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Nobility   /noʊbˈɪləti/   Listen
Nobility

noun
1.
A privileged class holding hereditary titles.  Synonym: aristocracy.
2.
The quality of elevation of mind and exaltation of character or ideals or conduct.  Synonyms: grandeur, magnanimousness, nobleness.
3.
The state of being of noble birth.  Synonym: noblesse.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Nobility" Quotes from Famous Books



... that was a cloak for many sins, and she could not doubt that he did, because the man hitherto so calm and the master of himself was transformed. His words were spoken with all the fire and heat of a lover, his eyes were alight, and his figure took on a certain dignity and nobility. Lucia Catherwood, looking at him, said to herself in unspoken words: "Here is a great man and he loves me." Her heart was cold, but a ray of tenderness came from ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... admired them. The large bas-relief in the corner of the dining-room represented a group of singing boys, for which Ritter, probably at the suggestion of his customer, a Vanderbilt or an Astor, had used the famous relief of Luca della Robbia as a model. In style, nobility and freshness, his work surpassed anything then ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... part—will go down there presently." She looked at Miss Avery intently, trying to understand the kink in her brain. Here was no maundering old woman. Her wrinkles were shrewd and humorous. She looked capable of scathing wit and also of high but unostentatious nobility. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... enormous guns, none less than one-hundred-and-fifty pounders. Among these we saw a great Armstrong gun, which had been presented to the Southern Confederacy by its manufacturer, Sir William Armstrong, who, like the majority of the English nobility, was a warm admirer of the Jeff. Davis crowd. It was the finest piece of ordnance ever seen in this country. The carriage was rosewood, and the mountings gilt brass. The breech of the gun had ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... lived more than three hundred years on their ancestral estates, which, it is true, were now considerably diminished, and he was connected by ties of blood or marriage with all the nobility in the county of Pesth. Up to the year 1848 the whole village of Kisfalu, with all its peasants, fields, and feudal prerogatives (such as mill, fish, tavern and other privileges) belonged to the Abonyis, and the present lord, Carl von Abonyi, came from ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... temporal Prince as well as the spiritual leader of his people. He instituted a new and select order of the priesthood, the members of which were to be priests and kings, temporal and spiritual. These were to be the nobility, the upholders of his throne. He caused himself to be crowned and anointed king and priest far above all others. To uphold his pretensions to royalty, he deduced his descent by an unbroken chain from Joseph, the son of Jacob, and that of his wife from some other ...
— Something of Men I Have Known - With Some Papers of a General Nature, Political, Historical, and Retrospective • Adlai E. Stevenson

... called—vessels of no great weight of metal, it is true, but manned, armed, officered, and found better perhaps than any other war-ships in the world; entirely at the instigation of the German Navy League, and out of the pockets of the German nobility. The majority of our own wealthy classes preferred sinking their money in German motor-cars and German pleasure resorts; or one must assume so, for it is well known that our Navy League had long since ceased to exert any active influence, ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson

... of Doria on this occasion has certainly never been explained; the two other leaders went on board and remonstrated with their commander-in-chief; they were neither of them men who could be treated as negligible quantities on the field of battle; both belonged to that brilliant Venetian nobility so renowned in commerce and in war. Marco Grimani was in command of the Papal galleys, in itself a mark of the highest esteem and confidence from a potentate second to none in his influence in the civilised world. To Vincenzo Capello, Henry the Seventh of England ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... purer vision, exquisitely harmonious and clairvoyant, remains a sort of test both of our own and of others' subjectivity; becomes, in fact, an objective standard or measure or pattern of those ideas which we discover within us all, and name truth, beauty, nobility. ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... would never stoop to beg for pity—would rather die hungered than accept one crumb of grudged and measured love; in its secret, inscrutable, unyielding loyalty to that promise given to a dead man; in the nobility of its refusal to shine brighter in its faith and truth and chivalry by the revelation of that other man's mean baseness; in its almost paternal solicitude; in its agony of love for her, insensible and ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves

... told that the wives of their nobility were sometimes Americans," said the Altrurian. "The English think that you regard such marriages as a great honor, and that they are very ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells

... turned was the sale of public offices and titles of honor. He looked about the country for wealthy men, and he offered them severally high office on condition of their paying large sums of money into the treasury as a consideration for them. He sold titles of nobility, too, in the same way. If any man who was not rich held a high or important office, he would find some pretext for removing him, and then would offer the office for sale. One of the historians of those times says that ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... we can mold them, the same. While you are to serve Scotland under a cloud, so will I. At the moment Bruce is proclaimed King of Scotland, Wallace shall be declared its bravest friend. We will go together—as brothers, if you will!" continued he. "I am already considered by the French nobility as Thomas de Longueville; you may personate the Red Reaver; Scotland does not yet know that he was slain; and the reputation of his valor and a certain nobleness in his wild warfare having placed him, in the estimation of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... parables in act. A woman came to him bent almost double, and went away straight. The human form is made for erectness. This is one of the marks of nobility in man, in contrast with the downward bending and looking of other animals. Man is the only creature that bears this erect form. It is a part of the image of God upon him. It indicates heavenly aspiration, hunger for God, ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller

... and from the doorway, where I paused in Bonnivet's keeping, I viewed the scene with an interest that for the first time overcame my sense of injustice. The long room hummed with talk; a crowd of churchmen and pages, with a sprinkling of the lesser nobility, many lawyers and some soldiers, filled it from end to end. In one corner were a group of tradesmen bearing plate for the Queen's inspection: in another stood a knot of suitors with petitions; while everywhere ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman

... these best of men also from such woe? They say that thou who art without beginning and without end deliverest those that think of thee. Why doth this saying become untrue. These my sons are ever attached to virtue and nobility and good fame and prowess. They deserve not to suffer affliction. Oh, show them mercy. Alas, when there are such elders amongst our race as Bhishma and Drona and Kripa, all conversant with morality and the science of worldly ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

... went on a silent greeting and thanking of the Commission's chief by thousands and thousands of visiting cards and messages that drifted like snowflakes through the door of the Director's house; engraved cards with warm words of thanks from the nobility and wealthy of Brussels; plainer, printed ones from the middle class folk, and bits of writing paper with pen or pencil-scrawled sentences on them of gratitude and blessing from the "little people." My wife would heap the day's bringing on ...
— Herbert Hoover - The Man and His Work • Vernon Kellogg

... of the Mahometan religion, using the Turkish and Persian languages. They are of fair complexions, and well made, but have, small eyes like the Tartars and Chinese. Their nobility wear rich and gay clothes, fashioned like those of the Persians, and have long beards. Their military dress is very costly, their arms being splendidly gilt and highly polished, and they are singularly expert in the use of the bow. In battle they are brave and well disciplined ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VI - Early English Voyages Of Discovery To America • Robert Kerr

... alter the facts of heredity! not that I think any the worse of him because he is a Coburg. However, the Royal House of Windsor will be peculiarly the British Royal Family and will probably marry amongst the British nobility. To that I have no objection whatever, as ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd

... insistent clamoring of a love that was gradually breaking her spirit. Like a somber shadow remorse followed her, shading blacker. She had been blind to a man's honesty, manliness, uprightness, faith, and striving. She had been dead to love, to nobility that she had herself created. Padre Marcos's grave, wise words returned to haunt her. She fought her bitterness, scorned her intelligence, hated her pride, and, weakening, gave up more and more to a ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey

... to be alive!" he thought. "Still young, a member of the old nobility, a multi-millionaire: what ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... next reign the condition of the poor was much improved; the effect of the land sales in Henry VII.'s reign, when the moneyed classes purchased two-thirds of the estates of the nobility, and spent their amassed wealth in cultivating and improving the neglected lands. This factor—as well as the cessation of the Wars of the Roses—was beginning to work a lasting benefit to the poor, as the street cries of 1557 show, for, according to ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green

... study. In these circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and fortunate.' J. H. Burton's Hume, i. 342. Goldsmith, in his Present State of Polite Learning (chap, vii), makes the following observation on pensions granted in France to authors:—'The French nobility have certainly a most pleasing way of satisfying the vanity of an author without indulging his avarice. A man of literary merit is sure of being caressed by the great, though seldom enriched. His pension from the crown ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill

... the pea-green young man's aristocratic origin. It was such deference as the British flunkey pays only to blue blood; for he has gradations of flunkeydom. He is respectful to wealth; polite to acquired rank; but servile only to hereditary nobility. Indeed, you can make a rough guess at the social status of the person he addresses by observing which one of his twenty-seven nicely graduated manners he ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen

... treatment—by which test the decorative artist stands or falls. Effective it must be; coarse it may be; vulgar it should not be; trivial it can hardly be; mere prettiness is beyond its scope; but it lends itself to dignity of design and nobility of treatment. Of course, it ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day

... in the Palace of Holyrood. Almost the whole official state, as settled at the Union, survived; and all graced the capital, unconscious of the economical scythe which has since mowed it down. All our nobility had not then fled. A few had sense not to feel degraded by being happy at home. The Old Town was not quite deserted. Many of our principal people still dignified its picturesque recesses and historical mansions, and were dignified ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 435 - Volume 17, New Series, May 1, 1852 • Various

... in the flowery land, in our dwelling surrounded by the flowery earth and sky, where the fountains of the flowers send their sweetness abroad; the delicious breath of the dewy flowers is in our homes in Chiapas; there nobility and power make them glorious, and the war-flowers bloom over ...
— Ancient Nahuatl Poetry - Brinton's Library of Aboriginal American Literature Number VII. • Daniel G. Brinton

... and ways, a permanent necessity for the vigorous life of religion. Indeed, such corporate tradition operates strongly even where men's spiritual sense seems most individual, or where, with the retention of some ethical nobility of outlook, they most keenly combat all and every religious institution. So with George Fox's doctrine of the Divine Enlightenment of every soul separately and without mediation of any kind, a doctrine derived by him from that highly ecclesiastical document, the Gospel ...
— Progress and History • Various

... to be destitute of some sort of weak provision against the injustice of their governors. Religious institutions, favourite prejudices, national manners, have in different countries, with unequal degrees of force, checked or mitigated the exercise of supreme power. The privileges of a powerful nobility, of opulent mercantile communities, of great judicial corporations, have in some monarchies approached more near to a control on the sovereign. Means have been devised with more or less wisdom to temper the despotism of an aristocracy over their subjects, ...
— A Discourse on the Study of the Law of Nature and Nations • James Mackintosh

... threatened to set in. The knights of France and Flanders, of England, Lombardy, and Sicily, left their brilliant castles. They marched to the East, carrying along with them the less polished, but equally enthusiastic, nobility of Germany. From the very first the spirit of the Roman towns in Italy and Gaul had exercised a more civilizing influence on the Barbarians who had crossed the Alps and the Rhine, whereas the Germans of Germany proper had been left to ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... in the ordinary circumstances of life selfishness and greed seem to be in the ascendancy, yet in times of distress and peril, then it is that the nobility of soul, the Godlike in man, asserts itself and ...
— Sinking of the Titanic - and Great Sea Disasters • Various

... imagination, or power of expression. In every quality, good or bad, calculated to create "a sensation," he is remarkably deficient. Yet everybody reads him with interest, and experiences for him a feeling of personal affection and esteem. An unobtrusive, yet evident nobility of character, a sound, large, "round-about" common-sense, a warm sympathy with English and human kind, a practical grasp of human life as it is lived by ordinary people, and an unmistakable sincerity and earnestness of purpose animate everything he writes. His "School-Days ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various

... of those monarchs who had any determinate object in view was either to extend their dominions by conquest from their neighbours, or to increase their authority at home by breaking the power of a turbulent nobility. In commercial ages the great and sole object of government, when not engaged in war, was to augment its revenues, for the purpose of supporting the charges which former wars had induced, or which the apprehension of fresh ones rendered necessary. And thus it has been, that of ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey

... sat there leaning her head a little wearily on her hand, there was about the whole Wesen an indefinable nobility that answered ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... ambition to create a social aristocracy, loudly proclaimed as founded on achievement, which, in point of fact, is based on nothing but the possession of money. The achievement that most certainly lands one among the crowned heads of the American nobility is admittedly the achievement of having acquired in some way or other about five million dollars; and it is immaterial whether its possessor got it by hard work, inheritance, marriage or the invention of a ...
— The "Goldfish" • Arthur Train

... his epistle to the nobility of England before his French and English Dictionary, takes notice, "that both in France, and in other nations, the word thou was used in speaking of one, but by succession of time, when the Roman commonwealth grew into an empire, the courtiers began to magnify the emperor, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume I (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... Belgium on my soul. Brave little country that has given new proof of its courage and nobility, and surprised the world with a ruler who is a man, as well as king. It occurs to me more than ever to-day in what a wonderful epoch we have lived. I simply can't talk about it. The suspense is so great. I heard this ...
— A Hilltop on the Marne • Mildred Aldrich

... to England in the service of a family of position, and afterwards was butler and upper servant in several houses of the nobility. His health broke down, and for a long time he was altogether unfit for work. He had saved a considerable sum of money, but the cost of doctors and the necessaries of a sick man soon played havoc with ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... Sampson which was the elder Witch, was taken and brought to Haliciud house before the Kings Maiestie and sundry other of the nobility of Scotland, where she was straitly examined, but all the perswasions which the Kings maiestie vsed to her with the rest of his counsell, might not prouoke or induce her to confesse any thing, but stood stiffely in the deniall of all that ...
— Daemonologie. • King James I

... readily be secretly disposed of without attracting attention in some quarter, it is shrewdly suspected that a jewel sold in 1830, by the Prince of Peace, for 500,000 francs, to one of the wealthiest of the Russian nobility, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various

... of February there was an assembly of the, nobility at Nemours for recovering their privileges. I opposed it to the utmost of my power, for I had experienced more than once that nothing can be more pernicious to a party than to engage without any necessity in such affairs ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... trailing black material she had worn at the Overdene concert, only she had not on the pearls or, indeed, any ornament save a cluster of crimson rambler roses. They nestled in the soft, creamy old lace which covered the bosom of her gown. There was a quiet strength and nobility about her attitude which thrilled the soul of the man who stood watching her. All the adoring love, the passion of worship, which filled his heart, rose to his eyes and shone there. No need to conceal it now. His hour had ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay

... could not fathom him, for he seemed among savages to be held in deep respect, and yet here he was, the ally of the white man against his race. His lean, supple figure, his passionless face, and his high, masterful air had a singular nobility in them. To me he was never the servant, scarcely even the companion, for he seemed like a being from another world, who had a knowledge of things hid from human ken. In woodcraft he was a master beyond all thought of rivalry. Often, when time did not press, he would ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... man who has never seen the extraordinary nobility, strength, and grace that the devoted generations of ship-builders have evolved from some pure nooks of their simple souls, the sight that could be seen five-and-twenty years ago of a large fleet of clippers moored along the ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... clergy, in an age of superstition, might be usefully employed to assert the rights of mankind; but so intimate is the connection between the throne and the altar, that the banner of the church has very seldom been seen on the side of the people. [101] A martial nobility and stubborn commons, possessed of arms, tenacious of property, and collected into constitutional assemblies, form the only balance capable of preserving a free constitution against enterprises of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... made up the simple trinity of a knight's belief and reverence, from the moment when the Church began to make an order of fighting men, with ceremonies and obligations of their own, thereby forever binding together the great conceptions of true Christianity and true nobility. ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford

... constructing porticoes and piazzas around the areas where his gladiatorial shows and the combats with wild beasts were to be exhibited. He provided gladiators in such numbers, and organized and arranged them in such a manner, ostensibly for their training, that his enemies among the nobility pretended to believe that he was intending to use them as an armed force against the government of the city. They accordingly made laws limiting and restricting the number of the gladiators to be employed. Caesar ...
— History of Julius Caesar • Jacob Abbott

... a son full of nobility, of winning grace, of high instincts; he needed but to have the way made clear ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac

... speaks "of her, not to her," deaf in the old selfishness and baseness. He can cry, amid his vivid recognition of another's guilt, that "the little peasant's voice has righted all again"—can be sure that he knows "which is better, vice or virtue, purity or lust, nature or trick," and in the high nobility of such repentance as flings the worst of blame upon the other one, will grant himself lost, it is true, but "proud to feel such torments," to "pay the price of his deed" (ready with phrases now, he also!), as, poor weakling, he stabs himself, leaving his final word to her who had been ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... landscape, spoils the general harmony, and keeps sleepless vigil as though it could not escape from burdensome memories of past unforgiven sins. Inside it is like a barn and extremely unattractive. It is strange to see how readily these elegant lawyers, members of committees, and marshals of nobility, who in their own homes will make a scene over the slightest fume from the stove, or stain on the floor, resign themselves here to whirring ventilation wheels, the disgusting smell of fumigating candles, and the filthy, forever ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... Wessex, had married Eadburga, natural daughter of Offa, King of Mercia, a profligate woman, equally infamous for cruelty and for incontinence. Having great influence over her husband, she often instigated him to destroy such of the nobility as were obnoxious to her; and where this expedient failed, she scrupled not being herself active in traitorous attempts against them. She had mixed a cup of poison for a young nobleman, who had acquired her husband's friendship, and had on that account become the object of her jealousy; ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various

... that day of the prince's gracious gift—he had already had as much excitement as he could bear—but Jacques, of course, had heard of it, and the trusty fellow showed as much pride as if he himself had received a patent of nobility. Roger Braund, too, came to congratulate me, and his pleasure was so genuine that it made mine the greater. Altogether I think that day after the battle of Arnay-le-Duc was the most ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... father was a physician, a scholarly man who directed his son's reading. His mother was a Puritan, one of those quiet, inspiring women who do their work cheerfully, as by God's grace, and who invariably add some sign or patent of nobility to their sons and daughters. There was also in the home a Puritan grandfather who led the family devotions every evening, and whose prayers with their rich phraseology of psalm or prophecy were "poems from beginning to end." ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... unarmed, Namely, especially, Ne, nor, Near-hand, nearly,; near, Needly, needs, on your own compulsion, Nesh, soft, tender, Nigh-hand, nearly, Nill, will not, Nilt, will not, Nis, ne is, is not, Nist, ne wist, knew not, Noblesse, nobleness, Nobley, nobility, splendour, Noised, reported, Nold, would not, Noseling, on his nose, Not for then, nevertheless, Notoyrly, notoriously, ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory

... in April 1851, and has been greatly supported and enlarged by the munificent contributions of the sovereign and some of the nobility. It receives British sailors at 13s. per week for men, and 10s. for boys and apprentices. Concerning it, Sir Edward Parry, governor of Haslar Naval Hospital, says: 'The practice formerly prevalent with the crimps, and other sharks, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various

... in the quarter where the nobility live," said Kajsa, piqued by his criticisms. "When you pass the bridges the streets ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne

... have been printed on the board in the vestibule of the school, which had a list of masters and of classes, no one can now hint at Moossy's baptismal name, nor even suggest his surname. The name of the Count had been sunk in the nobility which we conferred upon him, and which was the tribute of our respectful admiration, but "Moossy" was a term of good-humoured contempt. We were only Scots lads of a provincial town, and knew nothing of the outside ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren

... was trodden upon by the horses, and so died. When this was done, Jehu came to the palace with his friends, and took some refreshment after his journey, both with other things, and by eating a meal. He also bid his servants to take up Jezebel and bury her, because of the nobility of her blood, for she was descended from kings; but those that were appointed to bury her found nothing else remaining but the extreme parts of her body, for all the rest were eaten by dogs. When Jehu heard this, he admired the prophecy ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus

... mother," said Harley, with his most sad and quiet smile, "it is fated that we shall never agree. The first of our race is ever the one we are most proud of; and pray, what ancestors had he? Beauty, virtue, modesty, intellect,—if these are not nobility enough for a man, he is a slave ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... said that one man singly is enough to show that one man searchingly does cover all. There is no doubt that pushing is pressure and relaxing is concentration and nobility, nobility is the same. There is no doubt that something ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... battle-field, back to mine own land with my heart full of yearning love for it and for all within its boundaries. I came even from prison, captured in fair fight, by an untaught heathen, whose men lay slain by my hand, yet with the nobility of a true warrior, he asked neither ransom nor hostage, but handed back my sword, saying, 'Go in peace.' That in a heathen land! but no sooner does my foot rest on this Christian soil than I am met by false smiles and lying tongues, and my welcome to a neighbour's house is ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr

... considered only as a reaction of the simple bourgeoisie against the aristocratic class. Those agitations and convulsions are only the necessary consequence of the secular opposition, existing from the ninth and tenth centuries and those immediately following, between the strictly feudal nobility, which arrogated to itself all prerogatives and rights, and the more numerous class of burghers, set on the lower step of the social ladder. These latter wanted, not so much to get up to the level of their superiors, as to bring them down to their own, and even precipitate ...
— Irish Race in the Past and the Present • Aug. J. Thebaud

... scroll were written in letters of gold and told how on a certain occasion in the history of the past the fairies determined to assist the fortunes of a young man named Chang-lung, who had gained their admiration because of the nobility of character which he had exhibited in his ordinary conduct in life. He belonged to an extremely poor family, and so without some such aid as they could give him, he could never attain to that eminence in the State which would enable him to be of service to ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan

... come! who choke your house's entry With dear, unmeaning lumber, from your easels; Dull heads of the Nobility and Gentry; Full length of fubsey ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... patriots into the shade; his learning was a reproach to the ignorant, his fame was too bright a distinction; his high-bred air and refinement, which he could not help, would hardly commend him to the average citizen in an order of things in which mediocrity is at a premium, and the natural nobility of presence, which rarely comes without family antecedents to account for it, is not always agreeable to the many whose two ideals are the man on horseback and the man in his shirt-sleeves. It may well be questioned whether Washington, with his ...
— Memoir of John Lothrop Motley, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... on me. She has a voice that would make her famous on the stage, but she uses it all the time, as she says, 'in the service of the King!' I think she's narrow on that point, but I know she's sincere. Edith has had a great sorrow, and it makes her nobility stand out, pure and wonderful, like a white gem in a black setting. It seems to be the law that one must rub shoulders with sorrow before he really begins to live. And any afternoon you can find her down in the children's ward, singing ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead

... Rose's wedding, the Craigies' splendid yacht was to put to sea for a four- or five-days' cruise, and that Caroline had asked her to go—the only other young person besides the daughter of the house. And great persons were going, visiting nobility from England, a young American Croesus and his wife, a tenor from the Metropolitan. Annie had been delighted with this invitation; even Leslie, just returned from California and Hawaii, had expressed an almost surprised ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris

... was little demand for those articles of luxury which the Roman communities in the North had been accustomed to obtain from the South. There was little money and scarcely any notion of luxury, for the nobility lived a simple life in their dreary ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson

... passion. Born with a mighty longing for life, she thirsted for the sun—for a free, happy, active existence in the full daylight. She was noted for her large limpid eyes and the charming oval of her gentle face. Extremely ignorant, like all the daughters of the Roman nobility, having learnt the little she knew in a convent of French nuns, she had grown up cloistered in the black Boccanera palace, having no knowledge of the world than by those daily drives to the Corso and the Pincio on which she accompanied her mother. Eventually, when she was five ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... for its own sake by mixing with it the hope of future reward, which at the best is admissible only as a counter-weight against evil passions. When Shaftesbury speaks of future bliss, his highest conception of the heavenly life is uninterrupted friendship, magnanimity, and nobility, as a continual rewarding of ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... artists were painting beautiful pictures of lovely women and men of the nobility in their fine clothes, or of wonderful saints and angels, and pictures showing only the happier side of life. To them Millet's pictures came as a shock, bringing to mind the dirt and grime of the common, everyday tasks of the poorer French peasants. And, more than ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter

... told him that Victory was Queen of England he showed little surprise, telling me that in their recent explorations in ancient Russia they had found many descendants of the old nobility and royalty. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... work has ever stood so high. It is published under the especial patronage of Her Majesty, and His Royal Highness the Prince Consort, and is annually corrected throughout, from the personal communications of the Nobility. It is the only work of its class in which, the type being kept constantly standing, every correction is made in its proper place to the date of publication, an advantage which gives it supremacy over all its competitors. Independently of its full and authentic ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

... members of the Noyes family all seemed to be exceedingly and properly proud of this rhyming couplet; it formed a sort of patent of nobility. They wrote the pious injunction to their descendants in their Psalm-Books and their Bibles, in their wills, their letters; and they, with the greatest unanimity of feeling, had it cut upon their several tombstones. It was ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle

... understanding, conscience itself, is either erased or warped into the sanction of what in a healthful state it would most disapprove,—it is only charlatans who promise effectual cure. But here I assume that there is no hereditary taint; here I am convinced, from my own observation, that the nobility of the organs, all fresh as yet in the vigour of youth, would rather submit to death than to the permanent overthrow of their equilibrium in reason; here, where you tell me the character preserves all its moral attributes of gentleness ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... winter the nobility returned from their estates, the diplomatists from their long summer vacation, and the Imperial Court from Moscow, and the previous social desolation of the capital came speedily to an end. There were dinners and routs in abundance, but the season of balls was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... could explain it. And you can now, and you will, Father?" She was really beseeching him to rise up against her and the accusation against him, rise up in a great storm of indignation; she was praying that he would do that, expecting that he would, so firm were her convictions of his nobility. She drew back a little, to give him room, as it were; her hands fell upon his knee, and she leaned from him the better to see him, her face aglow with her fierce hope, her big belief, while she waited for that storm, that outraged denial, that tremendous vindication. And ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... of research was delivered and mounted in 1829, three years after the termination of the life of its deviser. The Dorpat lens had brought to Fraunhofer a title of nobility and the sole management of the Munich Optical Institute (completely separated since 1814 from the mechanical department). What he had achieved, however, was but a small part of what he meant to achieve. He saw before him the ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... Archbishop William de Corbeuil assisted by thirteen bishops, but one authority gives 1133 as the date. In "The history and antiquities of Rochester"[3] we read: "The city was honoured with a royal visit in the year 1130, when Henry I., the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many of the nobility were present at the consecration of St. Andrew's Church, then just finished: but their mirth was turned into sorrow, by their being mournful spectators of a dreadful conflagration which broke out on the 7th of May, and, without any regard to the majesty of the king, grandeur of the church, or ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Rochester - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • G. H. Palmer

... not in bed came out to look at us; it made us feel noble; but to me, with that feeling of nobility there came something pathetic, an influence of sorrow that caused my song to dissolve in a vague yearning that still had no separate existence of its own. It was as yet one with the night, with my mood and the whole spin of things. The ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... Kyp, called "Rollo" for short, one of the most persistent and luxurious of globe-trotters, who generally travelled in his own magnificent steam-yacht Royal Flush, on board of which he had entertained princes and the cream of foreign nobility without number. Everybody knew Van Kyp, and everybody liked him; he was such a genial soul, ever ready to bother himself over some other fellow's trouble, but never intimating that he had any of his own; reckless, generous, happy-go-lucky, always getting into scrapes ...
— "Forward, March" - A Tale of the Spanish-American War • Kirk Munroe

... he had been broken in doing battle against ancient rights and amenities. Besides, the nobility were afraid of their own perquisites if one of so ancient a charter as that of the ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... for the eventful ceremony had arrived. Cards of invitation having been issued to the most distinguished nobility throughout the kingdom, a vast assemblage of expectant guests filled the seats and aisles of the ancient gothic cathedral in which the marriage was about to be solemnized. Happy smiles beamed upon all faces as they glanced around the handsome ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... suffering death as a brute might; it is very realistic, and when we are near the marble itself we see the coarseness of the skin, the hardened soles of the feet, the coarse hand, and we are sure the artist must have made a true representation of this wild, savage man, who yet had the nobility of nature which would not live to ...
— A History of Art for Beginners and Students - Painting, Sculpture, Architecture • Clara Erskine Clement

... Edward the Fourth, which his mother had by Richard Duke of York, and that King was then eighteen years of age: and for the small distance betwixt her Children, see Austin Vincent in his book of Nobility, page 622, where he writes of them all. It may further be observed, that Lord Clifford, who was then himself only twenty-five years of age, had been a leading Man and Commander, two or three years together in the ...
— Poems In Two Volumes, Vol. 2 • William Wordsworth

... and she readily acquiesced in the prospect of meeting Captain and Mrs. Berwick. She was even flattered by it. The right chord of genuine nobility was in her, though she was reported to be satirical. It was true that she was slightly disposed to make abrupt, ironical speeches, the practice being one of her few small privileges. But she felt that Miss Sandys' confidence was honourable alike to giver and receiver, and that the terms on which ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler

... such scenes with danger fraught and pain Serving the fiery spirit more to flame, Who woos bright honour, he shall ever win A true nobility, a deathless fame: Not they who love to lean, unjustly vain, Upon the ancestral trunk's departed claim; Nor they reclining on the gilded beds Where Moscow's zebeline downy ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... deprive their Allies, that is to say the Goths, of the customary gifts. The contempt of the Goths for the Romans soon increased, and for fear their valor would be destroyed by long peace, they appointed Alaric king over them. He was of a famous stock, and his nobility was second only to that of the Amali, for he came from the family of the Balthi, who because of their daring valor had long ago received among their race the name Baltha, 147 that is, The Bold. Now when this Alaric was made king, he took counsel with his men and persuaded them to seek a kingdom ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes

... because he makes love a commodity. It is an exchange of gifts, of useful loans; it is good neighborhood; it watches with the sick; it holds the pall at the funeral; and quite loses sight of the delicacies and nobility of the relation. But though we cannot find the god under this disguise of a sutler, yet, on the other hand, we cannot forgive the poet if he spins his thread too fine, and does not substantiate his romance by the municipal virtues of justice, punctuality, ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the duke, on the recovery of a large portion of his estates, enjoying the elegant retreat at Twickenham, feted by the nobility of England, and caressed ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... the genuineness of brotherly or sisterly love. Perhaps familiarity has deadened its keenness. Like the appreciation of the sunlight which rushes with thrilling force on the victim of blindness, separation or misfortune may rouse the dormant affection and prove its nobility and its power; but in our experience manifest fraternal charity is one of those things even the wise man knew to be rare under the sun. Where we have been privileged to look in behind the veil of the family ...
— Alvira: the Heroine of Vesuvius • A. J. O'Reilly

... there is, I believe, some difference even in the quality of lords. England might thank us for ridding her of some among them. Neither are they to be found like beggars, under every hedge. No, no, the men we seek must have something better than their nobility to recommend them to our favor. But let us examine more closely into this plan and map of Miss Plowden; something may occur that shall yet bring the place within our circuit, like a contingent duty of ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper

... give rein to their desire for holiness. It was an innocent habit, and doubtless the robbers often "got round him," as the phrase goes. Quite as often, however, they discovered that he had "got round" them, and discovered the other side, the side of secret nobility. ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton

... points we, with all men, are in a position to form a judgment for ourselves. We, however, readily believe the great traveller when he tells us that nothing he ever heard of the lion led him to ascribe to it a noble character, and that it possesses none of the nobility of the Newfoundland or St. Bernard Dogs. The courage of the lion, although not greater than that of most large and powerful animals, is, without doubt, quite sufficient! But he fortunately possesses a wholesome dread of man, else would he certainly long ere now have become king of Africa as well ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne

... filled, and on the influence of such sculpture to be seen in the work of Flaxman or Thorwaldsen. It had, indeed, learnt from the Elgin marbles that the Greek sculptors in the fifth century possessed a nobility in their conception of the human form, a mastery in the treatment of the nude and of drapery, and a skill in marble technique of which only a faint reflection can be traced in the later Graeco-Roman tradition; but the great statues in which ...
— Religion and Art in Ancient Greece • Ernest Arthur Gardner

... of Elizabeth's reign, appear to have been fully disposed to profit by the example and injunctions of her father. Italian masters were invited over; the art of managing horses became an universal accomplishment, among the nobility and gentry of England; but most of the professors, both of equitation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various

... than he hath been of late, though incommoded by indigestion from his too great appetite. Madame Maintenon continues well. They have performed a play of Mons. Racine at St. Cyr. The Duke of Shrewsbury and Mr. Prior, our envoy, and all the English nobility here were present at it. (The Viscount Castlewood's passports) were refused to him, 'twas said; his lordship being sued by a goldsmith for Vaisselle plate, and a pearl necklace supplied to Mademoiselle Meruel of the French ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... need of the Church in this respect was felt and lamented by none sooner and more deeply than Luther. Already in his tract To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, 1520, he complained that Christian instruction of the young was being neglected. He writes: "Above all, the chief and most common lesson in the higher and lower schools ought to be the Holy Scriptures and for the young boys, the Gospel. Would to God every city had also a ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente

... ruined for life because a woman cannot love him. Human beings hang not on one another in that blind way. We have each an individual soul; on another soul may rest all its hopes and joys, but on God only rests its worth, its duties, and its nobility. We may live to do His work, and rejoice therein, long after we have forgotten the very ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)

... and set over the Duma as an upper chamber, or Senate, having equal rights with the Duma. Half of the members of the Imperial Council were to be appointed by the Czar and the other half elected from universities, zemstvos, bourses, and by the clergy and the nobility. In other words, over the Duma was to be set a body which could always be so manipulated as to insure the defeat of any measure displeasing to the old regime. And the Czar reserved to himself the power to summon or dissolve the Duma at will, as well as the power ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... the wise too softly acquiesce in this injury done to heartiness shamed by the effrontery of cold calm fools, and the shallow dignity of an empty presence. Turn the tables on them, ye truer gentry, truer nobility, truer royalty of the heart and of the mind; speak freely, love warmly, laugh cheerfully, explain frankly, exhort zealously, admire liberally, advise earnestly—be not ashamed to show you have a heart: and if some cold-blooded simpleton greet your ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... into a nut, is Josiah Bounderby. While Nickits (as a man came into my office, and told me yesterday), Nickits, who used to act in Latin, in the Westminster School plays, with the chief- justices and nobility of this country applauding him till they were black in the face, is drivelling at this minute - drivelling, sir! - in a fifth floor, up a narrow dark back street ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*

... manufacturer—and, moreover, not of an ordinary boot and shoe manufacturer, but of a Court boot and shoe manufacturer by Royal and Imperial appointment, who did not work for just any one, but only for the Archdukes and for the high Bohemian nobility. And she, Albina, had always to write down the figures when her father was taking measures, and so it had come about that a Count Colloredo had fallen in love with her. He had wished to educate and marry her; but she had at last refused because the noble relations ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein

... ARNOLD'S mansion is the very next to TYBURN,—a well chosen habitation for such an abandoned traitor: A step or two conveys him to that fatal spot, where the most guilty of all the miserable beings who have ever suffered, was perfectly innocent compared with him.—He lives despised by the nobility and gentry, and execrated by the people at large—countenanced by none excepting their Britannic and Satanic Majesties, and such of their adherents, respectively, who are looking for promotion under ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks

... was charming. It was not quite perfect, however. It was too manifestly and studiously arranged, and it had the finnicking exactness of the favourite gallery of some connoisseur. For its nobility of form, its deft and wise softness of colouring, its half-smothered Italian joyousness of design in ceiling and cornice, the arrangement of choice and exquisite furniture was too careful, too much like the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... meaning of this last kiss, and at the honeyed sound of her whispering his strength came back for a moment, and he strove to rise. The level sunlight through the open window smote full upon his face, which was very glad. Melite was conscious of her nobility in causing him such delight ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell

... and know her carnally.[FN278] She conceived by him and bare a handsome boy; and, fearing Al-Rashid, she dispatched the new-born child by one of her confidants to Meccah the Magnified (May Allah Almighty greaten it in honor and increase it in venerance and nobility and magnification!). the affair abode concealed till there befel a brabble between Abbasah and one of her hand-maidens whereupon the slave-girl discovered the affair of the child to Al-Rashid and acquainted him with its abiding-place. So, when the Caliph ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... which made him the worthy exponent of Jeanne d'Albret and the valorous general of the Reformers. He travelled at the rear of the conspirators as far as Vendome, intending to support them in case of their success. When the first uprising ended by a brief skirmish, in which the flower of the nobility beguiled by Calvin perished, the prince arrived, with fifty noblemen, at the chateau of Amboise on the very day after that fight, which the politic Guises termed "the Tumult of Amboise." As soon as the duke and cardinal ...
— Catherine de' Medici • Honore de Balzac

... a great set-off to your "newness," that the nobles who are your competitors are of a such a kind that no one can venture to say that their nobility ought to stand them in greater stead than your high character. For instance, who could think of P. Galba and L. Cassius, though by birth of the highest rank, as candidates for the consulship? You see, therefore, that there are men of the noblest families, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... King Edward VII., H.R.H. the Duke of Connaught, the Royal Families of France and Belgium, the Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... to visit the monastery thus rebuilt under his direction. The Archbishops, Dunstan and Oswald, with a large company of the nobility and clergy attended at the same time. The King is said to have inspected some old deeds which had been saved from the general destruction a century before, and to have wept for joy at reading the privileges belonging to the place. He therefore ...
— The Cathedral Church of Peterborough - A Description Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • W.D. Sweeting

... end were darted against this nobility of yesterday; and a thousand expressions of the new ladies were quoted, which presumed little acquaintance with good manners. And certainly there is nothing so difficult to learn, as the kind of ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein

... with so fierce a blaze at times, smouldered for long years, until in the beginning of the fourteenth century the flames burst forth anew. At that time a company of poets, and they were of bourgeois origin and not of the nobility, determined to take vigorous measures to restore the art of the troubadour to its former high position, and to this end they founded the College du Gay Scavoir, which was to support and maintain annually in Toulouse a poetic tournament called Les Jeux Floraux, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... the great whys of life.... Because one believes.... But why believe it? Left to himself Benham would have felt the mere asking of this question was a thing ignoble, not to be tolerated. It was, as it were, treason to nobility. But Prothero put it one afternoon in a way that permitted no high dismissal of their doubts. "You can't build your honour on fudge, Benham. Like committing sacrilege—in order to buy a cloth for ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells

... minority of his nephew the Duke never entered his presence in other than full court costume. On one occasion the youthful king, playing with a younger brother, handed him a palm leaf saying, "This shall be your patent of nobility. I make you duke of such and such a place." The regent remonstrated, whereupon the King excused himself by saying, "I was only in sport." The Duke replied, "A king has no right to indulge in such sports," ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... equipages, most of the nobility having left the city, and very few gentlemen on horseback save a few Cossacks or ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood

... conditions again, I would decide in exactly the same manner. Our misfortune lay in the fact that our experience with other armies had led us to believe that officers and gentlemen speak the truth, that men with titles of nobility, and with the higher titles of General and Major-General, do not lie. In ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis

... an excuse to wander about the gardens in the moonlight, saw the golden locks shining through the open windows, and Lord Ivinghoe standing over them, went home, and cried herself to sleep over the fickleness of the nobility, when she had better have cried over her own unjustified romance, excited by a few kindly speeches and a ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge

... manuscript, and make any few alterations which the taste of the public might require. It might be that the sonorous, and, if I may so express myself, magniloquent phraseology in which I was accustomed to invite the attention of the nobility and gentry to our last importations was not suited for the purposes of light literature, such as this. "In fiction, Mr. Robinson, your own unaided talents would doubtless make you great," said to me the editor of this Magazine; "but if I may be allowed an ...
— The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson - By One of the Firm • Anthony Trollope

... Alaric—of recouping, even slightly, the family fortunes. The thought flashed through Mrs. Chichester's mind of how little Margaret guessed what an honour was about to be conferred upon her through the nobility of her son in sacrificing himself on the altar of duty. The family were indeed repaying good for evil—extending the olive branch—in tendering their idol as a peace-offering at the feet of the ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... seemed better fitted to rule a world than to govern a single kingdom. I speak not of his minority, for then I was not with him; but when he was eleven years he was, by the advice of some of the nobility and others of his kingdom, embroiled in a war with his father, Charles VII, which lasted not long, and was called the Praguerie. When he was arrived at man's estate he was married, much against his inclination, to the King of Scotland's daughter; and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various

... reception, and imbibed the strongest impression of duty and gratitude to that great and amiable prince, which I am persuaded he will preserve to the latest moment of his life. During his stay among us he was caressed by many of the principal nobility, and did nothing to forfeit the esteem of any one of them; but his principal patrons were the Earl of Sandwich, Mr Banks, and Dr Solander; the former probably thought it a duty of his office to protect and countenance an inhabitant of that hospitable country, where the wants and distresses ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook

... forest of Senart; Belle Isle again, with the death of Porthos; and last, but not least, the taming of d'Artagnan the untamable, under the lash of the young King. What other novel has such epic variety and nobility of incident? often, if you will, impossible; often of the order of an Arabian story; and yet all based in human nature. For if you come to that, what novel has more human nature? not studied with the microscope, but seen largely, in plain daylight, with the natural eye? What novel has more ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... you, MARIA. And sorry I was to see that being next to a member of the nobility overawed you to that extent you could hardly open your mouth. So unlike ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, February 25, 1893 • Various

... psychology involves all our sensibilities, pleasures, affections, aspirations, capacities, it is thought on that ground to have a special nobility and greatness, and a special power of evoking in the student the feelings themselves. The mathematician, dealing with conic sections, spirals, and differential equations, is in danger of being ultimately resolved into a function ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain

... world did I say?— if the best men in the world could only see, as God sees it, that service is in itself the noblest exercise of human powers, if they could see that God is the hardest worker of all, and that his nobility are those who do the most service, surely it would alter the whole aspect of the church. Menial offices, for instance, would soon cease to be talked of with that contempt which shows that there is no true recognition of the ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald

... the text cp. the character of Ordonio in Coleridge's 'Remorse,' the concentrated force of whose dying words is terrible, while indicative of native nobility:— ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott

... the same reason it was also commanded that the choice of those who were to be destined to the service of God was not to be made in a broadcast manner from any family, but according to their descent from one particular stock, thus giving them distinction and nobility. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... almost universal ignorance of the science of heraldry, are beginning to bring the title of prince into fashion. There are no real princes but those possessed of principalities, to whom belongs the title of highness. The disdain shown by the French nobility for the title of prince, and the reasons which caused Louis XIV. to give supremacy to the title of duke, have prevented Frenchmen from claiming the appellation of "highness" for the few princes who exist in France, those of Napoleon ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac

... shall be passed." "No title of nobility granted." So says the Constitution; and yet you have passed bills of attainder in every State of the Union making sex a disqualification for the franchise. You have granted titles of nobility to every male voter, making all men rulers, governors, ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various

... the amateur detective, who was at Glengyle Castle with another more formal officer investigating the life and death of the late Earl of Glengyle. That mysterious person was the last representative of a race whose valour, insanity, and violent cunning had made them terrible even among the sinister nobility of their nation in the sixteenth century. None were deeper in that labyrinthine ambition, in chamber within chamber of that palace of lies that was built up around Mary Queen ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... brother, then right young, to stay In our king's court, came out of Italy: And there of knightly arms made such assay, Was none in Britain more approved than he; Prized by the king, who (no ignoble pay), Rewarding him like his nobility, Bestowed upon the youth, with liberal hand, Burghs, baronies, and ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... give his pupils is faith in the victorious might, and the stability of the eternal moral laws. His lessons were for the Life, for his life in itself was a lesson. Many a victory over the troubles of life, over temptations of every kind, ay, many an elevation to nobility of thought, and to purity of action, had its origin in that lecture-hall, at the feet ...
— Christian Gellert's Last Christmas - From "German Tales" Published by the American Publishers' Corporation • Berthold Auerbach

... the five hundred names I can almost make out my own classmates of twenty years ago. Abbots, Bigelows, Lawrences, Masons, Russells,—they come with every Commencement-season. Some families have had for every generation in a hundred and fifty years a representative in her halls. There is a patent of nobility in this, such peerage as a republic can rightly confer, the coronet which marks the union of birth and worth. We cannot, we, the Alumni, suffer these our brothers to sleep unhonored. Those who shall come after us, who shall fill our places in dear Old Harvard, shall occupy our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... commemorate his victorious and prosperous reign, extending from Judea to Ethiopia, and embracing a hundred and twenty-seven provinces, made a magnificent feast, which continued six months. This was to display his power and wealth, before the nobility of his realm, and representatives from the conquered provinces of his spreading empire. At the expiration of this brilliant entertainment, he gave the common people, without distinction, a feast of seven days in the court of his palace. The rich canopy and gorgeous curtains, with ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley

... strikingly impressive angle. He looked at women from four points of view, and he had, as it were, a sliding scale of manners on which he might mark delicately his perception of their position. There was firstly the Countess, or Titled Nobility. Here his manner was slightly deferential, and at the same time a little familiar—proof of ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole

... said, "we have no Court here, no great wealth, but few nobility, and, therefore, every one and everything is centred round our University. It comprises four ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... he got off his fighting harness, so to speak, before he found himself the object of marked attention by the nobility and members of the court. Invitations from all sources were showered upon him, and proud and influential houses, with rich heiresses to represent them, were among those who sought to interest the attention if not the heart of ...
— The Heart's Secret - The Fortunes of a Soldier, A Story of Love and the Low Latitudes • Maturin Murray

... heaven. Malchion especially drew him out from his hiding-place and refuted him. He was a man learned also in other matters, and principal of the sophist school of Grecian learning in Antioch; yet on account of the superior nobility of his faith in Christ he had been made a presbyter of that parish [i.e., diocese]. This man, having conducted a discussion with him, which was taken down by stenographers, and which we know is still extant, was alone able to detect the man ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... "but men's minds are much disturbed about it. Our national character suffers on all hands. Men remember the fatal case of Lord Sanquhar, hanged for the murder of a fencing-master; and exclaim, they will not have their wives whored, and their property stolen, by the nobility ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... Washington or Franklin or Napoleon or Christ calls up. On their face they are but names of men, or possibly sometimes of places; but we cannot utter the name of Lincoln without thinking of the whole terrible struggle of our Civil War; the name of Washington, without thinking of nobility, patriotism, and self-sacrifice in a pure and great man; Napoleon, without thinking of ambition and blood; of Christ, without lifting our eyes to the sky in an attitude of worship and thanksgiving to God. So common words carry with them a world of ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody

... resistance of the English, seized the land and all the political power of this country, and filled all kinds of offices— both spiritual and temporal— with their Norman brethren. Norman-French became the language of the Court and the nobility, the language of Parliament and the law courts, of the universities and the schools, of the Church and of literature. The English people held fast to their own tongue; but they picked up many French words in the markets and other places "where men most do congregate." But French, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn

... delightful and auspicious reunion. It is good that we are here. This large assemblage of Ohio's sons, coming from far and near, attests how strong and vital are the ties that bind us to our mother state. We have every reason to love and be proud of her. If American citizenship be a patent of nobility, it adds to the honor to have been born of that state which, almost in the forenoon of the first century of her existence, has shed such luster on the republic; which has given to it so long a roll of President, chief justices, judges of the Supreme Court and statesmen ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman

... not more grown with it, than my religion out of my soul and with it. With me religion was not carpentry, something built up of dry wood, from without; but it was growth,—growth of a germ in my soul." Thus we see that Parker was not singular in his sources of goodness and nobility: here also have the strong and worthy men of all time received their inspiration. The mother's sphere is never confined to the household, but expands for joy or bitterness through the world at large. A youth of farm-work, snatches of study, and school-teaching, seem to be the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... gathered himself together sufficiently to look round him, was surprised to see so few traces of the "casual-ward" in his new house. True, most of the fellows might be poor—which, of course, was highly reprehensible; and some of them might not be connected with the nobility, which showed a great lack of proper feeling on their part. But as a rule they held up their heads and seemed to think very well of themselves and one another; while their dress, if it was not in every case as fashionable as that of the temporary ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed

... sat beside it now, in a loose white wrapper, her head resting on her hand, an open book before her. The light fell full upon her profile, emphasising its nobility of outline—the short straight nose, the exquisite moulding of mouth and chin; while all about her shoulders fell the burnished mantle ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver

... of frequent mention among the nobility of Scotland. About the year 1735 John Alexander married Margaret Gleason, a "bonnie lassie" of Glasgow, and shortly afterward emigrated to the town of Armagh, in Ireland. About 1740, wishing to improve more rapidly his worldly ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... vine-like. He was constantly reaching out tendrils of craving for love, for appreciation, for understanding. More—for advice, for guidance. Such tendrils seeking a foot-hold, make a strong appeal to every womanly woman. She sees in them a call to her nobility of soul, to the mother that is a part of her spiritual nature—a call that gives her pleasant good-angel sensations, that soften her heart and flatter her self-esteem. To the Widow Clemm, with her self-reliance and her highly developed ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... Aghadez. The relations of the lesser Sheikhs of Aheer with the paramount sultan are of this kind. When a sultan dies, or is displaced, they assemble like the College of Cardinals, or rather like the old Polish nobility, to elect a new one. It is the law that this Sultan of Aghadez must be a stranger. When once chosen he is invested with something like absolute authority throughout all Aheer, and he alone possesses the ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson

... of Grodno were permitted to engage in all pursuits and occupations, and exempted from paying taxes on synagogues and cemeteries. They possessed full jurisdiction in their own affairs. Some were raised to the nobility, notably the Josephovich brothers, Abraham and Michael. Under King Alexander Jagellon, Abraham was assessor of Kovno, alderman of Smolensk, and prefect of Minsk; he was called "sir" (jastrzhembets), was presented with the estates of Voidung, Grinkov, and Troki (1509), ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin

... chiefs were in presence, all yielded in this particular to one, a young man of great height, magnificent figure, and a singularly bold and open countenance. He was painted much less than the others, and the natural nobility of his features showed. Unconsciously the rest had gathered about him until he was the center of the group, and the eyes of every man, Red Eagle, Yellow Panther, Captain Pipe, and all, were upon him. It was the spontaneous tribute to valor ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler

... and wooden leg and vastly strong, would shoulder my box, make way through the gang-plank idlers and porters with great words, put me grandly in the lead, come gasping at a respectful distance behind, modelling his behavior (as he thought) after that of some flunky of nobility he had once clapped eyes on; and as we thus proceeded up the hill—a dandy in tartan kilt and velvet and a gray ape in slops—he would have a quick word of wrath for any passenger that might chance to jostle me. 'Twas a conspicuous progress, craftily ...
— The Cruise of the Shining Light • Norman Duncan

... God save the people, Their lives may not be chronicled in the pages which tell of those who lived to make others serve them, but they are shining names upon God's Book of Life, and in the day of the coronation of the nobility which God sees and records, their names will stand out like radiant stars in the heavens. One of such was JAMES POWELL, whose life was a grand sacrifice of undeviating love for those whose necessities made him feel that he was debtor ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 2, February 1888 • Various

... Albinus and Bessia, whether, if they had their choice, they would desire sons of their character, or of mine: what would they answer, but that they should wish the worthiest to be their sons. If the Patricians have reason to despise me, let them likewise despise their ancestors, whose nobility was the fruit of their virtue. Do they envy the honours bestowed upon me? let them envy, likewise, my labours, my abstinence, and the dangers I have undergone for my country, by which I have acquired them. But ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore

... rigour; and the officers, instead of being indulged, as is usual in such cases, with residing in a town on their parole, or word of honour not to escape, were separately confined under a military guard, in the old chateaux, or country seats of the ancient nobility, who had been expelled during the Revolution. This harsh treatment induced many of them to attempt their escape, which, of course, they would not have done if they had promised not to do so, for a promise voluntarily ...
— The Eskdale Herd-boy • Mrs Blackford

... Signor James Currie's World-Renowned Circus and Grand Unrivalled Troupe of Equestrian Performers, whose feats of equitation and horsemanship have given unfeigned delight to all the courts of Europe, her Majesty the Queen, and the nobility and gentry of this and other countries. Among the principal attractions of this unrivalled troupe are Mr. Vernon Twomley, with his famous trained steed Bucephalus; Madame Orley, with her horse Chimborazo, who lacks only the gift of speech to take a first class at the University of Oxford; M. Aristide, ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge

... member of an African dancing team that performed at the Winter Garden in Berlin. His German almost had a Potsdam flavour. He told me that he had danced before the former Kaiser and had met many members of the Teutonic nobility. Yet the thing that stood out most vividly in his memory was the taste of German beer. ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson

... throbbing thought of better days to come which stirred the sluggish life of the expiring century, to assume, as we often do, that that cry of "liberty, equality, and fraternity," was merely the cry of the French, driven to desperation by the gulf between the nobility and the people. In truth, almost the whole Western world was eagerly looking on at the unfolding of a great drama, and the infection of it penetrated almost into every corner of England. No glimpses even of our local life at this period would be satisfactory which did not ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... enclosure, and on the right side, in the place of honor, were two glazed chambers for the two Queens. A deep foss served to keep off the crowd. The entrances were guarded by twelve French and twelve English archers; and at the foot of the lists, under a triumphal arch, stood the perron, or tree of nobility, from which the shields of the two Kings were suspended on a higher line than those of the other challengers and answerers. The perron for Henry VIII was formed of a hawthorn; and for Francis I a raspberry (framboisier), in supposed allusion to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... it was on an evening in September that she first got to know him. There had not been such a grand gathering on the Esplanade all the season. His Majesty King George the Third was present, with all the princesses and royal dukes, while upwards of three hundred of the general nobility and other persons of distinction were also in the town at the time. Carriages and other conveyances were arriving every minute from London and elsewhere; and when among the rest a shabby stage-coach came in by a by-route along the coast from ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... stayed on Gram; so had Rolve Hemmerding. The rest of the gentlemen-adventurers, all with shiny new titles of nobility, had returned. From them, as the two ships were getting into orbit, he learned what had happened on Gram since the Nemesis ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper

... we were not the best of friends in consequence, but I thought we loved each other too well for that defect in my character to make any difference. The wedding-day was at last fixed. I had presented her with funds to buy her trousseau, as they were not at all well off, when a young sprig of English nobility visited the Colonies, and became acquainted with them. The mother played her cards well, for that cursed snob married my girl under my very nose, and used the trousseau I had provided. She sent me a letter, in which she stated she had never loved me as I deserved ...
— Australia Revenged • Boomerang

... Dupin senior. M. de Salvandy, seeing an empty chair to the right of the King, seated himself upon it. All five wore the red sash, including M. Dupin. These four men about the King of the Belgians represented the old military nobility, the parliamentary aristocracy, the pettifogging bourgeoisie, and moonshine literature; that is to say, a little of what France possesses that is illustrious, and a little of what she possesses ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo

... in a papyrus now at St Petersburg, describes a mysterious island whereon there dwelt a monster most lovable and most forlorn: a creature so tenderly drawn, indeed, that the reader will not fail to enthrone him in the little company of the nobility of the kingdom of the fairy tale. Translations of the story by two or three savants have appeared; but the present version, which I give in its literal form, has been prepared especially for this volume by Mr Alan Gardiner; and, coming from him, it may be said to be the last word of the science ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall

... Swift with much less power would have better appreciated the weaknesses of humanity and made allowances for them. He would never have held them up to ridicule and contempt, but would rather have laid stress on those instincts of honour and nobility which the most ignorant and least reasoning ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift

... than there is of Jonson in his comedy; that is, just none at all. The heroic temper, which was at once the essence of Corneille's plays and true to the very soul of the man, was mere affectation and mise-en-scene with Dryden. The heroes of Corneille reflect that nobility of spirit which never entirely forsook France till the days of the Regency; those of Dryden give utterance to nothing better than the ...
— English literary criticism • Various

... development of the qualities of patience, attention, reverence, and of that vigour of soul which is not called forth, but rather impaired, by the coarser enjoyments of the senses and of vanity. So far, therefore, we have seen that the capacity for aesthetic pleasure is allied to a certain nobility in the individual. I think I can show that the preference for aesthetic pleasure tends also to a happier relation between the individual ...
— Laurus Nobilis - Chapters on Art and Life • Vernon Lee



Words linked to "Nobility" :   idealism, aristocracy, knighthood, William and Mary, elite group, honourableness, elite, patrician, peerage, samurai, purple, noblesse, Ferdinand and Isabella, aristocrat, sublimity, blue blood, status, noble, ignoble, baronetage, noble-mindedness, honorableness, baronage, position, high-mindedness



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