"True-born" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the house, brought to our ears the sound of rhythmically repeated blows, seeming to come from the stable. Mardary Apollonitch was in the act of lifting a saucer full of tea to his lips, and was just inflating his nostrils to sniff its fragrance—no true-born Russian, as we all know, can drink his tea without this preliminary—but he stopped short, listened, nodded his head, sipped his tea, and laying the saucer on the table, with the most good-natured smile imaginable, he murmured as though involuntarily accompanying ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... could not long be deferred; and when it came, he would not have one chance in a thousand against this wily, determined giant. Braddock would accomplish his end, of that he was as sure as he was certain that the sun would rise in the morning. It was in the cards. He knew. He was a true-born gambler, with all the instincts, all the wiles, all the insight of one who courts Chance and fights it at the same time. Such men as Robert Grand go on defying Fate to the bitter end, but they know that there will be an end, and ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... all true-born sailor-men—so Damaris divined—the world is made of water, with but accident of land. Impeding, inconvenient accident at that, too often blocking the passage across or through, and constraining you to steer a foolishly, really quite inordinately divergent course. Under this obstructive head ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... has been, and probably will be, long acclaimed and proclaimed by every true-born Englishman as his own peculiar diet; vide the ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... is a true-born gentleman ... If he supposes that I have pleaded truth, From off this briar pluck a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... the precincts of your inviting scenes of philosophic solitude, whither the insatiate love of true-born Liberty had led me, I beheld her Genius ascending, not in the spurious character and habit of a blood-thirsty Fury, armed with daggers and instruments of murder, and followed by a frantic and intoxicated multitude, but under the placid and chaste aspect of Justice, holding with a ...
— The Ruins • C. F. [Constantin Francois de] Volney
... him that is a true-born gentleman, And stands upon the honour of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck a ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... rituals, sacraments, devilry, hell fire, and the rest repose, by showing every man that he is his own priest and sacrificer. No anointing or ordering can make him more than he is in himself (not through Christ or any man), the true-born son of God, one in nature with whatsoever is Highest in existence. Boldly does Emerson fling ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... Russian army, it was under his command, and it would obey him in spite of the clamours of Wilson; Alexander, when informed of his proceedings, would approve them. What did he care for England? was it for her that he was fighting? He was a true-born Russian, his fondest wish was to see Russia delivered, and delivered she would be without risking the chance of another battle; and as for the rest of Europe, it was nothing to him whether it was under the dominion ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... irresistible. Le t me quote a few from last week's issue. Proverbial Title: 'A Pill in time saves Nine.' Familiar Title: 'Excuse me, how is your Stomach?' Patriotic Title: 'What are the three characteristics of a true-born Englishman? His Hearth, his Home, and his Pill.' Title in the form of a nursery dialogue: 'Mamma, I am not well.' 'What is the matter, my pet?' 'I want a little Pill.' Title in the form of a Historical Anecdote: 'New Discovery in the Mine ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... the bards of Wales styled thee in their flowing odes. Then, if those who were not English, and hated England, and all connected therewith, had yet much to say in thy praise, when thou wast far inferior to what thou art now, why should true-born Englishmen, or those who call themselves so, turn up their noses at thee, and scoff thee at the present day, as I believe they do? But, let others do as they will, I, at least, who am not only an Englishman, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... decide in Prague, one assumes from their having been concluded without violence that such must have been discussed in cellars. The window, as an argument, one feels, would always have proved too strong a temptation to any true-born Praguer. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... "That's the way everybody feels. There'll be a debate and a chance to cast a vote. Isn't your true-born American always itching to hold ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... gave to the elders of Mansoul, and to each town officer, a chain of gold and a signet. He also sent to their wives earrings and jewels, and bracelets, and other things. He also bestowed upon the true-born children of ...
— The Holy War • John Bunyan
... shall give orders for you to receive a donation immediately," she said in a low voice, and with that pronounced German accent which always reminded those with whom she came into contact that she was not a true-born Russian. "Stolypin, too, has told me of the wonderful miracle you performed ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... round the Cape was Sir Francis Drake, who, on Raleigh's Expedition, beholding for the first time, from the Isthmus of Darien, the "goodlie South Sea," like a true-born Englishman, vowed, please God, to sail an English ship thereon; which the gallant sailor did, to the sore discomfiture of the Spaniards on the coasts of Chili ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... land, When organ shakes a church; swore he would make The sea his home, though it was always roused By such wild storms as never leave Cape Horn; Happy to hear the tempest grunt and squeal Like pigs heard dying in a slaughterhouse. A true-born mariner, and this his hope— His coffin would be what his cradle was, A boat to drown in and be sunk at sea; To drown at sea and lie a dainty corpse Salted and iced in Neptune's larder deep. This man despised small coasters, fishing-smacks; ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... Defoe protest against the abuses of asylums in his day.[101] The "True-Born Englishman" reprobates the practice of men sending their wives to mad-houses at every whim or dislike, in order that they might be undisturbed in their evil ways. He asserts that this custom had got to such a head that the private mad-houses were greatly ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... you manage matters, 'tis not fit You should suspect yourselves of too much wit: Drive not the jest too far, but spare this piece; And, for this once, be not more wise than Greece. See twice! do not pell-mell to damning fall, Like true-born Britons, who ne'er think at all: Pray be advised; and though at Mons[1] you won, On pointed cannon do not always run. With some respect to ancient wit proceed; You take the four first councils for your creed. But, when you lay tradition ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... you would call a really clean ship—as the Skipper said, if you washed your hands one day they were just as bad again the next—but anyone who makes a fuss over a trifle like that is no true-born sailorman. We all loved her and were proud of her speed, for she could make nine knots at a push. Even the Second Engineer, who had been a fireman in the Wilson line, was moved to admit in a moment of admiration that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 26, 1919 • Various
... overtures: the world, before austere, becomes indulgent. It was so with Poole—no longer Dolly. Grant that in earlier life he had fallen into bad ways, and, among equivocal associates, had been led on by that taste for sporting which is a manly though a perilous characteristic of the true-born Englishman; he who loves horses is liable to come in contact with blacklegs; the racer is a noble animal; but it is his misfortune that the better his breeding the worse his company:—Grant that, in the stables, Adolphus Samuel ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... distant places; Where people always did as they were bid, Or did what they should not with foreign graces. Of coursers also spake they: Henry rid Well, like most Englishmen, and loved the races; And Juan, like a true-born Andalusian, Could back[660] a horse, as ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... which, that lion-hearted hero treated you with the forbearance of a true-born son of freedom." Captain Seccombe's voice took an oratorical roll. "He saw that you were bleeding from your fray. He fed you at his hospitable board; he would not suffer you to be de-nuded of the least ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... published in 1720, a year after "Robinson Crusoe," when Defoe was fifty-nine. Twenty years before had seen "The True-Born Englishman" and "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters"; and we are told that from "June 1687 to almost the very week of his death in 1731 a stream of controversial books and pamphlets poured from his pen commenting upon and marking every important ...
— The Life, Adventures & Piracies of the Famous Captain Singleton • Daniel Defoe
... of Dartmouth harbour—the sight of which is enough to make any outward-bound individual bitterly regret his determination to quit his native land— and to inspecting the outward man of his fellow-passengers with that icy stolidity which characterizes the true-born Briton. But the great event of the morning was the arrival of the mail-train, bringing the bags destined for various African ports, loose letters for the passengers, and a motley contingent of the passengers themselves. Amongst these latter, he had no difficulty in recognizing the two Jewesses, ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... were not content to regard the words of a song as a mere peg on which to hang the music, but sought the services of true-born lyrists. It is not too much to say that, for delicate perfection of form, some of the Elizabethan songs can compare with the choicest epigrams in the Greek Anthology. At least one composer, Thomas Campion, wrote both the words and the music of his songs; and there ...
— Lyrics from the Song-Books of the Elizabethan Age • Various
... a model of a man, quite fresh from Natur's mould!' said Pogram, with enthusiasm. 'He is a true-born child of this free hemisphere! Verdant as the mountains of our country; bright and flowing as our mineral Licks; unspiled by withering conventionalities as air our broad and boundless Perearers! Rough he may be. So air our Barrs. Wild he may be. ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... they call a mystery," she said to herself. "He's as true-born a gentleman as ever lived—with a gentleman's ways, a gentleman's voice, and a gentleman's hands, and yet he's 'on the road' like a tramp! Well! there's many ups and downs in life, certainly, and those that's rich to-day may ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... to give pleasure, avert pain, avoid offence, render her society agreeable to all its members, and enable every one to present himself in the most favorable light." Let the fair creatures made to adorn and reign over society add to their beauty, as Sarah Austin observes, the proper virtues of true-born and Christian women, gentleness, love, anxiety to please, fearfullness to offend, meekness, pity, an overflowing good-will manifested in kind words and deeds, and they may see in the example before us how high and lasting its empire is. This is the true secret ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... Similarly in Senegambia a python is expected to visit every child of the Python clan within eight days after birth; and the Psylli, a Snake clan of ancient Africa, used to expose their infants to snakes in the belief that the snakes would not harm true-born children of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... takes an interest in Johnson is interested in Boswell too. It ought to be {42} much more than interest, and in all true Johnsonians it is. Without Boswell, we should have respected Johnson, honoured him as a man and a writer, liked him as "a true-born Englishman," but we could not have known him enough to love him. By the help of Boswell, we can walk and talk with him, dine with him, be with him at his prayers as well as at his pleasures, laugh with ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... meeting,—somewhat strange After your jigging nights in Philadelphia,— A Mischianza, where we play a masque, And act a drama fraught with consequence More serious than any since the Duke Brought back King Charles. Two true-born Englishmen, If you'll accept my hand, shall this day place A jewel in old England's diadem, Which some rash spirits would shake ...
— The Treason and Death of Benedict Arnold - A Play for a Greek Theatre • John Jay Chapman
... monarch's pow'r? By Vulcan's aid the stalwart armorers show'r Their sturdy blows—warriors to Mars belong— And gentle Dian ever loves to pour New blessings on her favored hunter throng— While Phoebus aye directs the true-born poet's song. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... yeoman, "thou shouldst be as well a good Englishman as a good knight; for that which I have to speak of concerns, indeed, the duty of every honest man, but is more especially that of a true-born native ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... puzzled, but he lowered his tone. The true-born Briton bowed by instinct before the woman who had jilted him, when she presented herself in the character of a lord's mother. "How do you make that out, Maria?" he ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... grasped what was, perhaps, the true conception of her character. Looking at her clearly now, he understood the meaning of those pliant graces, so unaffected and yet always controlled by the reasoning of an unbiased intellect; her frank speech and plausible intonations! Before him stood the true-born daughter of a long race of politicians! All that he had heard of their dexterity, tact, and expediency rose here incarnate, with the added grace of womanhood. A strange sense of relief—perhaps a dawning of ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... a warm supporter of William III.; and his famous poem, The True-Born Englishman, was written in answer to an attack upon the king and the Dutch, called The Foreigners. Of his own poem he says, in the preface, "When I see the town full of lampoons and invectives against the Dutch, only because they are foreigners, and the king reproached and insulted by ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... laughter and thy scorn, of shame? But we, Thy wife by wedlock, and thy son by birth, Who have no part in spirit and soul with thee, Will bear no part in kingdom nor in life With one who hath put to shame his child and me. Thy true-born son, and I that was thy wife, Will see thee dead or perish. Call thy men About thee; bid them gird their loins for strife More dire than theirs who storm the wild wolf's den; For if thou dare not slay us here ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... and so loath to speak, In dumb significants proclaim your thoughts: Let him that is a true-born gentleman And stands upon the honor of his birth, If he suppose that I have pleaded truth, From off this brier pluck ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... always very delicate—perhaps was not even at the time these songs were composed,—as they picture rather the exuberant freaks of a half-civilised people than the better phases of their character. Yet even these form "part and parcel" of the history of "the true-born Englishman." ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 47, Saturday, September 21, 1850 • Various
... the superior class, whilst their connexions and purely native relations link them to the other side. In this perplexing mental condition, we find them on the one hand striving in vain to disown their affinity to the inferior races, and on the other hand, jealous of their true-born European acquaintances. A morosity of disposition is the natural outcome. Their character generally is evasive and vacillating. They are captious, fond of litigation, and constantly seeking subterfuges. They appear always dissatisfied with their lot in life, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... ambitious oak, the self-contained oak, and so on, through every phase of character. No other tree is so human or so expressive, and no other tree bespeaks such fortitude and endurance. To say that a well-grown oak typifies the reserve and strength of the true-born Briton, is perhaps to sum up its ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... view, impelled by one who rowed with exactly that amount of splashing which speaks the true-born Cockney. By dint of much exertion and more splashing, he presently ranged alongside ...
— My Lady Caprice • Jeffrey Farnol
... house near your palace, and a more contented spirit and another job and Ahellofalotof things. Don't get nervous about me, because I'm not going to kill myself for lack of all these things, although a true-born Samurai, loyal to Bushido might do so. For it is dishonor not to be rich at Christmas time; not to feel rich, anyway. But then let me see what I've got! There's Anne! I expect if sold on the block, at public auction, say in Alaska, where women are scarce, she ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... have much to do with the Low Dutch; and the better bred women also French. And I teach my Thekla all these tongues, saving the Flemish; for they speak not Flemish only in Flanders; it should do her not much good. But in all these four tongues have I kinsfolk; for my father was a true-born Fleming, and to him I alway spake Flemish; and my mother was a Spanish woman, and I spake Spanish with her; and my father's brother was wedded unto a dame of Low Dutchland (for whom my daughter is named Thekla, which is a Low Dutch name); and his ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... Old England—blessed travellers, whose exile was over, and who could look forward to spending the rest of their lives in that dear old country which, despite its rain and fog, must ever be the dearest in the world to true-born Britons. ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... the true-born Englishmen, as you may tell by their speech. 'Tis pretty company the master ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... had lived to shame me from my sneer, To lame my pencil and confute my pen— To make me own this hind of princes peer, This rail-splitter a true-born king of men[1294]." ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... Or hollow statues which the best men are, Without Promethean stuffings reach'd from heaven! Sweet poesy's sacred garlands crown your gentry: Which is, of all the faculties on earth, The most abstract and perfect; if she be True-born, and nursed with all the sciences. She can so mould Rome, and her monuments, Within the liquid marble of her lines, That they shall stand fresh and miraculous, Even when they mix with innovating dust; In her sweet streams shall our brave Roman spirits Chase, and swim after death, with their ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... a "ghee-seller" as "defiled." "I was strongly tempted," he writes, "to knock his ghee-pots about his ears, take thirty rupees' worth of satisfaction out of his royal highness, and then go up to court and pay my fine." It will be seen that Mr. Hornaday is a true-born American, and not disposed to stand any nonsense that conflicts with the great law of human equality. But though this trait makes him appear somewhat uncharitable toward prejudices that have survived the Declaration of Independence, it shows itself in its most ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... added John, "that you would think me like the rest of them. Miscreants, all! Not one would shout for you—you, the victor! They don't heed the judgment of Heaven one jot. And that's what they call being warriors of the Cross! If the Prince were a true-born Englishman, he would be ashamed of himself. But never heed, Richard. Why don't you speak to me? Are you angered that I told of the letter? Indeed, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... your life you'll pocket the bart. Oh, this trip's about enough for me! Where's it going to end, and where are we?" He made a wry face and sank in a heap on his chair. "If you've got any influence with Holgate make him come in. I'm sick of this damn sentry-go. If it suits Germans, it don't suit a true-born Englishman." ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... incident which recently appeared in the papers under the head-line "Insulting an Ambassador," our old friend MICKY writes us as follows:—"Be jabers then, ye must know the truth. Me and Count MUNSTER was drivin' together. The Count's every bit a true-born son of Ould Ireland for ever, and descended from the Kings of Munster by both sides, and more betoken wasn't he wearin' an Ulster at the very moment, and isn't he the best of chums with the Dukes of CONNAUGHT and LEINSTER? Any way we were ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... works: "This defence of whiggish loyalty," says Scott, "seems to have been written by the celebrated Daniel De Foe, a conjecture which is strengthened by the frequent reference to his poem of the True-born Englishman."[197] He was not often so careless, but the rapidity and range of his work during these years undoubtedly gave occasion for more than one lapse of accuracy, while at the same time it perhaps increased the effectiveness ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball
... are fewer than of old? Some I have known; they give me assurance of the many, near and far. Hearts of noble strain, intrepid, generous; the clear head, the keen eye; a spirit equal alike to good fortune and to ill. I see the true-born son of England, his vigour and his virtues yet unimpaired. In his blood is the instinct of honour, the scorn of meanness; he cannot suffer his word to be doubted, and his hand will give away all he has rather than profit by a plebeian parsimony. ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... am not, good folks, but a true-born Englishman, and a good hater of all Frenchmen and Spaniards. So let me go forward peaceably. As for the clout I gave Master Peter, here is a groat to mend it. I have but a round dozen, or I ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... though high-minded, Maria Theresa. He was sent to humble the whole race of Austria before those grim assassins, reeking with the blood of the daughter of Maria Theresa, whom they sent half dead, in a dung-cart, to a cruel execution; and this true-born son of apostasy and infidelity, this renegado from the faith and from all honor and all humanity, drove an Austrian coach over the stones which were yet wet with her blood,—with that blood which dropped every step through her tumbrel, all the way she ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and boxing-matches, are said to be the chief amusements of the king and the people. Mr. Crawfurd saw all these, and he tells us that in the last of them the populace formed a ring with as much regularity as if they had been true-born Englishmen, and preserved it with much greater regularity than is usually witnessed here—thanks to the assistance of the constables with their long staves. While these official persons were duly exercising their authority, the same good-natured monarch, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 395, Saturday, October 24, 1829. • Various
... do it, like a true-born Englishman," he said cheerily. "How does that song go? I forget. There, never mind. I won't act like a sham, even if I am where there's so much Dutch courage. Now, look ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... consider well what he was about, before he suffered himself to begin falling desperately in love with this Rose or Rosamond Gray, or any Irishwoman whatsoever; who, having been bred in a mud-walled cabin, could never be expected to turn out at the long run equal to a true-born Englishwoman, bred in ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... opinions to theirs. Therefore, I must request you not to consider me either entirely ignorant of the Grecian literature, nor yet disposed, especially in political questions, to yield it the pre-eminence over our own; but rather to regard me as a true-born Roman, not illiberally instructed by the care of my father, and inflamed with the desire of knowledge, even from my boyhood, but still even more familiar with domestic precepts and practices than the ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... was the son of a London butcher names James Foe. Why Daniel, who prided himself on being a true-born Englishman, Frenchified his name by adding a "De" to it we do not know, and he was over forty before he ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... reverend senators of Thebes, What Deeds ye soon must hear, what sights behold How will ye mourn, if, true-born patriots, Ye reverence still the race of Labdacus! Not Ister nor all Phasis' flood, I ween, Could wash away the blood-stains from this house, The ills it shrouds or soon will bring to light, Ills wrought of malice, not unwittingly. The worst to bear ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles |
