"Ignobly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... our personality, they fill our aura with beauty or ugliness according to our intents and purposes in life.'' Each evil thought or action has its pursuing phantom, each smile or kindly deed its guiding angel, we leave wherever we ignobly stand, a tomb and an epitaph to haunt us through the furnace of conscience ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... which did not, however, add fluency nor conviction to his speech. Neither had he the abstraction of a student, for his accounts were kept with an accuracy which struck us, who dealt at the store, as ignobly practical, and even malignant. Possibly we might have expressed this opinion more strongly but for a certain rude vigor of repartee which he possessed, and a suggestion that he might have a temper on occasion. "Them red-haired chaps is like to be tetchy and to kinder ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... good reason to know, when Selina, her riven garment held out at length, avenged her discomfiture with the Greek-fire of personalities and abuse. Every black incident in my short, but not stainless, career—every error, every folly, every penalty ignobly suffered—were paraded before me as in a magic-lantern show. The information, however, was not particularly new to me, and the effect was staled by previous rehearsals. Besides, a victory remains a victory, whatever the moral character of ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... the Wallachian at his own headquarters, exposed his treason to the Hetaerist officers who surrounded him, and carried him, a doomed man, to the Greek camp. Wladimiresco's death was soon avenged. The Turks advanced. Hypsilanti was defeated in a series of encounters, and fled ignobly from his followers, to seek a refuge, and to find a prison, in Austria. Bands of his soldiers, forsaken by their leader, sold their lives dearly in a hopeless struggle. At Skuleni, on the Pruth, a troop of four hundred men refused to cross to Russian soil until they had given battle to the ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of a people who once knew something of noble aspirations, but have submitted to learn from a practical age that the business of life is to make money, and the enjoyments of it what money can buy. A few are ignobly successful; the many fail, and are miserable; and the subtle anarchy of selfishness finds its issue in madness and revolution. But we need not open this painful subject. Mr. Arnold is concerned with the effect of the system on ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... skirmish at euchre, at which she was ignobly beaten, and, I must say, shamefully cheated, she was back at the piano, and it was the clock striking twelve that made her start ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of Titus we may clearly see the notions which the Romans then had of death, and of the happy state of those who died bravely in war, and the contrary estate of those who died ignobly in their beds by sickness. Reland here also produces two parallel passages, the one out of Atonia Janus Marcellinus, concerning the Alani, lib. 31, that "they judged that man happy who laid down ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... that contest for life and death against the public foe which the Athenians will institute when the day comes. (3) And yet they are not a few who, owing to a bad habit of body, either perish outright in the perils of war, or are ignobly saved. Many are they who for the self-same cause are taken prisoners, and being taken must, if it so betide, endure the pains of slavery for the rest of their days; or, after falling into dolorous straits, (4) when they have paid to the ...
— The Memorabilia - Recollections of Socrates • Xenophon
... war meant to a country whose government was as rotten as its army was unprepared, whose political chiefs were as vain, incompetent, ignorant, and weak as were the chiefs of its brave army—an army riddled with politics, weakened by intrigue and neglect—an army used ignobly, perverted, cheated, lied to, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... of storms, and not least of the storms within. All this may be seen rudely but forcefully presented under the great doorway of Strasburg Cathedral. Heading the band of Foolish Virgins, the wicked woman who lures them on to destruction is filled, blown out by the Devil, who overflows ignobly and passes out from under her skirts in a dark ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... more to do with Annie. Such is life! Such is man! Such is the terrible egoism of man! And thus it was that, for the sake of wounded pride, John and Robert not only did not speak to one another for ten years, but they spoilt at least one of their lives; and they behaved ignobly to Annie, who would certainly have married either one or ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... ease of such life compelled me to marvel and admire, and I who had so lately lain at the feet of eastern sages, set up this mechanician as my god. If I looked back at all to the land of dreams, the placid figure beneath the Tree of Enlightenment took on the aspect of a fool's idol, ignobly self-manacled, pitiful ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... in stern condemnation of the crime which has been consummated on that beautiful soil; in rescue of fellow-citizens now subjugated to a Tyrannical Usurpation; in dutiful respect for the early fathers, whose aspirations are now ignobly thwarted; in the name of the Constitution, which has been outraged—of the laws trampled down—of Justice banished—of Humanity degraded—of Peace destroyed—of Freedom crushed to earth; and, in the name of the Heavenly Father, whose ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... Thus ignobly fell the noblest of the ancient Germans, the man whose patriotism saved the realm of the Teutonic tribes from becoming a province of the empire of Rome. Had not Hermann lived, the history of Europe might have pursued a different course, and the final downfall of the colossus ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Muse, oppress'd by kings, Or droops in silence, or in fetters sings! In vain thy dauntless fortitude hath borne The bigot's furious zeal, and tyrant's scorn. Why didst thou safe from home-bred dangers steer, Reserved to perish more ignobly here? Thus, when, the Julian tyrant's pride to swell, Rome with her Pompey at Pharsalia fell, 80 The vanquish'd chief escaped from Caesar's hand, To die by ruffians in a foreign land. How could these self-elected monarchs raise So large an empire on so small ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... two or three recruits in use, notably a young person with big feet, in alpaca, from Kilburn, who for a couple of years had come to me regularly for my illustrations and with whom I was still—perhaps ignobly—satisfied. I frankly explained to my visitors how the case stood, but they had taken more precautions than I supposed. They had reasoned out their opportunity, for Claude Rivet had told them of the projected edition de luxe of one of the writers ...
— Some Short Stories • Henry James
... the position of women in despotisms," we continued, "we should confess that it seemed to be as ignobly subordinate as that of women in republics. They were scarcely more conspicuous than the Citizenesses who succeeded in the twilight of the One and Indivisible the marquises and comtesses and duchesses of the Ancien Regime, unless they happened, as they sometimes ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... behind Adam and Eve, they had this consolation left, that "the world was all before them where to choose." Was she not a free woman, without even a guardian to trouble her with advice? She had no excuse to act ignobly, but had she any for being unmaidenly? Would it then be—would it be a very unmaidenly thing if—? The rest of the sentence did not even take the shape of words. But she answered it nevertheless in the words, "Not so unmaidenly as presumptuous." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... worlds. She leaves it now, ruined and degraded, and the passionate outbreak of her patriotic sorrow with which the poem opens lifts the character and imagination of Balaustion into spiritual splendour. Athens, "hearted in her heart," has perished ignobly. Not so, she thinks, ought this beauty of the world to have died, its sea-walls razed to the ground to the fluting and singing of harlots; but in some vast overwhelming of natural energies—in the embrace of fire to join the gods; ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... Marriage is a union of equals—equal interests being involved, equal duties at stake; and if any woman has been married to a man who chooses to take advantage of the laws as they now stand, who chooses to subject her, ignobly, to his will, against her own, to take from her the earnings which belong to the family, and to take from her the children which belong to the family, I hold that that woman, if she can not, by her influence, change this state of things, is solemnly obligated to go to some State where ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... taken good care not to let me inhabit your house or any part or portion thereof, because you would have considered me in no position to pay you your rent. Now, during the war my tool has unquestionably rendered me but poor service. It has remained ignobly idle in the inkstand, in the folio, or on the bench. Not only have I been unable to use it, but I have also in some sort lost the knack of handling it; I must have some time to get myself into working order ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... princess would merely laugh and at once achieve the task. At last there came a young man who argued with himself that she would not be able to perform this feat after she had lost her virginity. He therefore seduced her first and she then failed ignobly, merely wetting her stockings. Accordingly, she became his bride. (Kryptadia, vol. i. p. 333.) Such legends, which have lost any mythologic elements they may originally have possessed and have become merely contes, are not uncommon in the folk-lore of many countries. But in their ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... than their lives. I believe that upon the success of our cause depends, not the prosperity of any class of men, or of any race of men, only, but of all men, and all races. For America marches in the van of human progress, and if she falters, if she ignobly turns back, woe is to the world! Perhaps you do not see this yet; but never mind. One thing we all see—a path straight before us, our duty to our country. We must put every other consideration aside, forget all minor differences, and unite in this ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... The Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate A Suppliant for his own! Is it some yet imperial hope That with such change can calmly cope? Or dread of death alone? To die a Prince—or live a slave— Thy choice is most ignobly brave! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... which compensates for the absence or surrender of the idea, of reason, is, in his eyes, a Philistine. This is why Heine so often and so mercilessly attacks the liberals; much as he hates conservatism he hates Philistinism even more, and whoever attacks conservatism itself ignobly, not as a child of light, not in the name of the idea, is a Philistine. Our Cobbett[144] is thus for him, much as he disliked our clergy and aristocracy whom Cobbett attacked, a Philistine with six fingers ...
— Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... them sallow with a mean-looking face and an expression of devouring envy in his glance, the other wearing a collar and straps drawn very tightly, with a sort of thimble of black taffeta on his index-finger—and both ignobly dirty, with greasy necks, and the sleeves ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... I can't talk seriously before I've had a bath and—and brushed my hair. You see, you've taken rather an unfair advantage of me by getting out of bed." (He paused for an answer, and still no answer came.)—"Don't imagine I'm ignobly lying down all the time, wrapped in a blanket. I'm sitting on my pillow. I know there's any amount to be said. But how do you suppose I'm going to say it if I've got to stay here, all curled up like a blessed Buddha, and you're planted ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... Apollo, which he got from Delphi, and that he then kissed it, and said, "O Pythian Apollo, after raising the fortunate Sulla Cornelius in so many contests to glory and renown, wilt thou throw him prostrate here, at the gates of his native city, and so bring him to perish most ignobly with his fellow-citizens?" After this address to the god it is said that Sulla entreated some, and threatened and laid hold of others; but at last, the left wing being completely broken, he was mingled with the fugitives and made his escape to the camp with the loss of many of his friends and ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... with dislike. Even when she looked on the astonishing scene that lay before her when they stepped on to the platform at Roothing station she was distracted from her astonishment by a sense that she would afterwards maintain an argument on the subject with Marion. The surroundings were ignobly ugly, as eggshells and scraps of newspaper trodden into waste ground are ugly. She was prepared to tell Marion so, though it was her own town. There had not been sufficient space to build a station with the ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... best in the end. If, being miserable, we are also disloyal, then we are insensibly degraded—so insensibly, perhaps, that we are not conscious of any part of the process, and only become aware of what has been going on when we have to face a crisis, and find ourselves prepared to act ignobly, and to justify the act with specious excuses." She glanced up at the mantelpiece. "Come," she said, "it is four o'clock, and I am sleepy. I ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... least pretend that she knew at present what would become of her. I forebore to touch particularly on that, however, for I certainly was not prepared to say that I would take charge of her. I was cautious; not ignobly, I think, for I felt that her knowledge of life was so small that in her unsophisticated vision there would be no reason why—since I seemed to pity her—I should not look after her. She told me how her aunt had died, very peacefully at the last, and how everything had been ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... settle and his days flush; and when he wished to feel "good," as they said at American City, he had but to retrace his immense development. That was what the whole thing came back to—that the development had not been somebody's else passing falsely, accepted too ignobly, for his. To think how servile he might have been was absolutely to respect himself, was in fact, as much as he liked, to admire himself, as free. The very finest spring that ever responded to his touch was always there to press—the ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... shouted Jasper, mirthfully. 'Oh, but it's quite decent; only rather depressing. The decently ignoble—or, the ignobly decent? Which is Biffen's formula? I saw him a week ago, and he looked ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... 'Who would sink ignobly beneath the slow superiority of starvation, or perish under the quickly glancing steel of the barbarian conqueror's sword, when such a death as ours is offered to the choice?—when wine flows bright, to drown sensation in ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... none but confused and changing notions on the subjects most interesting to his fellow-creatures and himself. His opinions are ill-defended and easily abandoned: and, despairing of ever resolving by himself the hardest problems of the destiny of man, he ignobly submits to think no more about them. Such a condition cannot but enervate the soul, relax the springs of the will, and prepare a people for servitude. Nor does it only happen, in such a case, that they allow their freedom to be wrested ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 2 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... pride equal to his own, revolts against his authority, and, in order to humiliate him the more, pretends to elope with Carker, whom in turn she scorns and crushes. Broken thus in fortune and honour, Mr. Dombey yet falls not ignobly. His creditors he satisfies in full, reserving to himself nothing; and with a softened heart turns to the daughter he had slighted, and in her love finds comfort. Such is the main purport of the story, and round it, in ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... self-painting and self-revealing, is it not ungrateful, barbarous, inhuman? Can he be indeed a true lover of his kind, who would record in judgment against such a man words that have escaped him in the fervour of the pleading designed to uphold great causes dear to humanity?—who would ignobly strike the self-disarmed?—scornfully insult him who, kneeling at the Muses' confessional, whispers secrets that take wings and fly abroad to the uttermost parts of the earth? Can they be lovers of the people who do so? who find it in their hearts ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... fleet. The other vessels of the flotilla were commanded by men who had not been in the regular navy, who were merely Mississippi River captains, and the like. These men were, doubtless, naturally as brave as any of the regular officers; but, with one or two exceptions, they failed ignobly in the time of trial, and showed a fairly startling contrast with the regular naval officers beside or against whom they fought. This is a fact which may well be pondered by the ignorant or unpatriotic people who believe that ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... the exorbitant requisitions upon their fellow-creatures made by the young, is the demand, that they be definite: no mercy is in them for the transitional. And Dudley—and it was under her influence, and painfully, not ignobly—was in process of development: interesting to philosophers, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... his narrative at several points. The satirist in him will not let him miss the chance for a sneer at priests and another at William III.'s standing army. He makes his heroine's love ignobly sensual. She is a widow, who having "tasted marriage joys," is unwilling to live single. Dryden's bourgeois manner is capable even of ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... resistance and bravery of men. But one lamenting ignobly, he blames in a clear comparison (I. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... which far better examples may be seen elsewhere; while the differences in their ages, styles, and purposes hinder them from attaining any unity of decorative effect, and break the unity of the church almost as fatally, though not as ignobly, as the incoherent fillings of the aisles at Westminster. The Cavalli chapel itself, though well deserving the illustration which the Arundel Society has bestowed upon it, is filled with a medley of tombs and ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... within her. Yes, the old people were past hoping for; mere wreck and driftwood on the shore, the spring-tide of death would soon have swept them all into unremembered graves. But the young men and women, the children, were they too to grow up, and grow old like these—the same smiling, stunted, ignobly submissive creatures? One woman at least would do her best with her one poor life to rouse some of them to discontent ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gettin' real handy and accommodatin'," said Clorinda the next morning, when they were all in the kitchen, and Jason, ignobly arrayed in Clorinda's kitchen-belle apron, was chopping, and Minty was seeding raisins. "I expected nothin' but what I'd got to pick the white turkey, and he's fetched her ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... looked into his eyes, for Eros alone of divinities is altogether a spirit, and hides in passions not of his essence if he would commune with a mortal heart. So that if a man love nobly he knows love through infinite pity, unspeakable trust, unending sympathy; and if ignobly through vehement jealousy, sudden hatred, and unappeasable desire; but unveiled love he never knows. While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures: 'Into the dance! there is none ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... the arms of her attendant maidens. But Diana, who beheld her fate, suffered not her slaughter to be unavenged. Aruns, as he stole away, glad, but frightened, was struck by a secret arrow, launched by one of the nymphs of Diana's train, and died ignobly ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... onward to the last horizon of the world, gods and men act out the brief human tragedy, as if on a narrow island in the midst of a great sea. A few steps this way or that will plunge them into darkness; the darkness awaits them, however they succeed or fail, whether they live nobly or ignobly, in the interval; but the interval absorbs them, as if it were to be eternity, and we see them rejoicing and suffering with an abandonment to the moment which intensifies the pathos of what we know is futile. Love, in Wagner, is so ecstatic and so terrible, ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... Dolabella; if you have been guilty, I have contributed, and too much love Has made me guilty too. The advance of kindness, which I made, was feigned, To call back fleeting love by jealousy; But 'twould not last. Oh, rather let me lose, Than so ignobly trifle ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... Mahomet was superstitious—if he felt that fate had doomed him, and that resistance would be useless—he resolved not to fall ignobly. His defence was indeed heroic; but it was vain, even though Alfonso sent him an aid of twenty thousand men: his cities fell one by one; Seville was constrained to capitulate: he and his family were thrown into prison until a ship ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 5 • Various
... marble beauty do they thus ignobly impress us,—but calm, fair, strong, and immortal. "They seem," wrote Hazlitt, "to have no sympathy with us, and not to want our admiration. In their faultless excellence they appear ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... than Christians," the Turk went on, "and they are strong men, heroes. The Italians are the worn-out scum of ancient Rome, getting the better of us ignobly. But they shall not spoil the Mahometan world. Not even the English, most powerful of the machine nations, ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... thy citadel subdued; Not ignobly, not untimely, Take praise in solemn mood; Take ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... had fully attained all the mysteries of his new profession. He employed his few leisure hours in fabricating a complete suit of armour: every year had brought him an account of the progress of the Saracens; and he could not help entertaining a hope that his arm, though so ignobly employed, was destined at some future day to revenge the wrongs of the Christians, as well as the injury which he had personally received ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... town; we are thirty gallant fellows, and I have heard the garrison is not more than three hundred." But the rest of the party thought such a way of getting supper was not a very cheap one, and, grovelling knaves, preferred rather to sleep ignobly and without victuals, than dare the assault with Otto, and ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... they passed through the cemetery gates and drove to one spot where art and nature had combined to make pleasant to the living eye the resting-places of the dead, and they laid their offering of fresh wild-flowers upon the grave of one who had nobly lived and had not ignobly died. Above the mound, a block of rugged granite rose, bearing on its face the name and age and day of death of William Buckley, and ...
— Burnham Breaker • Homer Greene
... the old King to his Grave, even that would not leave me Imoinda free; but still that Custom that makes it so vile a Crime for a Son to marry his Father's Wives or Mistresses, would hinder my Happiness; unless I would either ignobly set an ill Precedent to my Successors, or abandon my Country, and fly with her to some unknown World who ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... Jesse Benton was stabbed; Jackson was shot in the shoulder and severely wounded. He was put to bed in the old Nashville Inn, a famous hostelry of the time, and while he lay helpless from a wound so ignobly won, the call was on its way which should at last summon him to the work for which he was fittest. He was to pass from an action such as no biographer can defend to deeds which none can fail to praise. Jackson the duellist ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... splendor bright and brave Is phosphorescence from another's grave— Till now unknown, by any chance or luck, Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck? You whip a rascal out of office?—you Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew Its smoke in six directions to assert Your lack ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... to the taste Of lustful apperence, to sing, to dance, To dress, and troule the Tongue, and roule the Eye. To these that sober Race of Men, whose lives Religious titl'd them the Sons of God, Shall yeild up all thir vertue, all thir fame Ignobly, to the trains and to the smiles 620 Of these fair Atheists, and now swim in joy, (Erelong to swim at larg) and laugh; for which The world erelong a world of tears must weepe. To whom thus Adam of short joy bereft. O pittie and shame, that they who to live well Enterd so ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... claim to the truth from her? As she knew what he never would have told her an hour later, had she a right to recede from the position she had taken in response, simply because she could and he could not? Should she ignobly refuse him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... tell her, Charlie, She must not grieve too much, Our country claims our young lives, For she has need of such. And where is he would falter, Or turn ignobly back, When Duty's voice cries 'Forward,' ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... link that binds me to other days, and it is broken. 'The wage of sin is death,' and I am dead these long months past and fathoms deep in Hell, yet walk the earth because nor land nor sea will yield a resting-place among its honored dead to one so ignobly slain." ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... to fall on the bent head of his friend. "Mourn not for me," cried he, "nor think that these are regretful drops. I die as I have wished, in the field for Scotland. Time must have soon laid my gray hair ignobly in the grave; and to enter it thus covered with honorable wounds, in glory, has long been my prayer. But, dearest, most unwearied of friends, still the tears of mortality will flow; for I leave my children fatherless in this faithless world. And my Helen! Oh, Wallace, the angel who exposed ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... constant reference to the plan. A man that lives as he likes, by impulse, by inclination, or ignobly yielding to the pressure of circumstances and saying, 'I could not help myself, I was carried away by the flood,' or 'Everybody round about me is doing it, and I could not be singular'—will never build ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... the modern Babylon, where we have undergone many vicissitudes, I trust not ignobly, Mrs. Micawber and myself cannot disguise from our minds that we part, it may be for years and it may be for ever, with an individual linked by strong associations to the altar of our domestic life. If, on the eve of such a departure, you will accompany our mutual ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... yet hooking in was an ideal that was cherished among them, that was talked of, and that was even sometimes attempted, though not often. Once, when a fellow really hooked in, and joined the crowd that had ignobly paid, one of the fellows could not stand it. He asked him just how and where he got in, and then he went to the door, and got back his money from the doorkeeper upon the plea that he did not feel well; and ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... discovered how the craving of the national stomach for food, and of the popular mind for political purification, might be stilled by no longer transporting political offenders and suspects to French Guiana or Lambessa, where they uselessly and ignobly perish, but by sentencing them, instead, to the enviable lot of making a feast for their brethren. Would not every Socialist, receiving permission thus to help feed society, exclaim: ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... Bessie was so busy with little Ted that the household affairs outside of the nursery came under their exclusive control. Thaddeus stood it—I was going to say nobly, but I think it were better put ignobly—but he had a ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... compromise a fundamental contradiction. The whole contest was lowered to a court intrigue. There is grandeur in the flight of Athanasius, dignity in the exile of Eunomius; but the conservatives fell ignobly and unregretted, victims of their own ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... anything, frivolity or a thesaurus of serious information. Memory, what a treacherous jade thou art! It may be said, why did I not take copious notes in short-hand? I would have done so were I a stenographer; but I am not. I tried to acquire the accomplishment once, and ignobly failed. I could write short-hand slightly quicker than long-hand, but when written, I could ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... Commissioners were performing their herculean task so faithfully and well, is not so plain; unless it was the result of one of those freaks of passion or despotic impulse, for which the Secretary of War was so ignobly distinguished. But unlike many other blunders which the War Department committed at this time, it did not result in any evil consequences, for the fight was over. But of this fact the Secretary of War was ignorant when he ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... When the lifeless remains lay upon the pavement of the court, Henry of Guise stooped down and with his handkerchief wiped away the blood from the admiral's face. "I recognize him," he said; "it is he himself!" Then, after ignobly kicking the face of his fallen antagonist, he went out gayly encouraging his followers: "Come, soldiers, take courage; we have begun well. Let us go on to the others, for so the king commands!" And often through the ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... must have the bell tied to him also, so that like a beacon (or bacon) he might warn the cruisers of his whereabouts. This arranged, and the caps being again tied on, they recommence the game with renewed spirit. One man ignobly raised his helmet, alias nose-bag, to see where the small hog was keeping himself, and then made a rush for him, whereupon one of three umpires, a very lean man with nervous twitches, rushed at ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... said the dog and the cat, 'we will stand by you, and if we are killed, it is at any rate better to die on the field of battle than to perish ignobly at home,' and they shook paws and concluded the bargain. The fox sent word to the wolf to meet him at a certain place, and the three set forth to encounter him and ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... produced on his mother, he wouldn't have lapsed after all, in spite of the feelings and determinations he had brought back with him from Europe, into the old ways again under the old influence, and gone on ignobly pretending to agree, to approve, to enjoy, to love, when he was never for an instant doing anything of the sort? He might have trailed on like that for years—Mr. Twist didn't like the picture of his own weakness, but he was determined ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... strong light all the palliating circumstances that could be urged in his favor. Such were, for example, that he was a prince of the empire and as such had a right to conduct negotiations and to make peace; that he wished to give rest to a torn and bleeding Germany; that he had been ignobly treated by the House of Austria, and so forth. By laying stress upon these things and passing lightly over others, it was easily possible to save Wallenstein from the detestation that is wont to associate itself with the idea ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... she cried, all a-quiver with disdain, "can you not for once conquer the self that is destroying your very soul? Neither by word nor act shall you interfere between Arthur Courtenay and his duty. Would you have him cling ignobly to life like that poor dandy whom he has sent to herd with savages? Be sure he has not forgotten those who are beholden to him. We are his first care. Let it be mine to leave him unhindered in the task ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... connect herself with every powerful influence—the princess loved this strange species of contrast. She found it curious and interesting to see this man, almost in rags, mean in appearance, and ignobly ugly, and but lately the most humble of subordinates look down from the height of his superior intelligence upon the nobleman by birth, distinguished for the elegance of his manners, and just before so considerable a personage in the Society. From that moment, as the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... that dastardly cowardice peculiar to himself and a few of his compatriots and traitors who joined themselves to his train, and against the very spirit of the law of nations and of civilized warfare, immersed the flourishing town of Newark (Niagara) in one continued sheet of flame, and ignobly fled with his followers into his territory. The historian laments that it is not in his power to record one magnanimous act of that recreant General, to rescue his name from that gulf of infamy to which his nefarious conduct has forever ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... still stand, mellow and lovely, with its carved ceiling and its proud merchant's mark, when the abbey church was only a shadow on the surface of a field in hot weather and all the abbey buildings were shrunk to one ruined ambulatory, ignobly sheltering blue Essex ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... greatly; but we can not avoid the endeavor from which either great failure or great success must come. Even if we would, we can not play a small part. If we should try, all that would follow would be that we should play a large part ignobly and shamefully. ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... quick of our hearts, till we grow sick with loathing and hot with indignation—if you knew what it was and is, you would feel how glad and grateful we must be to have a right word from John Ruskin. Dear Mr. Ruskin, England has done terribly ill, ignobly ill, which is worse. That men of all parties should have spoken as they have, proves a state of public morals lamentable to admit. What—not even our poets with clean hands? Alfred Tennyson abetting Lord Derby? That to me was the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... helpless before him. She thought, desolated: "I am nobody's. And so there is 'talk'!" She scorned herself for being nobody's. To belong utterly to some male seemed to be the one tolerable fate for her in the world. And it was a glorious fate, whether it brought good or evil. Any other was ignobly futile, was despicable. And then she thought, savagely: "And just see my clothes! Why don't I take the ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... feel that you are pale, but you summon up all your reserves of base hypocrisy and remark, "Poor fellow! Poo-poo-poo-ole fellow!" You really mean, "I should like to tomahawk you, and scalp you afterwards!"—but this sentiment you ignobly retain in your own bosom. You lift one leg in an apologetic way, and poodle instantly dashes at you with all the vehemence of a charge of his compatriots the Cuirassiers. You shut your eyes and wait for the shedding of blood; but the torturer has all the malignant subtlety of ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... the antique; and Raphael's grand gods and goddesses, his exquisite Eros and radiant Psyche of the Farnesina, are indeed succeeded but too soon by the Olympus of Giulio Romano, an Olympus of harlots and acrobats, who smirk and mouth and wriggle and sprawl ignobly on the walls and ceilings of the dismantled palace which crumbles away among the stunted willows, the stagnant pools, and rank grass of the marshes of Mantua. But this is no more the fault of antiquity than it is the fault of the Middle Ages; it is the fault of that great principle of life ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... laws, and do you now appeal to those laws for protection? You shall have those laws exercised to the full. You shall abide by what you have appealed to.' The result is I am in gaol. Certainly no man ever fell so ignobly, and by such ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... air-pipe of the condenser from top to bottom; and after two useless halts the captain reported to me that we must return to Suez. What a beginning! The fracture somewhat relieved the machinery; we did better work after than before the accident, but we were ignobly towed into dock ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... is in perfect bodily health one can more readily resist the infection of disease. Similarly if Scottish skies were not ready and longing to pour out rain, were not ignobly weak in holding it back, they would not be so susceptible to the depressing influences of visiting ministers. This is Francesca's theory as stated to the Reverend Ronald, who was holding an umbrella over her ungrateful head at the time; ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... price of landed property was nearly doubled. On the Queen's birthday, the first after the annexation, the 24th of May 1877, the native chiefs were invited to attend, and the Union Jack was formally hoisted to the strains of the National Anthem. This same flag was within a few years ignobly hauled down during the signing of the Convention at Pretoria, and formally buried by a party of Englishmen and loyal natives. But for the time being all seemed pleased with the new state of affairs. As Mr. Haggard says, it is difficult to reconcile the enthusiasm ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... age rendered ungraceful and improbable. I doubt not that, from the beginning, we had been surrounded by these snares by Louis of France, in order to determine us to take refuge at his Court, or rather to put ourselves into his power, after which rash act on our part, how unkingly, unknightly, ignobly, ungentlemanlike, he hath conducted himself towards us, you, Quentin Durward, can bear witness. But, alas! my kinswoman—what think ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... the deceptions of passion! It will not always banish from your mind, that you have acted ignobly—and condescended to subterfuge to gloss over the conduct you could not excuse.—Do truth and principle require ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... of my life has been Lana Helmer. It began ignobly; it continues through all this pain and bewilderment, a pure, clean current, running to the deep, still sea of dreams.... There it is lost; I follow it no further.... And were I here today as upright and as stainless as are you, Loskiel, ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... the designs and hopes of his former comrades; and he could not, he would not believe them capable of ignobly betraying ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... really in doubt whether the skilled hand of the great surgeon would not be ignobly employed in boxing my ears. No perversion of spelling can possibly report the complicated German-English jargon in which his fury poured itself out on my devoted head. Let it be enough to say that he declared Nugent's abominable personation ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... ploughman looks at the staff he has fixed as his guide. Keep looking unto Jesus. Many a preacher, who could make hell tremble for its own, has, by looking back, become respectably commonplace. So the fine promise of his youth dies ignobly, and is laid in the grave of Demas! Whether it be a bag of gold, or a fair face, or a pillow of down, thou art called to look back upon, do as the Master did—set thy ...
— Broken Bread - from an Evangelist's Wallet • Thomas Champness
... me yesterday about you. He asked me, if you found any thing to amuse you at Naples. I replied that you found too much to amuse you. 'I am glad of it,' said the King, 'so our family honor at least is saved.' Since, however, you are most ignobly virtuous, I have tried to turn the affair to the best advantage. I have brought about a magnificent match for you, to supersede one I have heard you were making for yourself. The lady is rich, noble, and beautiful. She is the daughter of the Duke d'Harcourt, one of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... his usual good fortune, landed at Elmina on March 9, exactly the right time. The attempt to intimidate had ignobly failed, and had recoiled upon the attempter. King Mensah, in order to remove all suspicions of intending a campaign, had resolved to send coastwards the most important and ceremonious mission of the age. It was to conclude a kind of Paix des Dames. Queen Kokofu had threatened that in case of hostilities ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... ago). I tried to throw a stone across the narrow part, and found I could no longer throw stones; so I sat down and rested. How thin my legs were! and how miserably clad—in old prison trousers, greasy, stained, and frayed, and ignobly kneed—and what boots! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Office,' says a simple reader? Alas, no, my friend, man does not 'reverence Office,' but only sham-reverences it. I defy him to reverence anything but a Man filling an Office (with or without salary) nobly. Filling a noble office ignobly; doing a celestial task in a quietly infernal manner? It were kinder perhaps to run your sword through him (or through yourself) than to take to revering him! If inconvenient to slay him or to slay yourself ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Royal George, of 100 guns, came on, stern and majestic, seeking some fitting antagonist. This was the great ship that afterwards sank ignobly at its anchorage at Spithead, with "twice four hundred men," a tale which, for every English boy, is made famous in Cowper's immortal ballad. But what an image of terror and of battle the Royal George seemed as in the bitter November ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... further; No villainous bounty yet hath pass'd my heart; Unwisely, not ignobly, have I given. Why dost thou weep? Canst thou the conscience lack, To think I shall lack friends? Secure thy heart; If I would broach the vessels of my love, And try the argument of hearts by borrowing, Men and ...
— The Life of Timon of Athens • William Shakespeare [Craig edition]
... that is behind them will in the long run be dragged up. In the order of nature, the collective character of a nation will as surely find its befitting results in its law and government, as water finds its own level. The noble people will be nobly ruled, and the ignorant and corrupt ignobly. Indeed all experience serves to prove that the worth and strength of a State depend far less upon the form of its institutions than upon the character of its men. For the nation is only an aggregate of individual conditions, and civilization ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... man of twenty-two, mourning over the vanished brio of youth, he carried morbidity to perfection. Only when he was travelling (as, for example, in Egypt) do his letters lose for a time their distemper. His love-letters are often ignobly inept, and nearly always spoilt by the crass provincialism of the refined and cultivated hermit. His mistress was a woman difficult to handle and indeed a Tartar in egotism, but as the recipient of Flaubert's love-letters she ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... of the young prince, while not actually ending in the murder he had planned, drives the boy to attempted escape and to death. The nobles rise and welcome the Dauphin, whose invasion of England proves fruitless, it is true, but the victory is not won by John, and the king dies ignobly at Swinstead Abbey. ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken |
