"Humiliating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... then the compulsory abdication of the great and conspicuous mansion for the small, obscure, hired cottage; then the saddening bodings and deep concern felt in seeing the means of living daily diminishing, with no prospect of ever being replenished; and, finally, the humiliating resort of the wife and children to the needle or menial employments, for the actual necessaries of life,—these, all these, are but the usual graduated vicissitudes of sorrow and trial which are allotted to ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... another great misfortune also which at this trying time hung over England. The country was dejected. The humiliating disasters of Afghanistan, dark narratives of which were periodically arriving, had produced a more depressing effect on the spirit of the country than all the victories and menaces of Napoleon in the ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... manage,—the very word tells the whole story,—MANAGE men, by cunning strategy, cajolery, and all manner of indirections, just as if they were elephants. But if men were what they ought to be, there would be no such humiliating necessity. They ought to be so upright, so candid, so just, that it is only necessary to show this is right, this is reasonable, this is wrong, for them to do it, or to refrain from the doing. As it is, men smoke by the hour together, and their wives ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... pavement, in accordance with this law, touching their hats to every white passer-by; they were consequently obliged to be continually lifting their hands to their heads, for they passed white people at every step. Although I believe no punishment is now enforced for the omission of this humiliating homage to colour, the men I have referred to were doubtless ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the hives, and almost before the gaolers had time to retire to a safe distance, Vespaluus gave a lusty and well-aimed kick, which sent all three hives toppling one over another. The next moment he was wrapped from head to foot in bees; each individual insect nursed the dreadful and humiliating knowledge that in this supreme hour of catastrophe it could not sting, but each felt that it ought to pretend to. Vespaluus squealed and wriggled with laughter, for he was being tickled nearly to death, and now and again he gave a furious kick and used a bad word as ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... towards the end of January, with no flourish of trumpets or beat of drums to announce the fact of their arrival to their one hundred and eighty odd schoolfellows. They were simply "new kids." But though, after the fame they had won at The Birches, it was rather humiliating at first to find themselves regarded as three nobodies, yet there was some compensation in the thought that, just as the smallest drummer-boy can point to a flag covered with "honours," and say "My regiment," so, in looking round at the many ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... while Marty was giving wholes instead of tenths and the red box was so well filled, that it met with an accident that disfigured it for life. Though the occurrence was a sad and humiliating one for Marty, ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... the two were oppressed by thoughts of the absent one. The attempts of his friends during the day to help or to get trace of Fred Greenwood had been brought to naught, and it looked as if they would have to consent to the humiliating terms of Tozer and Motoza, with strong probability that the missing youth was never again to ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... settled their disputes by an arrangement which secured absolutely to Mackenzie all Glengarry's lands in the county of Ross, and the superiority of all his other possessions, but Glengarry was to hold the latter, paying Mackenzie a small feu as superior. In consideration of these humiliating concessions by Macdonald, Mackenzie agreed to pay twenty thousand merks Scots, and thus ended for ever the ancient quarrels which had existed for centuries between the powerful families of Glengarry and Kintail. "Thus ended the most of Glengarrie's troubles tho' there ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... think it—of social inequalities. Circumstances which will try you to the quick, spare me the ungracious necessity of paining a man who has lived in friendly intimacy under the same roof with myself by any humiliating reference to matters of rank and station. You must leave Limmeridge House, Mr. Hartright, before more harm is done. It is my duty to say that to you; and it would be equally my duty to say it, under precisely the same serious necessity, if you ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... affairs was very humiliating to the Roverings, the more so as they had all grown very hungry after their bath, and the contents of the basket had a ...
— Harper's Young People, August 17, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the doctor's face, and only to one who knew him well could the expression be at all decipherable. To me it distinctly denoted disappointment—that humiliating sense of disappointment and disillusion which must invariably come upon a man of strong and fanatical convictions when brought into contact with the meanness ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... "I know nothing so humiliating: to see a rational being in such mechanical motion! with no knowledge upon what principles he proceeds, but plodding on, one foot before another, without even any consciousness which is ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... made no scruple to prefer a brother of Atahuallpa, and to present him to the Indian nobles as their future Inca. We know nothing of the character of the young Toparca, who probably resigned himself without reluctance to a destiny which, however humiliating in some points of view, was more exalted than he could have hoped to obtain in the regular course of events. The ceremonies attending a Peruvian coronation were observed, as well as time would allow; the brows of the young Inca were encircled with the imperial borla by the hands of his conqueror, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... restraint of such a delegated Commission I do not see why the existing administrations of tutelage Africa should not continue. I do not believe that the Labour proposal contemplates any humiliating cession of European sovereignty. Under that international Commission the French flag may still wave in Senegal and the British over the protected State of Uganda. Given a new spirit in Germany I do not see why ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... luck was steadily against them; their provisions and water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship belonging to a "flota" which had ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... misery of his situation was manifest to him. To be moneyless and an object of the chairmaker's charity—this was bad enough, but his folly in proclaiming himself an earl's son to that scoffing and unbelieving crew, and, on top of that, the humiliating result—the recollection of these things was a sharper torture still. He made up his mind that he would never play earl's son ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... pledged her so much love must have heard the odious jests that were cast upon her, and stood there silently a witness of the infamy she had been made to endure. She might, perhaps, have forgiven him his contempt, but she could not forgive his having seen her in so humiliating a position, and she flung him a look that was full of hatred, feeling in her heart the birth of an unutterable desire for vengeance. With death beside her, the sense of impotence almost strangled her. A whirlwind of passion and madness rose ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... determined to give a wide berth to everything that bore the shape of a human being. It was a strange commentary on man's superiority to the lower animals, and not very creditable to the former, that he himself was the thing they most feared to meet with in the wooded wilderness. And yet, humiliating as the reflection may appear, it depressed the minds of the castaways, as, looking their last upon the bright blue sea, they turned their faces toward the interior of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... your sake, that he must bear with your weaknesses and profit by your points of strength. But, above all, make him feel that you believe in him, that you're proud of him, and that you've been a fool to make such a humiliating exhibition before him as you ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... have already said, but the results were negligible because the men were unable to employ their capacities. There were sensational features, like the production of "Parsifal" and "Salome," but there were humiliating ones, like the prostitution of a great establishment for the performance of "Die Fledermaus" and "Der Zigeunerbaron" to deck out the Herr Direktor's benefits. The blight of commercialism had fallen on the institution. On February 11, 1908, Mr. Conried resigned, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... who, like Wallace, shrink from applying to man the ultimate consequences of the theory of descent. The idea that man is derived from ape-like forms is to them unpleasant and humiliating. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Queen's Gate, one might surely with all confidence present oneself in Bryanston Square. Was he not an educated man, by birth a gentleman? If he had no position, why, who had at one-and-twenty? How needlessly he had been humiliating and discouraging himself! In the highest spirits he went down into the garden to talk with Mrs. Hannaford and Olga. They gazed at him, astonished; he was a new creature; he joked and laughed and could hardly contain his exuberance of joy. When there fell from ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing
... were in no condition to put up a serious fight. It transpired later that the general so ignominiously and comically made prisoner was a divisional commander who, with all his staff, was apparently proceeding to his advanced headquarters with no thought of danger. It was humiliating for him and his entourage but was a highly important capture for us, in that he was one of the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... emphatically, I say, never count upon that; count upon all else that I can do for you, and forgive me when I advise harshly or censure coldly; ascribe this to my interest in your career. Moreover, before decision becomes irrevocable, I wish you to know practically all that is disagreeable or even humiliating in the first subordinate steps of him who, without wealth or station, would rise in public life. I will not consider your choice settled till the end of a year at least,—your name will be kept on the college ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... commentaries in that way, Mr. Bainrothe. But a truce to recrimination and reminiscence both. Let us adhere strictly to the letter and verse of our affairs. These papers form the subject of your visit, I believe. Know, at once, that the first I will sign, on certain conditions, bitter and humiliating as I feel it to be obliged to do this; but, that I will ever consent to yield the guardianship of my sister wholly to Evelyn Erie and her husband, or divest myself of my house and furniture, or my wild lands in Georgia, to you, here first named to me, in consideration of expenses ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... it upon itself to reduce his advantages to the average standard. Nature gave Byron clubbed feet, but with those feet she gave him a genius whose numbers charmed the world— a genius which multitudes of commonplace or weak men would have been glad to purchase at the price of almost any humiliating eccentricity of person. But they were obliged to content themselves with excellent feet, and brains of the common kind and calibre. Providence had withered the little boy's leg, but the loudest song I have heard from a boy in a twelvemonth came from his lips, as he limped along alone in the open ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... had to call upon the tailor and beg him for further time. This was humiliating, especially as the tailor was considerably out of humor, and disposed to be hard with him. A threat to apply for the benefit of the insolvent law again, if a suit was pressed to an issue, finally induced the tailor to waive legal proceedings ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... never had attempted to deny it, not even to herself. And she had found it hard to restrain herself when he had stood outside the door of her room gravely pleading with her. Only pride had kept her from yielding—the humiliating conviction that she was not good enough for him—or rather that her father's crimes had made it impossible for her to accept him upon a basis ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... laughing, has an interest which is perhaps not confined to the art of painting. For me, personally, it has a slight, vague repercussion upon literature. The attitude of the culture of London towards it is of course merely humiliating to any Englishman who has made an effort to cure himself of insularity. It is one more proof that the negligent disdain of Continental artists for English artistic opinion is fairly well founded. The mild tragedy of the thing is that London is infinitely too ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... before us a most humiliating spectacle. If an effort is made to extirpate some form of sin that has taken audacious root in the soil of our moral life, one reform element or denomination fights with the other until the hoe is so broken that there is nothing left wherewith to dig out the miserable ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... was her lot if she were left a widow before having presented her husband with a son. Even if she were left an infant widow of an infant husband and their marriage could not possibly have been consummated, she was doomed to an austere and humiliating life of perpetual widowhood, whilst, on the other hand, if she died, her widowed husband was enjoined to marry again at once unless she had left him a son. To explain away this cruel injustice, her fate ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... desired war, and that with the celebration of the United States of Europe we should see the beginning of the golden age of Peace. But the events of the tremendous days from July 28 to August 4,1914, show us with humiliating distinctness that though Kaisers, Emperors, Crown Princes, and Archdukes may be the accidental instruments of invisible powers in plunging humanity into seas of blood, a war is no sooner declared by any of them, however feeble ...
— The Drama Of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days - Scenes In The Great War - 1915 • Hall Caine
... wiped her eyes. She had been deeply hurt at Rona's sudden attack. It is humiliating to find that where you occupied a pedestal you are now, even temporarily, a ...
— For the Sake of the School • Angela Brazil
... the mountain, dissipated the gray smoke, and cast a theatrical light on the faces of the dead. Russell bent over Altimira. His head was shattered, but his death was avenged. Never had an American troop suffered a more humiliating defeat. Only six Californians lay on the field; and when the American surgeon, after attending to his own wounded, offered his services to Pico's, that indomitable general haughtily replied ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... and even made a few acquaintances in this irregular and involuntary manner. I could have wished he had been a less susceptible animal, for, though his flirtations were merely Platonic, it is rather humiliating to have to play 'gooseberry' to one's own horse—a part which I was constantly being ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... Lady Florence has not been in any degree the cause of the change of manner we have observed, there can be no impropriety on that account in our speaking of the subject to Mrs. Hungerford. It may be painful, humiliating—but what is meant by confidence, by openness towards our friends?—We are all of us ready enough to confess our virtues," said she, smiling; "but our weaknesses, what humbles our pride to acknowledge, we are apt to find some delicate ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. VII - Patronage • Maria Edgeworth
... Driggs, won't you stop a moment?" asked young Prescott. "It will be a bit humiliating to be towed into dock. Wait, and let us get into the canoe. We'd rather take it ashore ...
— The High School Boys' Canoe Club • H. Irving Hancock
... draws an impassable line of demarcation between the costume of the virtuous woman in every rank and that of her frail sister. The humiliating truth that many of our female fashions are originated by those whose position we the most regret, and are then carefully copied by all classes of women in our country, does not obtain credence among Japanese women, to whom even the slightest approximation in the style of hair- dressing, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... impropriety of this extraordinary scene, accusing and practising injustice. For my part, there is no circumstance, in all the contradictions of our most mysterious nature, that appears to be more humiliating than the use we are disposed to make of those sad examples which seem purposely marked for our correction and improvement. Every instance of fury and bigotry in other men, one should think, would naturally fill us with an horror of that disposition. The effect, however, is directly contrary. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... met him at the Whiteside dock, and on the way down had brought him up to date on their part of the case, including their humiliating experience of the ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... next ten minutes trying to force his prisoner to beg his pardon. They were long and humiliating and painful minutes for Macalister, but he endured them doggedly and in silence. The officer's temper rose minute by minute. The forward wall of the firing trench was built up with wicker-work facings and the officer drew ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... hand, left the room to his class. That was rather humiliating for a head-teacher to come over and see his subordinate, but it was better than to ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... The priest had refused to take her child, and at the first glance had discovered the humiliating truth that she believed to have thoroughly disguised under the luxurious surroundings of a woman of the world ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... only endear to us the more the Church of England. This was perhaps the reason, besides the inherent marvel of the matter, why we passed so lightly over M. Esquiroz and his late ecclesiastical researches. It was humiliating to English pride to have to confess that a Frenchman had unveiled to the world of Paris the hitherto sacred mysteries of the perpetual curate and of the ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... of the Hall, has taken sides with a certain few students in the house who have a fancied grudge against a number of young women whose interests I am now representing. Miss Remson has allowed these students to place us in the most humiliating of positions; has even aided and abetted them in putting us in a false light. She has also reprimanded us frequently for offenses of which we are not guilty. We are willing to overlook all this and try even more earnestly in future to please Miss Remson. This, in spite of the harsh way ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... transacted in his own great presence? Why is it that I recall these things? Why do I bring forward what many of us, forgetting the iron weight with which the sentiments of his age press down even upon the mightiest genius, might look upon as a humiliating circumstance far greater than it is, in the life of a man we ought all to love so much? Is history a thing done away with, or is not the past for ever in the present? And is it not but too probable that we ourselves are occasionally guilty of things which, for our lights, are as sad ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... hamper nationalism by ordering Albanian to be printed in Arabic characters, and making Turkish compulsory in the schools. They had roused fierce anger, too, by publicly flogging some offenders, a punishment regarded in Albania as so shameful and humiliating that it bred sympathy for the victim and hatred for the inflicter. Has it, perhaps, the same result ...
— Twenty Years Of Balkan Tangle • Durham M. Edith
... profitable in the end if man would take a hint from his lack of wings, and settle down comfortably into the assurance that midair is not his appointed element. The confession is a humiliating one, but there is a temperate balm in the consciousness that his inability to "shave with level wing" the blue empyrean cannot justly be charged upon himself. He has done his endeavour, and done it nobly; but ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... seriously had been women whose charms were on the wane, and whose chances of marriage were fast failing them. For the first time in his life he had now passed hours of happiness in the society of a beautiful girl, who had left him to think of her afterward without a single humiliating remembrance to lower him ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... "Why, because it is humiliating to her to see all her girl friends married before her," replied the mother, with a ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... a particularly humiliating type of answer to receive, because it implies that one is an ass. In truth the man who should invent an artificial language and invite the world to study it for itself would be a fool, and a very swell-headed fool at that. It seems in vain to point this out ...
— International Language - Past, Present and Future: With Specimens of Esperanto and Grammar • Walter J. Clark
... Donatists alike gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making Augustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secret delight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel are beings of a different quality ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... something of the pulpit manner, and the spirit of one possessed. "O hellish compliance!" she exclaimed. "I would not suffer a complier to break bread with Christian folk. Of all the sins of this day there is not one so God-defying, so Christ-humiliating, as damnable compliance": the boy standing before her meanwhile, and brokenly pursuing other thoughts, mainly of Haddo and Janet, and Jock Crozer stripping off his jacket. And yet, with all his distraction, it might be argued that he heard too ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the population. All the other boards and departments established for the help and guidance of these people only succeed in badgering and frightening them. They are met, even at Ellis Island, by the board of health and they are subjected to all kinds of disagreeable and humiliating experiences culminating sometimes in quarantine and sometimes in deportation. Even after they have passed the barrier of the emigration office, the monster still pursues them. It disinfects their houses, it confiscates the rotten fish and vegetables ...
— New Faces • Myra Kelly
... of the tabooed book, of whatever identity; the question, in my breast, of why, if it was to be so right for others, it was only to be wrong for me. I remember the soreness of the thought that it was I rather who was wrong for the book—which was somehow humiliating: in that amount of discredit one couldn't but be involved. Neither then nor afterwards was the secret of "Hot Corn" revealed to me, and the sense of privation was to be more prolonged, I fear, than the vogue of the ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... everything! That is the disgusting part of it. Leander Morris offered him—but why should I tell you? It's humiliating enough in the very ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... would be the case should they on rising face about in our direction, we slowly retreated towards our camp. On looking back, we saw that they were still crawling about on hands and knees; and as the spectacle was rather humiliating than interesting, we did not feel inclined to ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... knew now that he was right:—that, dearly as she loved him, independence in thought, word, and act were still the breath of life for her and for her art. He had put the matter to practical proof with a sledge-hammer directness all his own; had opened her eyes to the humiliating truth that never in all her thirty years of living had she given up anything that mattered ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... and insignificant as the exercises continued. This would not do; should the fellow become thoroughly frightened, he might not be able to say anything; this would be disappointing to the assemblage, and somewhat humiliating to him who had announced the special attraction of the evening. Sam's opportunity must come at once; he, the deacon, did not doubt that his own long experience in introducing people to the public in his capacity of chairman of the local lecture committee would enable him to present ...
— All He Knew - A Story • John Habberton
... that on one occasion in his palace when he had grown somewhat over-festive he took the head of his general Akechi(159) under his arm and with his fan played a tune upon it, using it like a drum. Akechi was mortally offended and never forgave the humiliating joke. His treason, which resulted in Nobunaga's death, was the final outcome of ...
— Japan • David Murray
... very cheaply, taking cannon in payment. Then, smiling grimly at the two pitiful little craft in which they purposed sailing for France, he offered them all a free passage home. Laudonniere would not {89} accept a proposal so humiliating, but was very glad to buy a small vessel ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... enough to be governed by an aristocracy or a monarch whose executive power is dependent upon legend in the mass of the people; it is humiliating enough to be thus governed through a sort of play-acting instead of enjoying the self-government ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc
... more notice of him; perhaps it was hardly worth while to let him slip entirely out of her hands; and when she looked at herself in the glass, she could not help laughing and thinking how absurd it was for any one, with her pretensions to beauty, to be contented to accept her present humiliating position. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... the ring, so great was her embarrassment. That the present of one lover should be brought back to her by another was an awkward, almost humiliating circumstance, Yet she was glad as well as ashamed. "Oh, Mr. Trelyon, how can I thank you?" she said in a low earnest voice. "All you seem to care for is to make other people happy. And the trouble ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... anything in the world if you will only tell me how," said Donald. "Maybe you think it isn't grinding me and humiliating me properly. Maybe you think Father and Mother haven't warned me. Maybe you think Mary Louise isn't secretly ashamed of me. How ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... Lucien made up his mind to a humiliating step for love's sake. He took Fendant and Cavalier's bills, and went to the Golden Cocoon in the Rue des Bourdonnais. He would ask Camusot to discount them. The poet had not fallen so low that ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... destroying the lion, we should be destroyed by him?" asked the emperor, with a shrug. "What if the lion should a second time place his foot on our neck, trample us in the dust, and dictate to us again a disgraceful and humiliating peace? Do you think that the present position of the King of Prussia is a pleasant and honorable one, and that I am anxious to incur a similar fate? No, madame! I am by no means eager to wear a martyr's crown instead of my imperial crown, and I will rather strive to keep my ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... Crassus, who had such reverence tor his father-in-law, that, when a candidate for the consulship, he could not persuade himself in the presence of Scaevola to cringe to the people, or to adopt any of the usual self-humiliating methods of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... passed in that interview, but I do not know how to reproduce it, how to give anything like an impression of the marvellous thing it was, or that it turned into under her hands. It ought, you see, to have been so ugly, so humiliating, so absolutely intolerable for both of us. And it wasn't. She took it from me, at the end, and held it up, as it were a little way out of my grasp; and before I knew where I was, with some sudden twist or turn she had brought beauty out of ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... unlimited military power of the republic, he, the third Democratic Governor of Kansas, was, like his predecessors, in secret flight from the province he had so trustfully gone to rule, execrated by his party associates, and abandoned by the Administration which had appointed him. Humiliating as was this local conspiracy to plant servitude in Kansas, a more aggressive political movement to nationalize slavery in all the Union ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... not such a capable Chancellor I might be more offended. I am tryingly stupid at times, but to be in the very middle of a sentence and discover that the man I'm talking to is fast asleep, is humiliating, to say the least." ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... people, with incurable weakness by excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies, without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it abolished its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating regulation, that it subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of the republic in the same measure that it lowered the individual Representatives of the people. By branding an insurrection in defense of the Constitution as anarchy, and as a deed looking to the overthrow of society, ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... vice, unthrift, and idleness, and those whom God has striken for no fault that humanity is entitled to pass judgment upon; between the fitting inmates of the workhouse, and those—helpless from age, infirmity, accident, and disease—to whom the associations of the workhouse are humiliating, painful and demoralizing. Nothing is more essential, under democratic rule, than the maintenance of due severity towards those who will not work; nothing more likely to relax that needful severity than its indiscriminate application to ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... he hastens to add that, of course, "the true pilot" will be called "a prater, a star-gazer, a good-for-nothing." [Footnote: 2 Bk. VI, 488-489.] But this wistful admission, though it protects him against whatever was the Greek equivalent for the charge that he lacked a sense of humor, furnished a humiliating tailpiece to a solemn thought. He becomes defiant and warns Adeimantus that he must "attribute the uselessness" of philosophers "to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg the sailors to be commanded by him—that is not the order of nature." ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... with the son of his colonel. I do not doubt, however, that he had an affection for Kirsty far deeper and better than his notion of their relations to each other would indicate. Although it was mainly his pride that suffered in his humiliating dismissal, he had, I am sure, a genuine heartache as he galloped home. When he reached the castle, he left his pony to go where he would, and rushed to his room. There, locking the door that his mother might not enter, he threw himself ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... I know from painful experience, there is much to unlearn in what one has picked up by the light of Nature. Scrambling down a run, crashing and sitting on one's Skis, may be great fun the first day, but is tiring and humiliating as time goes on. It is infinitely preferable to learn the knack of Ski-ing tidily, and thereby keeping dry and, in a few days, running well enough thoroughly to enjoy a day out with its slow climb to the top of some peak or pass, and then the slide ...
— Ski-running • Katharine Symonds Furse
... her the cruel scene in which she had just been engaged, then hastened to her own apartment. Her hitherto stifled emotions broke forth in tears and repinings: her fate was finally determined, and its determination was not more unhappy than humiliating; she was openly rejected by the family whose alliance she was known to wish; she was compelled to refuse the man of her choice, though satisfied his affections were her own. A misery so peculiar she found hard to support, and almost bursting with conflicting passions, her heart alternately swelled ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... himself very discouragingly on the subject of life in the polar regions, and combated my cheerful faith in the possibility of preventing scurvy. He was of opinion that it was inevitable, and that no expedition yet had escaped it, though some might have given it another name: rather a humiliating view to take of the matter, I think. But I am fortunately in a position to maintain that it is not justified; and I wonder if they would not both change their opinions if they were here. For my own part, I can say ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... must pause. I would that for the sake of poetry I could leave my hero, bathed in that heroic light, erect and menacing. But alas, in this practical world of ours, the battle is too often to the strong. And I hasten over the humiliating spectacle of Aristides, spanked, cuffed, and kicked, and pick him from the ditch into which he was at last ignominiously tossed, a defeated but still struggling warrior, and so bring him, as the night closes ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... trying to make the Dutchman think I am being taken as a pupil to a finishing school in Germany." She thought of her lonely pilgrimage to the West End agency, of her humiliating interview, of her heart-sinking acceptance of the post, the excitements and misgivings she had had, of her sudden challenge of them all that evening after dinner, and their dismay and remonstrance and reproaches—of her fear and determination in insisting and carrying her point and making ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... had been trying for him. But how humiliating! He was glad that there had been no one there to see him. He would need all his strength for the battle that was in front of him. Yes, he was glad that there had been no one to see him. He would ask old Puddifoot to look at him, although the man was ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... "second nature" which is habit—calls aloud for the customary performance. Strenuous effort is required to get out of the rut, and the slipping back into the rut which is almost sure to occur in moments of inadvertence is humiliating. Result—usually the ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... not take these things very seriously. A new occasion was mostly spectacular to her. However, Winifred was a detached, ironic child, she would never attach herself. Gudrun liked her and was intrigued by her. The first meetings went off with a certain humiliating clumsiness. Neither Winifred nor her ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... chosen to bear the holy shrine and win pardon for his sins. So strangely, indeed, and so strongly was the privilege exercised during these years of foreign dominion, that I cannot avoid the reflection—humiliating to Rouen as it is—that an attempt at least might have been made to exercise it in the case of the most famous prisoner ever in the donjons of the city, of the woman who would have been most worthy of those upon the roll of mercy to benefit by the protection of the Church. But if any attempt was ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... manner which an occasional shopkeeper adopts. It is most disagreeable to right-thinking people. Let him remember that he is also a man; and let his manner be manly as well as civil. It is an awful and humiliating sight, a man who is always squeezing himself together like a whipped dog, whenever you speak to him,—grinning and bowing, and (in a moral sense) wriggling about before you on the earth, and begging you to wipe your feet on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... continued in this fashion, without pause, until after Maurice de Guerin had died, after which his sister bewailed him in other pages, written in a watery prose strewn here and there with bits of poems whose humiliating poverty ended by moving ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... always be the fundamental problem of religion—the relationship of the soul, not to its neighbor, but to God. Hence the almost total absence of doctrinal preaching—indeed, how dare we preach Christian doctrine to the industry and politics and conduct of this age? Hence the humiliating striving to keep up with popular movements, to conform to the moment. Hence the placid acceptance of military propaganda and even ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch
... patron and dependant—so irksome, so humiliating, so feudal, yet containing for many the whole moral law—is done away with, and in its place appears a spirit of true fellowship, a growing sense of mutual respect and helpfulness. Club life teaches us that there are many kinds of wealth in the ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... the misfortune of an English general to experience so thorough, so humiliating a defeat. The wild charges of the Highlandmen broke up the ordered ranks of the English troops in hopeless confusion; almost all the infantry was cut to pieces, and the cavalry escaped only by desperate flight. Cope's Dragoons were accustomed to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... pitied their sufferings; but he had foreseen, and he watched the decay of their loyalty, and the progress of their discontent. Adversity had awakened the Romans from the dreams of grandeur and freedom, and taught them the humiliating lesson, that it was of small moment to their real happiness, whether the name of their master was derived from the Gothic or the Latin language. The lieutenant of Justinian listened to their just complaints, but he rejected with disdain the idea of flight or capitulation; repressed their clamorous ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... regret to apprehension. The necessity of considering my situation prevented me from contemplating, at that time, the perfidy of Mlle. d'Arency, the blindness with which I had let myself be deceived, or the tragic and humiliating termination of my great ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens
... not find it humiliating to have his sublime meditations interrupted in such a tricky, brutal way? A moment before, he felt as if to be a Viking were his real calling, and now, inwardly shaking and shivering, amid general ridicule, he crawled ignominiously ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... of Oudinot, Ney, Legrand, Maison, Zayonchek, Doumerc, and, finally, to his own sure and profound decision, his recognition of the true steps to be taken, Napoleon owed the possibility that he could escape after a bloody scene, the most humiliating, the ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... friends had often been flogged in his very presence, and he had seen his mother sold to the negro-trader. An only sister had been torn from him by the soul-driver; he had himself been sold and resold, and been compelled to submit to the most degrading and humiliating insults; and now that the woman upon whom his heart doted, and without whom life was a burden, had been taken away forever, he felt it a duty to hate ...
— Clotelle - The Colored Heroine • William Wells Brown
... Hill." That he was not so accomplished as Masaccio in the art of composition, that his scale of colour is less pleasing, and that his style in general lacks the elevation of his mighty predecessor, is not sufficient to place him in any position of humiliating inferiority.[182] What above all things interests the student of the Renaissance in Filippino's work, is the powerful action of revived classicism on his manner. This can be traced better in the Caraffa Chapel of S. Maria sopra Minerva at Rome and in the Strozzi Chapel of ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... enough, doctor," she said. "You are giving your time, your skill, for nothing. Oh doctor, don't you see you are humiliating me by refusing to ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... every age and country, have been enslaved, as he who will take the pains to peruse Dr. Dick's admirable treatise on the improvement of society by the diffusion of knowledge can not fail to be convinced. That such absurd notions should ever have prevailed is a most grating and humiliating thought, when we consider the noble faculties with which man is endowed. That they still prevail to a great extent, even in our own country, is a striking proof that as yet we are, as a people, but just emerging ...
— Popular Education - For the use of Parents and Teachers, and for Young Persons of Both Sexes • Ira Mayhew
... a lady, and had been more or less well educated. That was all. It did not seem natural to him that she should call him "the master" in that tone. He knew that she was not his equal, but somehow it was a little humiliating to have to own it, and he often wished that she were. Often, not always; for he had never been sure that he should have cared to make her his wife, had she been ever so well born. He scarcely knew what he really wanted now, for he had lost his hold on himself, and was content ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... sanguine Christi, the future author of the Pilgrim's Progress never forgot the phrase. At a glance Gifford saw what was the whole matter with the sick man. And painful as the truth was to the sick man's mother, and humiliating with a life-long humiliation to the sick man himself, Gifford was not the man or the minister to beat about the bush at such a solemn moment. "This boy has been tampering with that which will kill him unless he gets it taken off his conscience and out of his heart ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte |
