. So they roared with fury at this sacreligious upstart. A man whose mask was a joke, because he was so burly and hearty that everybody in the crowd knew him, took up the bloody whip. It was Billy Nash, secretary of the "Improve America League," and the crowd ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... the Sedleys did, the possibility of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody—a little upstart governess. "Hang it, the family's low enough already without her," Osborne said to his friend Captain Dobbin. "A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride, and know my own station: ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... bear me out, Mr. Cludde, when I remind you that the owner of the estate had fled from her lawfully-appointed guardian, aided and abetted in her flight, I doubt not, by this upstart himself. I am ready to account for my administration of the property to Sir Richard Cludde, and to no one else, and I say you have no right to call in question anything I may have done ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... not happy. She was not treated by her neighbours with the obsequious reverence which she believed to be due to persons possessed of twenty thousand pounds. The fashionable ladies in the neighbourhood, also, called her "a mean person"—"a nobody"—"an upstart of yesterday." In truth, there were not a few who so spoke, because they envied the wealth of the Sims, and ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... Pahang flocked to the interior, all noisily eager to stamp out of existence the upstart Chief, who had dared to wear shoes, and to carry an umbrella in the streets of their King's capital. The aged Chief of Lipis and his people, however, clove to Panglima Prang, or To' Raja, as he now openly called himself, and the war did ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... which it is needless to say was echoed and reechoed till it seemed it could not cease. Only a few ventured to mutter under breath: "The Hellene will have a subsatrapy in the East before the season is over and a treasure of five thousand talents! Mithra wither the upstart!" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... poor father had been alive," wound up Mrs. O'Keeffe, "the dirty upstart would never have dared to put such an insult on his orphaned daughter, that he wouldn't, and if Dan O'Leary should hear of it—which the saints forbid—it's not the jig that his foot would be teaching ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... was assumed as a cloak for cowardice: and that the consuls rather distrusted the courage than disbelieved the sincerity of their soldiers: that inaction and idleness among men in arms were a novel form of sedition. Besides this they uttered insinuations, partly true and partly false, as to the upstart nature of their race and origin. While they loudly proclaimed this close to the very rampart and gates, the consuls bore it without impatience: but at one time indignation, at another shame, agitated the breasts of the ignorant multitude, ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... upstart; one that swears like a falconer, and will lie in the duke's ear day by day, like a maker of almanacs: and yet I knew him, since he came to th' court, smell worse of sweat ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... England. But the popular voice was loud against the nobles who preferred to spend their money on such things instead of on improving their estates, and who squandered on fine clothes what used to be spent on roast beef for their retainers. Greene's Quip for an Upstart Courtier parodies what the new and ...
— English Travellers of the Renaissance • Clare Howard
... people; Christianity has never entered into our soul we see ourselves as the Chosen, and by no effort of spiritual aspiration can attain unto humility. In this there is nothing hypocritic. The blatant upstart who builds a church, lays out his money in that way not merely to win social consideration; in his curious little soul he believes (so far as he can believe anything) that what he has done is pleasing to God and beneficial to mankind. He may have lied and ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... Hohenzollern, Protestant against Catholic, Ultramontanes beholding the reign of Anti-Christ; Guelphs and Wittelsbachs, protesting their own peculiar and ancient lineage against self-seeking latter-day upstart aristocrats! ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... Good Jove! what sense hast thou to be a sense! Since from the first foundation of the world, We never were accounted more than five. Yet you, forsooth, an idle prating dame, Would fain increase the number, and upstart To our high seats, decking your babbling self With usurp'd titles ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... !" Falk roared; and he turned on Roger with all the anger of his mean nature choking his voice. "I'll—I'll beat you, you young upstart, you! I'll beat you in that man's place," he cried, with ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... themselves as his benefactors, and neglected as unimportant detail the sole and entirely selfish reason for their graciousness. But enraged though these worthy gentlemen were, and eagerly though they longed to treat the "conceited and grasping upstart" as he richly deserved, they accepted his ultimatum. Even the venerable and venerated Lockyer—than whom a more convinced self-deceiver on the subject of his own virtues never wore white whiskers, black ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... to sit on a throne cost him his life and the glory, which otherwise might have been his, of saving his country from William the Norman. As regent for one of the scions of Ecgberht's house, he might have relied on the co-operation of his rivals; as an upstart on the throne he could only count on the veiled or open enmity of Mercians and Northumbrians, who regarded him, and were regarded by him, as hardly less foreign than the ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard
... immense To search, with wandering quest, a place foretold Should be—and, by concurring signs, ere now Created vast and round—a place of bliss In the purlieus of Heaven; and therein placed A race of upstart creatures, to supply Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught Than this more secret, now designed, I haste To know; and, this once known, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... been ready to patronize the upstart who had ventured so boldly into the territory of the great trust, but one glance at the clear-cut resolute face of the young man ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... To be called "Woman" by an upstart—for Prince Askurry had married Princess Sultanam for her ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... efficient tool for his purpose in the Captain of the company to which Traverse Rocke belonged. This man, Captain Zuten, was a vulgar upstart thrown into his command by the turbulence of war, as the scum is cast up to the surface by the ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... gentlemanly, and often hid himself in the common mass of men, in order to prevent the discovery of his individuality. He had no insulting egotism, and no pompous pride; no haughtiness, and no aristocracy. He was not indifferent, however, to approbation and public opinion. He was not an upstart, and had no insolence. He was a meek, quiet, unobtrusive gentleman.... Read Mr. Lincoln's speeches, letters, messages and proclamations, read his whole record in his actual life, and you cannot fail to perceive that he had good understanding. He understood ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... that evening of Hans Kuhn's upstart pretensions, his statements were received with an ominous silence. Aunt Hedwig only coughed slightly, and continued her knitting with more than usual energy. Herr Sohnstein only moved a little in his chair and puffed a little harder than usual at his pipe. ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... would pass, by the election of the princes now tributary to France, from the house of Habsburg to that of Bonaparte. [Sidenote: The "Empire of Austria."] Francis II. determined to forestall the possible indignity of the subordination of his family to an upstart dynasty. On the 14th of May 1804, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French; on the 11th of August Francis II. assumed the style of Francis I., hereditary emperor of Austria. [Sidenote: End of the Holy Roman Empire.] Two ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... of our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What would a lord say—yes, or any other person of whatever condition —if he caught an upstart peasant with a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... lies sick unto death from the after-effects of an old wound and sends for his kinsmen and other nobles of the Quarter. While delivering his message to them, Thorolf, his favorite (secretly the lover of the chieftain's wife, Helga), and long a thorn in the flesh of these proud men as an upstart, infuriates them anew by his insolent bearing. Obedient to the call of their chief, they assemble about him to determine on measures for the defence of the land, and to learn of the disposition of his dominions. The weak Brand is given his lawful share, which agrees well enough ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... the thirteen years of its existence it produced a singularly interesting series of publications. The number of separate works registered in Bohn's Appendix to Lowndes's Bibliographer's Manual is 94, besides "Quippes for Upstart Newfangled Gentlewomen by Stephen Gosson," which was suppressed, and "Rhyming Satire on the Pride and Vices of Women Now-a-days, by Charles Bansley," 1540, which was reprinted in 1841, but not issued. The set is much sought after, ...
— How to Form a Library, 2nd ed • H. B. Wheatley
... 1813 against Napoleon. It was an Idea that brought the Balkan League into being and carried its armies in triumph to Salonica and Adrianople. Freedom, Unity, Liberation, such were the forms which that Idea took: the determination of a free people to resist an upstart despot's designs of world-dominion; the enthusiasm of a divided nation for the dream of national unity; the longing of races which had but recently won their own freedom, to emancipate their kinsmen from an alien and oppressive yoke. In each of these struggles error and even crimes were committed ...
— The War and Democracy • R.W. Seton-Watson, J. Dover Wilson, Alfred E. Zimmern,
... gigantic bank wars, its resources drained by colossal swindles, crouching yet under the iron rule of upstart land-barons, "dashing journalism," and stern railroad autocrats, the Californian community has gloomily ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... tricks I will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;— Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,— I ask but ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... control of the gas situation. Better to take him at his suggestion, raise the money and buy him out, even at an exorbitant figure. Then the old gas companies could go along and do business in their old-fashioned way without being disturbed. This bucaneer! This upstart! What a shrewd, quick, forceful move he had made! It irritated ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... willing to run some risk by helping Drysdale, whom he liked, and he signed to the auctioneer. The farmers stopped, but Osborn went on. He had not liked Peter Askew and liked Kit worse. Father and son had opposed him, and now the young upstart was proud of the money he had, no doubt, got by doubtful means. He would not let the fellow balk him, and his face got red as he answered the auctioneer's inquiring glance. Presently he turned with a frown as Hayes touched ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... lace excruciates the Ryders," said Helen. "I was standing near Mrs. Judge Ryder and the girls just now. 'Did you ever see such an upstart?' And, 'What an extravagant dress she has on—it is ridiculous,' Josephine Ryder said. When Ben Somers heard this attack on you, he told them that your lace was an heirloom. Here he is." Mr. Parker ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... itself in the rather irrational form of Anti-Semitism. In the controversies of Palestine and Syria, for instance, it is very common to hear the answer that the Jew is no worse than the Armenian. The Armenian also is said to be unpopular as a money-lender and a mercantile upstart; yet the Armenian figures as a martyr for the Christian faith and a victim of the Moslem fury. But this is one of those arguments which really carry their own answer. It is like the sceptical saying that man is only an animal, which of itself provokes the retort, "What ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... splendour has the dark spot of a secret and a sort of blackmail.... His glory did not come from the Crusades, but from the Great Pillage.... The oligarchs were descended from usurers and thieves. That, for good or evil, was the paradox of England; the typical aristocrat was the typical upstart. ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... trim and white Are pitched like tents, the lodging of a night; Each on its bank of baked turf mounted high Perches impatient o'er the roadside dry, 180 While the wronged landscape coldly stands aloof, Refusing friendship with the upstart roof. Not so the Eagle; on a grass-green swell That toward the south with sweet concessions fell It dwelt retired, and half had grown to be As aboriginal as rock or tree. It nestled close to earth, and seemed to brood O'er homely thoughts in a half-conscious mood, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... erected by an architect named Sostrasius, son of Dixiphanes, at the entrance to the port of Alexandria, which was a bran-new busy city in those days, a mere mushroom growth in that old, old Egypt, where the upstart Ptolomies were reigning on the throne ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous
... yourself. This is the kind of difficulty which I wished to represent to you, my dear count. You would hardly have recited your touching history before it would go forth to the world, and be deemed unlikely and unnatural. You would be no longer a lost child found, but you would be looked upon as an upstart, who had sprung up like a mushroom in the night. You might excite a little curiosity, but it is not every one who likes to be made the centre of observation and ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They must all have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly. What can they want with flying, and raising themselves above their proper station in life? In the days of my ancestors no birds ever thought of having wings, and did very well ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... at the foot of the palace staircase, where only an hour ago he had assured his courtiers he would not receive the upstart Napoleon as an equal and shake hands with him; but as Napoleon now saluted him with a kind nod, and gave him his hand, the elector bowed so deeply and respectfully that it almost looked as if he wished to kiss the ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... the light of an inheritance. Always acting as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. It ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... man, but he made a grand mistake that night, unless he were desirous of making his protegee as uncomfortable as possible. How could those ladies feel otherwise than insulted at seeing the man of ice so suddenly attentive and bland to a nobody, an upstart, ...
— The First Violin - A Novel • Jessie Fothergill
... hog-rooting, and land out of hart makes Thistles a number foorthwith to upstart. If Thistles so growing proove lustie and long, It signifieth land ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... grizzled head. "This Grim Hagen said that he did not age until he stopped to conquer a planet and replenish his ship's energy. It was thirty years ago when he first spoke to us. He looks like a man of forty-five now. Could he have been an upstart of fifteen when he ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... poor country, and the poor relation has {148} never been a popular character anywhere. Consequently Englishmen—and who was ever more English than Johnson?—commonly saw in the newly arrived Scot a pauper and an upstart come to live upon his betters: and they revenged themselves in the manner natural to rich relations. To Johnson's tongue, too, the Scots offered the important additional temptations of being often Whigs, oftener still Presbyterians, and always the countrymen of Boswell. ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... think it necessary to notice this remark. He went on with his tirade against the prospective "supply:" "Why can't Elder Simpson preach hisself, I 'd like to know, instead o' puttin' up that young upstart to talk to his betters? Why, I mind the time that that boy had to be took out o' church by the hand fur laffin' at me,—at me, mind you," the old man repeated, shaking his stick; "laffin' at me when I ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... wasting time, Lactu!" exclaimed one of the men suddenly. "Settle with this upstart later. Now let us take a vote on the issue before us. The ship is waiting to blast off for Mercury. Do we ask for her assistance, ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort him ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... were urgently needed. Above all, reason was called to decide upon questions before which man's reason stands impotent; and imagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religious feeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of the rational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were not theirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the light and fire of ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... preference by the universal votes of the assembly; for such is the iniquity of the times, that though the head be covered with grey hairs, yet nothing is allowed to the reverence of antiquity, when encountered by a proud and upstart novelty. The other city is now so far neglected, that the ruins or footsteps of its magnificence are scarce remaining, any more than of Verulam, as is most elegantly set forth by our noble poet Spenser in his verses on that subject; the latter usurping the name ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... "I'll show that upstart Corner House girl that she sha'n't ride over me," she declared, angrily, as the contestants gathered for the second trial ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... much for Milton's outraged dignity. Bennett did not allow him that coveted privilege. This upstart could not ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... who had robbed her son of the heritage of his father, Caesar, and whose mention in the will was like an imputation on her fidelity—the cold-hearted, calculating upstart, whose nature from their first meeting in Rome had repelled, rebuffed, chilled her; of the man by whose cajolery and power her husband—for in her own eyes and those of the Egyptians Antony held this position—had been induced to wed his sister, Octavia, and thereby stamp her, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... once mentioned to you the darling view some of us have long had of raising a family, as it is called. A reflection, as I have often thought, upon our own, which is no considerable or upstart one, on either side, on my mother's especially.—A view too frequently it seems entertained by families which, having great substance, cannot be satisfied ...
— Clarissa, Volume 1 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the Meadow Saffron rises bare from the earth, and is, therefore, called "Upstart" and "Naked Lady." This plant owes its botanical name Colchicum, to Colchis, in Natalia, which abounded in poisonous vegetables, and gave rise to the fiction about the enchantress Medea. She renewed the vitality of her aged father, AEneas, by drawing blood out of his veins and ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... chanced to be absent for a few days, was, on his return, regaled with an exaggerated account of the proceeding, his wife ending her discourse by saying: "If you don't do something with your upstart daughter I'll leave the house; yes, ...
— Homestead on the Hillside • Mary Jane Holmes
... finds itself for a moment among very famous events and personages, and hanging on to the skirts of history. When the eagles of Napoleon Bonaparte, the Corsican upstart, were flying from Provence, where they had perched after a brief sojourn in Elba, and from steeple to steeple until they reached the towers of Notre Dame, I wonder whether the Imperial birds had any eye for a little corner of the parish ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... abandoned proceedings," "villanous conduct," "scurrilous falsehoods," and "base and insolent behavior."[328] "I am considerable enough," he says, "to have enemies and to be envied;"[329] and he declares he has proof that Shirley told the Mohawks that he, Johnson, was an upstart of his creating, whom he had set up and could pull down. Again, he charges Shirley's agents with trying to "debauch the Indians from joining him;" while Shirley, on his side, retorts the same complaint against his ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... deceived. He saw the Baron de Chipotier, the Comte de Boisflottant, and the son of Pillardin, the lucky millionaire, successively come into the regiment, and these sprigs of lofty lineage, full of brilliancy and loquacity, naturally eclipsed the modest qualities of the obscure upstart soldier. Spending their life in cafes, overwhelmed with debt, loved by the women, they laughed among themselves at all the minutiae of the service, which they treated as beneath their notice, ridiculed their superiors, and especially the serious-minded officers. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... they reminded him of a parcel of saucy lacqueys who take liberties with an upstart master for whom they ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... find I am forced to speak if for no other reason than your epithet "parvenu." The word has no reproach. It was ever thus that the old and perishing recognised the vigorous and new. Parvenu, upstart—the term is replete with significance and health. I doubt not Elijah himself was dubbed parvenu when he fluttered with his golden harp into that bright-browed throng, pride-swollen for that they had fought with Michael when Lucifer ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London
... BOO'BY (Lady), a vulgar upstart, who tries to seduce her footman, Joseph Andrews. Parson Adams reproves her for laughing in church. Lady Booby is a caricature of Richardson's "Pamela."—Fielding, Joseph ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... at his son's audacity seemed to have bereft Ralph Mainwaring of the power of speech, but now he demanded in thunderous tones, while his face grew purple with rage, "What do you mean, sir, by daring to address such language to me? You impudent upstart! let me tell you that you had best attend to your ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... engaging paper. His passion was London. He had a fling at other subjects—a dozen books or so—but his graver hours were given to the study of London. There is hardly a park or square or street, palace, theatre or tavern that did not yield its secret to him. Here and there an upstart building, too new for legend, may have had no gossip for him, but all others John Timbs knew, and the personages who lived in them. And he knew whether they were of sour temper, whether they were rich or poor, and if poor, what shifts and pretenses they practiced. He knew ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... shouted Hal in derision, "he wants to be captain of our team, no doubt, the little upstart! Come on, lads, we don't want his company. See, all ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... that too bad? Columbus had many enemies in Spain. The nobles of the court, the men who had lost money in voyages to the Indies, the people whose fathers and sons and brothers had sailed away never to return, could not say anything bad enough about "this upstart ...
— The True Story of Christopher Columbus • Elbridge S. Brooks
... farm simply ran after the 'doctor' like puppies. The old man Prokofitch was the only one who did not like him; he handed him the dishes at table with a surly face, called him a 'butcher' and 'an upstart,' and declared that with his great whiskers he looked like a pig in a stye. Prokofitch in his own way was quite as much of ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... seemed to feel themselves released from the constraints of all law. They harbored jealousy and distrust of the admiral as a foreigner. The cavaliers and hidalgos, of whom there were too many in the expedition, contemned him as an upstart, whom it was derogatory to obey. From the first moment of their landing in Hispaniola, they indulged the most wanton license in regard to the unoffending natives, who, in the simplicity of their hearts, had received the white men as messengers from Heaven. Their outrages, however, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... new spectacle to the Princes of Germany, all accustomed to old habits of etiquette, to see an upstart sovereign treat them as subjects, and even oblige them to consider themselves as such. Those famous Saxons, who had made Charlemagne tremble, threw themselves on the protection of the Emperor; and the alliance of the head ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... dandified trifling officer; an upstart. Also, the merry-thought of a fowl. Also, a small fish of the bonito kind, which frequently jumps out of the water. A name applied also ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... and theirs her mournful cry, The noble Dame who calls thee here to break Away the evil weeds which will not flower. A thousand years and more! and gallant men There fix'd her seat in beauty and in power; The breed of patriot hearts has fail'd since then! And, in their stead, upstart and haughty now, A race, which ne'er to her in reverence bends, Her husband, father thou! Like care from thee and counsel she attends, As o'er his other works the Sire ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... insolence. He was created count of Oliva, a knight of Santiago, commendador of Ocana in the order, secretary to the king (secretario de camara), was loaded with plunder, and made an advantageous marriage with Ines de Vargas. As an insolent upstart he was peculiarly odious to the enemies of Lerma. Two religious persons, Juan de Santa Maria, a Franciscan, and Mariana de San Jose, prioress of La Encarnacion, worked on the queen Margarita, by whose influence Calderon was removed from ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... young man, but you are a scion of a great and ancient House, which was powerful and illustrious when the Hohenzollerns were but mean and petty barbarian princelings. Withdraw yourself, while the opportunity is still with you, from the fatal domination of this vain and inflated upstart who endeavours to serve only his own selfish designs. Our enemies will make peace with you, and thus he too will be forced to abandon the War. With him and with the deeds that have outraged the world ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 10, 1917 • Various
... any future invitations to her house, for I overheard a conversation between Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Montgomery which I believe was intended to reach my ears, and consequently wounded and mortified me very much. I was ridiculed and denounced as a 'poor upstart and interloper,' who was being smuggled into society far above my position in life, and pronounced an avaricious schemer, intent on thrusting myself upon Mr. Leigh's notice, and ambitious of marrying him for his ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... between rage and physical fear; for Hamilton's eyes were flashing, his body curved as if he meditated immediate personal violence. "But I'll not do it, sir, any more than I or anyone else will be deluded by the speciousness of your language. You are an upstart. You have no State affinities, you despise them for a very good reason—you come from God knows where—I do not even know the name of the place. You are playing a game. You care nothing for the country you were not ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... as "falsifier," "upstart," "pretender," were freely used, and poor Newton for a time was almost ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... meant war with all the power of Sparta, relieved of all other enemies by the peace. Sparta had conquered and humbled Athens. It had conquered many other cities, forcing some of them to throw down their walls and go back again to their old state of villages. What upstart was this that dared defy its wrath and power? Thebes could hope for no allies, and seemed feeble against Spartan strength. How dared, then, this insolent delegate to fling defiance in the teeth of the lord ...
— Historic Tales, vol 10 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... as if they had been on the stage, especially the one to whom you were talking. I will do him the justice to say he is a handsome wretch, but like all those foreign adventurers he has a dissipated air. As for the other, he is simply commonplace and vulgar, with little upstart radical notions." ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... up at twelve at noon, his clock goes right; Mine better goes, wound up at twelve at night. Then in oblivion's grateful cup I drown The galling sneer, the supercilious frown, The strange reserve, the proud, affected state Of upstart knaves grown rich, and fools grown great. No more that abject wretch[93] disturbs my rest, Who meanly overlooks a friend distress'd. 90 Purblind to poverty, the worldling goes, And scarce sees rags an inch beyond his nose; But from ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... king's daughter. There was one person who did hate him most bitterly, and that was the Duchess of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. and Richard III.: the same who, as I told you, encouraged printing so much. She felt as if a mean upstart had got into the place of her brothers, and his having married her niece did not make it seem a bit the better to her. There was one nephew left—the poor young orphan son of George, Duke of Clarence—but he had always been quite silly, and Henry VII. had him watched carefully, for fear ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... might well give him hopes of obtaining a decided advantage. Alexander, his father's adversary, had been murdered in A.D. 235 by Maximin, who from the condition of a Thracian peasant had risen into the higher ranks of the army. The upstart had ruled like the savage that he was, and after three years of misery the whole Roman world had risen against him. Two emperors had been proclaimed in Africa. On their fall two others had been elected by the senate; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... the Durbar, but wiser counsels prevailed. Partab Singh paid his tribute, with no more deduction than could be accounted for by the ever-ready plea of a bad harvest, and gave no excuse for marching troops into his territory. But he would not swell the triumph of the upstart Durbar by showing himself at Ranjitgarh, nor would he lower his dignity by making any response to Colonel Antony's overtures. He remained in self-imposed seclusion within the borders of his province, declining either ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... upstart," he cried, shaking his fist at Calvin as the car turned around, "I'll be down in ten minutes and see to you!" The provost marshal turned his white steed and began gathering up his procession and his prisoners. But the spell was broken. The mind of the crowd took in an idea. It ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... knees were long and strong, white and remarkably tapering. Her features were almost too perfect; her beauty was sensuous, insolent and dazzling. Withal her presence intimated tremendous primal charm and the mystery of undiscovered potentialities. And she was royal! No mere upstart of an impostor could have assumed that perfect hauteur, that ...
— The City of Delight - A Love Drama of the Siege and Fall of Jerusalem • Elizabeth Miller
... read in this London paper by my mortal enemy, Bunting, who had been introduced to old Stiffelkind's acquaintance by my adventure with him, and had his shoes made regularly by that foreign upstart. ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Zedekiah, his upstart courtiers and the remnant in Jerusalem to the basket of bad figs. The princes, elders, mechanics and artisans, whom Nebuchadrezzar had carried away, he compared to the basket of good figs. There was no message of hope in the "bad figs" now ruling the country; ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... any rate, had enough of them; and he that couldn't be happy with three hundred and sixty-four, wouldn't desarve to have three hundred and sixty-five. Along with all this, he bought coaches and carriages, and didn't get proud like many another beggarly upstart, but took especial good care of his mother, whom he dressed in silks and satins, and gave her nice nourishing food, that was fit for an ould woman in her condition. He also got great tachers, men of great larning, from Dublin, acquainted with all subjects; and as his own abilities ...
— The Ned M'Keown Stories - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... "Miserable upstart!" cried the man, now so thoroughly angry that he let go Anne's hand, "I have a good mind to give you what you deserve. As for you, undutiful, wretched girl," he added, his voice rising to an emotional tremolo, "you shall be ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... loath to confess that Mrs. Johnson had not a flattering opinion of the Caucasian race in all respects. In fact, she had very good philosophical and Scriptural reasons for looking upon us as an upstart people of new blood, who had come into their whiteness by no creditable or pleasant process. The late Mr. Johnson, who had died in the West Indies, whither he voyaged for his health in quality of cook upon a Down-East schooner, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... are upstart ministers as well as City-turned gentlemen, I will remember Moliere's M. Jourdain, and feed full the gluttonous vanity of ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... of the O'Neals, being told that Barrett of Castlemone had only been 400 years in Ireland, replied, "I hate the upstart, which can only look ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... believed the time had come to insist firmly upon his rights which were being seriously threatened by this sleek brown upstart. He possessed a weapon against which the fox would be helpless and in this extremity he prepared to use it. Still, the skunk was a gentleman and ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... could not be selected," said Savelli; "but I should scarce deem it possible that a Colonna could think there was an option between resistance and fealty to this upstart revolution." ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... a good christian but I'se got disgusted wid dese young upstart niggers what dances in de chu'ch. Dey says dat dey am truckin' an' dat de Bible ain't forbid hit, but I reckin dat I knows dancin' whar I ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... boastfully, "hurt? Well, I should say not. It was only some upstart chickens who dared to sneak into the house, and I'm more than a match for any number of such. I guess we shan't be disturbed again by chickens or by ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... no attention whatever to this rough stuff, being already engaged in courting the Hammersmith dame for the good of her social importance. I make no doubt before the maid finished rubbing in the complexion cream that night she had reduced this upstart to the ranks and stepped into her place as leader of the most exclusive social set between South San Francisco and old Henry Miller's ranch house at Gilroy. Anyway, she kept talking to herself about it, almost over the mangled remains ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... misunderstanding with Capt. Mackay, eighteen months before, at the Great Meadows, touching this same question of rank between royal and provincial officers, which had caused him great trouble and annoyance. Matters had now come to such a pass, that a little upstart captain of forty men could set at naught the authority of the commander-in-chief of the forces of a whole province, merely because he could boast a bit of paper embellished with the king's name. This was a degradation too grievous to be longer borne by a manly, independent ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... to his mistress! Tom Tusher presuming to think of Castlewood's widow! Rage and contempt filled Mr. Harry's heart at the very notion; the honour of the family, of which he was the chief, made it his duty to prevent so monstrous an alliance, and to chastise the upstart who could dare to think of such an insult to their house. 'Tis true Mr. Esmond often boasted of republican principles, and could remember many fine speeches he had made at college and elsewhere, with worth and not birth for a text: but Tom Tusher to take the place ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of disturbing his ancestors' work than of disturbing their graves. For now the house looked like a real live house, that had a history, and had grown and grown as the world grew; and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know who his own grandfather was, who would change it for some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing, which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night, as mushrooms ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... the clergy hold on to their prerogative as banishers of epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit to rebuke the upstart teachers of impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge the people back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses and Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned and half-suppressed work, "The Analysis of Religious Belief", quotes some ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... A RICH upstart once asked a poor person if he had any idea of the advantages arising from riches. "I believe they give a rogue an advantage over an honest man," was ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... gay may heed tha not, An' passing by may sneer; The upstart squire's dowters laugh, When thou, my love, art near; But if all ther shinin' soverins War wared o' sattens green, They mightn't be as handsome then As t' Lass o' ...
— Revised Edition of Poems • William Wright
... horse, presently riding up the lane between the rows of cottonwoods. Young Menocal had persuaded Louise to leave her household duties for the moment to sit on the veranda and talk with him. But now had come this impudent upstart! Charlie's warning of someone at hand was when Louise ceased to speak and gazed intently along the lane. His annoyance at the interruption changed to a quick jealousy as his companion rose, descended the steps, bade the engineer welcome, and ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... about religion when they knew that they felt no anxiety. They were anxious, in their way. They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart—in their own language, "this fellow—of whom every man knew whence he was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not to fear the God whom ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... herself, are hardly real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... concerning Napoleon; and, in reading his nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?" What stories did we not believe of him?—what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?—we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... civilized Europe, where it has so often been asserted that the receiving of petitions, and granting their prayer, is the most enviable branch of royal prerogative? Alas! will the golden mean of reason never govern the practices of men? Must we for ever be the dupes of superstition, or the slaves of upstart authority? Are we doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies, a medium between the bigotry of the Crozier, the pride of the Sceptre, and the cruelty of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips |
