"Humiliating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the luxurious tastes which kept Bacon constantly in debt, made him susceptible to corruption. Accordingly he accepted bribes; and, when exposed, his degradation from the highest office under the crown was most complete and humiliating. He was summoned before the bar of Parliament; and, finding the evidence against him complete, he admitted his guilt and pleaded for clemency. These are the words of his confession, "Upon advised consideration of the charges, descending into my own conscience and calling ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... take him on board his own steamer with which he was going to cruise in the Taiho Lake. Lar Wang, however, was quite confident, and said that all was well. This confidence was doubly unfortunate, for Gordon had excused himself from the Futai's banquet on the ground that his presence might seem humiliating to the Taeping leaders, whereas it was the only thing that could have averted their fate. As Gordon was leaving the city the Wangs passed him, laughing and talking, and riding apparently unarmed to the Futai's quarters. The next time Gordon saw them was when he beheld ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... Kanus spoke of politics, but his face changed when military matters came up. The marshal lived for only one purpose: to avenge his army's humiliating defeat in the war against the Acquatainians, thirty Terran years ago. What he didn't realize, Odal thought, smiling to himself, was that as soon as he had reorganized the army and re-equipped it, Kanus planned to retire him and place ...
— The Dueling Machine • Benjamin William Bova
... had entertained a humiliating opinion of the sex that makes the world move round; he was beginning to doubt, and he would retract ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... as if quite overcome by her aunt's change of manner. "It means just what it seems to mean: I am—not married," she replied faintly. "Excuse me—for humiliating you, aunt, by this mishap: I am sorry for it. But I cannot ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... that is a security for your conduct. Our most humiliating errors proceed usually from inattention, and from that mental dissipation which we call heedlessness. You estimate your situation with great truth. Many are surprised that I could repose in you so great a trust ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... at the outset the bubble with which you were trying to dazzle me. Let me assure you that we thoroughly understand France's attitude in this matter. She is on our side simply because she sees an opportunity of humiliating, ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... pure nightmare description and of the usual sealed-pattern. I am worried by the sense of not being able to pack in time to catch my train, or else I am compelled to go back to Oxford and try to pass an examination under impossible and humiliating conditions. Indeed, I don't think I can ever remember a dream, except this one about my son, which was of a non- egotistical kind, that is, in which somebody else speaks, and of which I am not the centre. In a word, it seems to me that, though ...
— The Adventure of Living • John St. Loe Strachey
... those qualities in the professional nurse. According to my experience, she is a disagreeable person who finds in private nursing exquisite opportunities for asserting her superiority over ordinary and prostrate mankind. I know of no more humiliating position for a man than to be in bed having his feverish brow soothed by a sprucely-dressed strange woman, bristling with starch and spotlessness. He would give half his income for his clothes, and probably the other half if she would leave him alone, and go ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the gallant stand ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... weeping, how you had been dragged from the temple of Vesta to the Valerian bank.[349] To think of it, my dear, my love! You from whom everybody used to look for help![350] That you, my Terentia, should now be thus harassed, thus prostrate in tears and humiliating distress! And that this should be brought about by my fault, who have preserved the rest of the citizens only to perish myself! As to what you say about our town house, or rather its site, I shall not consider myself fully restored, until it has also been restored ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... and the circumstances, we are reminded of the collapse of the military systems of Austria and Prussia under the onset of the ragged Jacobins of France, shivering and shoeless, but full of demonic energy, when we read of the humiliating discomfiture of this stately Ostrogothic monarchy—doubtless possessing an ordered hierarchy of nobles, free warriors, and slaves—by the squalid, hard-faring and, so to say, democratic ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... the prophet, spokesman, and champion of the Order whose bitter johnny-cake he has eaten. You must n't be surprised to find him reticent, not to say mendacious, respecting details which he may regard as humiliating. A sort of Irish pride will probably lead him to represent that he had abundant, though unavailable, resources during the period of his perdition. For one or the other of these reasons—orthographical inability, or Irish pride—the half is never told; therefore, as a rule, the reading ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... grows out of a Pharisaical notion of our own righteousness, and it is an invariable mark of a Pharisee to oppose the humiliating doctrine of equal guilt and equal grace. No man ever hated Christ who felt the weight of his own sins and the need of a Saviour. No set of men ever fomented persecutions but such as thought themselves the more particular favourites of ...
— A Series of Letters In Defence of Divine Revelation • Hosea Ballou
... thick mist of empty, senseless longing. She made no fire, cooked no dinner, drank no tea, and only late in the evening ate a piece of bread. When she went to bed it occurred to her that her life had never yet been so humiliating, so lonely and void. During the last years she had become accustomed to live constantly in the expectation of something momentous, something good. Young people were circling around her, noisy, vigorous, full of life. Her son's thoughtful and earnest face was always before ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... tyranny of the Muscovite autocrats, they hailed with joy the elevation of the Romanoff family to the throne. The condition of the nobles was thenceforth bettered, their political influence increased. Under Peter the Great, however, there came a change. To noble birth, this Czar showed a most humiliating indifference, and the nobles saw with horror the accession to their ranks of the lowest order of men. The condition of the aristocracy, old and new, was not, however, one of unmixed happiness. The nobles were transformed into mere servants of the Czar, and ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... the lineage of his audience naturally aroused another protest. It was met by the sharp rejoinder, "I brought you in chains to Rome; you are freed now, but none the more terrible for that!" [450] It was a humiliating spectacle. The most respected man in Rome was using the vulgar abuse of the streets to the sovereign people; and the man who used this language was so blinded by prejudice as not to see that the blood which ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... for if he had replied he would have told the truth, and he did not wish to tell the truth then, because it would have been humiliating. ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... for the Queen; yet, you are no friend of mine and keep her from me under guard. This morning I went to see her in her bed, and I remarked that Kay lies with her every night. Sire, for God's sake, be not angry, if I am disgruntled and if I complain. For it is very humiliating for me to be hated and despised by one with whom Kay is allowed to lie." "Silence!" says the king; "I don't believe it." "Then come, my lord, and see the sheets and the state in which Kay has left them. Since you will not believe my words, ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes
... were the astonishment, rather than the admiration, of all beholders, who regarded them as agents, and characterized the way in which they carried their samples as the latest thing from the States. For a commencement, this was humiliating, so that the jaunty lawyer twisted his moustache fiercely, and felt inclined to quarrel with the self-possessed, clean-shaven space between Wilkinson's elaborate side-whiskers. But the pedagogue, in his suavest manner, remarked that Cicero, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... had been increasing, as crowds do, began to jeer at the words, for, like most crowds, it was of a nether sort, and enjoyed the unusual sight of the gentleman and the aristocrat abasing and humiliating himself ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... that the most humiliating moment of her whole life had arrived. She had been selected as the valedictorian of her class, she had been chosen above her beloved Phil because of her gift as a speaker, yet she would be obliged to return to her ...
— Madge Morton's Victory • Amy D.V. Chalmers
... it is very humiliating to have to beg for money which really belongs to one—for it does belong to us, to you and me, I mean—as much as to him, doesn't it? It's maddening to think that the law allows a man to ruin his relations because senility has ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... courage of performance which is never abashed by any failure, but steadily pursues its right and human design in a scene of imperfection, I might hope to strike in the long-run a conduct more tender to others and less humiliating to myself. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... said so but last night, when we were talking about you. But you refused all; you threw away your education, your talents, your good qualities, from a foolish pride, which you considered independence. My father almost humbled himself to you—not that it is ever humiliating to acknowledge and attempt to repair a fault, but still he did more than could be expected from most people. Your friends persuaded you, but you rejected their advice; and what was still more unpardonable, even I had no influence over you. As long as you punished yourself I did not upbraid you; but ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... assassination of Mr. Lincoln, I believe the great majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their government. They believed, I have no doubt, as I did, that besides being the mildest, it was ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... I believe, that Natural Selection cannot effect what is not good for the individual, including in this term a social community. It would take a volume to discuss all the points; and nothing is so humiliating to me as to agree with a man like you (or Hooker) on the premises ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Marty was giving wholes instead of tenths and the red box was so well filled, that it met with an accident that disfigured it for life. Though the occurrence was a sad and humiliating one for Marty, it led ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett
... compensation, is the extraordinary kindness displayed by friends, relations, and employers in making things easy for the afflicted household. And then, too, there is the heroic quality of soul displayed by the sufferer himself and his sister—a heroism which is ennobling to think of, and yet humiliating too, because it seems to be so far out of one's ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... now unable to keep up with this too expert individual of uncertain sex, and was obliged again to "break," with the humiliating petition, ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... passes in the interior. When the army moved away the scene was one of shame and agony; the sick vainly pleaded with their comrades to save them; the whole force contrasted the proud hopes of their coming with their humiliating end and refused to be comforted by Nicias, whose courage shone brightest in this hour of defeat. Demosthenes' force was isolated and was quickly captured; Nicias' men with great difficulty reached the River Assinarus, parched with thirst. ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... of peace with the French governor until he had complied with all the English demands. In this extremity, Denonville sent Father Vaillant to Albany, in the hope of bringing his intractable rival to conditions less humiliating. The Jesuit played his part with ability, and proved more than a match for his adversary in dialectics; but Dongan held fast to all his demands. Vaillant tried to temporize, and asked for a truce, with ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... delight in the simple act of living, that all the shynesses begotten by my old habits as an author awoke and intensified into something like fright. Furthermore, I found myself much discouraged by my inability to understand a word of all the storm of chatter about me. It was a humiliating experience for a philologist. Thus I had begun to feel quite sulky, when I was startled to hear ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... based largely on theory, but now that she was actually on her way to Mr. Ryder all sorts of misgivings beset her. Suppose he knew her by sight and roughly accused her of obtaining access to his house under false pretences and then had her ejected by the servants? How terrible and humiliating that would be! And even if he did not how could she possibly find those letters with him watching her, and all in the brief time of a conventional afternoon call? It had been an absurd idea from the first. Stott was right; she saw that now. But she ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein
... soundness of Martin's verdict, for my part I feel that my experiences during that week left me with memories not perhaps more shocking, but certainly more humiliating and disgraceful to England, than the picture burnt into my mind by the Westminster Riot. I will ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... the most humiliating of all; but I did it to please my old grandfather, upon whom I can be severe enough at times about his weaknesses. Rolf, who in spite of his faults is the best-natured fellow in the world, went to the town of——, and we polished it up ourselves. We would ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... the English. So ended the famed expedition to the Hellespont and the Bosphorus. It broke the spell by which the passage of the Dardanelles had for ages been guarded; but beyond this it was little more than a brilliant bravado, followed by a series of humiliating blunders. And yet no investigation was instituted into the causes of the failure, Sir John Duckworth being a favourite admiral of the "all talents" ministry; and subsequently, after their dismissal, he being sheltered from censure by the strife ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... by no means suffered me to breakaway—I should most assuredly have "run amok" among the mutineers, and in all probability have been killed by them in self-defence; as it was, my anger and the bitterly humiliating conviction of my utter helplessness so nearly overcame me that I was seized with an attack of giddiness that caused everything upon which my eyes rested to become blurred and indistinct, and to whirl hither and thither in a most distracting fashion, while I seemed to lose the control of my tongue, ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... salubrious air of Oakly-park. But it would be inexpressible, intolerable mortification to me, to have it said or suspected in the world of fashion, that I retreated from the ranks disabled instead of disgusted. A voluntary retirement is graceful and dignified; a forced retreat is awkward and humiliating. You must be sensible that I could not endure to have it whispered—'Lady Delacour now sets up for being a prude, because she can no longer be a coquette.' Lady Delacour would become the subject of witticisms, epigrams, caricatures ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... I condemn so much as the condition you were in when you did it," she complained. "Mr. Garrison, you do not know how humiliating it is to be killed by a man who is too drunk to know where the jugular vein is located. My ...
— Her Weight in Gold • George Barr McCutcheon
... the holy Patriarch with the various revolutions which would take place in his Order, and he signified them to him by the statue itself, by the different metals of which it was composed, either thus to modify by these humiliating foreshowings the honor which he derived from being the Founder of so wonderful a work as that of the establishment of his Order; or to inspire him with the intention of sending up fervent prayers to heaven, which should draw down graces on his flock at all times, which, ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... explaining to her the cruel scene in which she had just been engaged, then hastened to her own apartment. Her hitherto stifled emotions broke forth in tears and repinings: her fate was finally determined, and its determination was not more unhappy than humiliating; she was openly rejected by the family whose alliance she was known to wish; she was compelled to refuse the man of her choice, though satisfied his affections were her own. A misery so peculiar she found hard to ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... had taken but a very small part in the war, should at least bear a fraction of the cost. But the cry of "No taxation without representation" was raised; the Americans rebelled; and England was placed in the humiliating position of being defeated by her own colonists. During that period Ireland remained thoroughly loyal; the efforts of Franklin and his party to enlist Ireland on their side were as complete a failure ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous
... amongst the various branches of the Serb race for south Slav unity, as it was called, gradually began to take shape. At the same time a more definitely political agitation started in Serbia, largely inspired by the humiliating position of economic bondage in which the country was held by Austria-Hungary, and was roughly justified by the indisputable argument: 'Serbia must expand or die.' Expansion at the cost of Turkey seemed hopeless, because even the acquisition of Macedonia would give Serbia ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... radical element of that organization,—an element which took the position that no respectable white Democrat could afford to participate in an election in which colored men were allowed to vote. To do so, they held, would not only be humiliating to the pride of the white men, but the contamination would be unwise if not dangerous. Besides, they were firm in the belief and honest in the conviction that the country would ultimately repudiate the Congressional Plan of Reconstruction, ...
— The Facts of Reconstruction • John R. Lynch
... methods of meeting makes me too unhappy. See what has happened!' She could not help smiling. 'Out of the frying-pan into the fire! After meanly turning to avoid the parson we have rushed into a worse publicity. It is too humiliating to have to avoid people, and lowers both you and me. The only remedy ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... Lucius Licinius Crassus, who had such reverence tor his father-in-law, that, when a candidate for the consulship, he could not persuade himself in the presence of Scaevola to cringe to the people, or to adopt any of the usual self-humiliating methods of ...
— De Amicitia, Scipio's Dream • Marcus Tullius Ciceronis
... to that approach to an angel in this world, a person who has satisfied his appetite, the spectacle of a crowd of people feeding together in a large room must be a little humiliating. The fact is that no animal appears at its best in this necessary occupation. But a hotel breakfast-room is not without interest. The very way in which people enter the room is a revelation of character. Mr. King, who was put ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... France adhered to their cause; the duke of Milan was the enemy of Eugenius; and he was driven from the Vatican by an insurrection of the Roman people. Rejected at the same time by temporal and spiritual subjects, submission was his only choice: by a most humiliating bull, the pope repealed his own acts, and ratified those of the council; incorporated his legates and cardinals with that venerable body; and seemed to resign himself to the decrees of the supreme legislature. Their fame pervaded the countries of the East: and it was in their ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and half dressed, would away grumbling, to grind the colours in the dark, cold workroom, cudgelling his wits the while, grinding and cursing all the time, to think of some way of escaping such harsh and humiliating treatment in future. Long he sought in vain; but his mind was an active one, and one morning early a happy ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... case—and, if my story be followed to its close, I am persuaded that I shall not be held to be one who took the disease of love more lightly than my fellows—this process of convalescence, most salutary, yet in a sense humiliating, was aided by a train of circumstances, in which my mother saw the favour of Heaven to our family and the Vicar the working of Betty Nasroth's prophecy. An uncle of my mother's had some forty years ago established ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... as to whether monkeys laugh or not. I lived on familiar terms with Pretty-Heart for a long time, and I know that he certainly did laugh and often in a way that was most humiliating to me. Of course, he did not laugh like a man, but when something amused him, he would draw back the corners of his mouth, screw up his eyes, and work his jaws rapidly, while his black eyes ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... was never wanting. Towering as was his intellectual strength and keenness above me, indeed above the whole of the rest of the members of the Board, he did not condescend to me. The result was never humiliating. It had no pain of any sort in it. He was too spontaneous and liberal with his consideration to seem conscious that he was showing any. There were many men of religious note upon the Board, of some of whom I could ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... itself, as against the Executive and the people, with incurable weakness by excluding its most popular part? By giving up numerous Deputies, without further ceremony to the mercies of the public prosecutor, it abolished its own parliamentary inviolability. The humiliating regulation, that it subjected the Mountain to, raised the President of the republic in the same measure that it lowered the individual Representatives of the people. By branding an insurrection in defense of the Constitution ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx
... inglorious; nameless, renownless[obs3]; obscure; unknown to fame; unnoticed, unnoted[obs3], unhonored, unglorified[obs3]. shameful; disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable; despicable; questionable; unbecoming, unworthy; derogatory; degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem[Lat], dedecorous[obs3]; scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable; ribald, opprobrious; errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious. ignominious, scrubby, dirty, abject, vile, beggarly, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... his humiliating defeat, had spies constantly watching his foes, intending, if possible, to take them by surprise. When the spies reported to him the lack of vigilance on the part of the enemy, he stealthily crossed to the island with his force and fell upon the sleeping camp. All the Russians but two were ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... would not have us accuse ourselves over-vehemently and exaggerate our faults. At the same time, he had no desire that in regard to ourselves we should err on the side of leniency. He wanted us to embrace the happy medium, by humiliating without discouraging ourselves, and by encouraging ourselves with humility. In another letter he says: "Be just, neither accuse nor excuse your poor soul, except after much consideration, for fear ...
— The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales • Jean Pierre Camus
... which followed the election in which he had played a part so humiliating to his vanity, Maxime de Trailles returned to Paris. It might be supposed that in making, on his arrival, a rapid toilet and ordering his carriage to be instantly brought round, he was hastening to pay a visit to the Comte de Rastignac, minister ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... tour through Switzerland to Italy, and on reaching Milan he played at La Scala, where he made an immense popular success, but drew from one of the journals a scathing criticism, which, however humiliating it may have been, struck him by ...
— Famous Violinists of To-day and Yesterday • Henry C. Lahee
... gossiped. Megalius, a punctilious defender of discipline and the hierarchy, no doubt gathered up these malevolent rumours with pleasure. He used them as an excuse for making Augustin mark time, so to speak. Commonplace people always feel a secret delight in humiliating to the common rule those whom they can feel are beings of ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... stadtholder. To these humiliating conditions the pride of the States had refused to submit; and Cromwell was content to accept two other articles, which, while they appeared equally to affect the two nations, were in reality directed against the Stuart family and its adherents. It was stipulated ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... Garfield. The poverty of the frontier, where all are engaged in a common struggle, and where a common sympathy and hearty co-operation lighten the burdens of each, is a very different poverty, different in kind, different in influence and effect, from that conscious and humiliating indigence which is every day forced to contrast itself with neighboring wealth on which it feels a sense of grinding dependence. The poverty of the frontier is indeed no poverty. It is but the beginning of wealth, and has the boundless ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... snipers has not yet been dislodged, though their ammunition is running short. Passengers should be prepared to use all the resources of their vocabulary at Bargingham, where the inhabitants enjoy a well-deserved repute for their command of picturesque invective. It would be humiliating to the whole charabanc confraternity if they were to yield their pre-eminence in this branch of education ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... follows:—Hera having raised a storm at sea in order to drive him out of his course, Zeus became so angry that he hung her in the clouds by a golden chain, and attached heavy anvils to her feet. Her son Hephaestus tried to release his mother from her humiliating position, for which Zeus threw him out of heaven, and his leg was ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... get out of this place. We were followed to the restaurant, I am certain, and I am equally certain that at the next table two police spies were seated, and these two shadowed us in a cab until we reached our blacksmith's shop. It is a humiliating confession to make, but somehow the atmosphere of this place has got on my nerves, and I shall be glad to turn my back on it. Jack pooh-poohs the idea that he is in any danger. Even the Governor of St. Petersburg, he says, dare not lay a finger on him, and as ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... and held me close to her. What ought I to have said? What ought I to have done? I neither knew what to say or what to do. I looked from Lucilla to the twin brothers. There was Oscar the Weak, overwhelmed by the humiliating position in which he had placed himself towards the woman whom he was to marry, towards the brother whom he loved! And there was Nugent the Strong, master of himself; with his arm round his brother, with his head erect, with his hand signing to me to keep silence. He was right. ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... which is habit—calls aloud for the customary performance. Strenuous effort is required to get out of the rut, and the slipping back into the rut which is almost sure to occur in moments of inadvertence is humiliating. Result—usually the habit sticks. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... society and not nationalistic scene shifting. His conditions can be ameliorated only through a union with his fellow sufferers, through human brotherhood, and not by means of separation and barriers. In his struggles against humiliating demands, inhuman treatment, economic pressure, he can depend on help from his non-Jewish comrades, and not on the assistance of Jewish manufacturers and speculators. How then can he be expected to co-operate with them in the building of ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 1, March 1906 • Various
... The news of the humiliating Peace of Peronne, after the king had committed the one great folly of his career by gratuitously placing himself in Charles the Bold's power,[98] was received by the Parisians with many gibes. The royal herald proclaimed at sound of ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... state of almost complete destitution, it is a fine thing to have, in the course of less than two months, beaten, eight different times, an army of from 65 to 70,000 men, obliged the King of Sardinia to make a humiliating peace, and driven the Austrians from Italy. The last victory, of which you have doubtless had an account, the passage of the Mincio, has closed our labours. There now remain for us the siege of Mantua and the castle of Milan; ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... Atkins whenever he was captured; for the English had destroyed and burnt theirs as often as they could. As we had no means of import, and as the enemy had burnt our clothes, who shall condemn our action, however humiliating it might have been to the soldier or costly to the British Government to provide outfits for both parties? Necessity knows no laws. In the same way the burghers were provided with rifles, ammunition, horses, saddles, bridles and other necessaries ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... these teasing and almost humiliating discussions, Dryden continued steadily advancing in his great labour; and about three years after it had been undertaken, the translation of Virgil, "the most noble and spirited," said Pope, "which ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... water-spout then swept the whole concern away, after which, like a wild-horse set free, it took a leap of full thirty feet—a straight column of solid water—before it burst itself on the ground, and rushed wildly down to the lake! It was a humiliating termination— and showed how terrible it is to create a power which ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... it to him," repeated Mr. Grunert, closely approaching Lombard. "In 1803, when the king sent him to Brussels to negotiate with Bonaparte, about an honorable peace between Prussia and France, he allowed himself to be bribed. He exercised an influence humiliating and disadvantageous to us; but Bonaparte bribed him by paying him the sum of six thousand Napoleons d'or. ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... with, then, mainly is the correspondence, the temper itself. And that, he well knows, involves a long and humiliating discipline. The case now is not at all a surgical but a medical one, and the knife is here of no more use than in a fever. A specific irritant has poisoned his veins. And the acrid humors that are breaking out all over the surface of his life are only to be subdued ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... d'Assier, a positivist, who believed in spectres had to suggest that the ghosts wear the ghosts of garments! Thus positivism, in this disciple, returned to the artless metaphysics of savages. Telepathy saves the believer from such a humiliating relapse, and, perhaps, telepathy also may be made to explain 'collective' hallucinations, when several people see the same apparition. If a distant mind can thus demoralise the central terminus of one ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... Boston police. Public excitement ran high, a futile attempt to rescue Burns having been made during his confinement, and the streets were crowded with tens of thousands of people, of whom many came from other towns and cities of the State to witness the humiliating spectacle. ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... others), but they do not abandon them. Apparently it is their policy rather to create strife and confusion than to alleviate existing misery. That attitude must have covered English Socialists with ignominy in the eyes of foreign Socialists. The very humiliating treatment which the English Socialists received at the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart of 1907 from their Continental comrades suggests that the curious attitude and the not very estimable tactics of British Socialists ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... direct. Their greeting was scarcely more than a nod, and showed their mutual constraint. Leigh read in Emmet's bold eyes a warning such as an injured husband might convey to the man that had wronged him, and a defiant reassertion of himself after his humiliating confession. He suspected also, what indeed was the truth, that the discovery of his own feeling for the bishop's daughter had opened Emmet's eyes anew to her value, and had cleared them of the mists of passion for the unfortunate ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... not, I cannot say how humiliating it is to think that you can, for an instant, believe I would again forget myself so much as to wish to desert him whom God has given me for a protector, for one chosen by my own erring passions. And you, Andrew Merry! Learn to ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was his superior in the Priesthood, if not in experience and ability, looked upon me as a cipher, fit for nothing. The rough treatment and slights that I received from him were more than humiliating to a man of fine feelings and a spirit such as I possessed. I said nothing to him, but I poured out my soul in secret prayer to my Heavenly Father, asking Him to open the door for my deliverance, so that my proud spirit, which was ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... have been a component of the national legislature until more than a century and a half after the admission of the commons. [31] Indeed, the influence of the church was much less sensible in Aragon, than in the other kingdoms of the peninsula. Notwithstanding the humiliating concessions of certain of their princes to the papal see, they were never recognized by the nation, who uniformly asserted their independence of the temporal supremacy of Rome; and who, as we shall see hereafter, resisted the introduction of the Inquisition, that last stretch of ecclesiastical usurpation, ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... wondering how you will meet what seems to me a more humiliating role, when you are sent out by an editor to gain an entree to some person who does not ...
— A Woman of the World - Her Counsel to Other People's Sons and Daughters • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... favourable impression of it to the Public. If a degree of success, exceeding our most sanguine hopes, is not sufficient for justifying the omission of a measure, deemed one of the most essential for attaining an end, I would plead in favour of our worthy brother, that by a humiliating fatality, so often accompanying the most useful discoveries, the credit of this ventilator is yet far from being firmly established in the navy. What wonder then, if Captain Cook being so much otherwise taken up, should not have had time to examine it, and therefore avoided the encumbering ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... he had been ashamed of her. This was a most afflicting, humiliating notion. She was delighted to see the boat from the yacht waiting to take her off. She had imagined her own dress both pretty and becoming—she knew that it had cost her months of patient embroidering. Poor Bessie! ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... be ominous of silence in a full sense, presently. First, one word is not to be spoken—and then, another is not. And why? Why deny me the use of such words as have natural feelings belonging to them—and how can the use of such be 'humiliating' to you? If my heart were open to you, you could see nothing offensive to you in any thought there or trace of thought that has been there—but it is hard for you to understand, with all your psychology (and to be reminded of it I have just been looking at the preface of some poems ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... Governor Young to the President of the United States, and the truth slowly made its way into the eastern press. President Buchanan tacitly admitted his mistake; but to recall the troops at that juncture would be to confess humiliating failure. ...
— The Story of "Mormonism" • James E. Talmage
... that he had too many other uses for his time. M. Nioche, however, came to see him very promptly, having learned his whereabouts by a mysterious process to which his patron never obtained the key. The shrunken little capitalist repeated his visit more than once. He seemed oppressed by a humiliating sense of having been overpaid, and wished apparently to redeem his debt by the offer of grammatical and statistical information in small installments. He wore the same decently melancholy aspect as a few months before; a few months more or less of brushing could make little difference ...
— The American • Henry James
... to a crisis, they resolved to make a last effort for the repeal of the four and a half percent duty. They therefore adopted immediate emancipation, and then, covered as they were, with the laurels of so magnanimous an act, they presented to parliament their cherished object. The defeat was a humiliating one, and it produced such a reaction in the island, as well nigh led to the rescinding ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... way back to the Bow and String, there came from small boys and hidden voices such exclamations as: "Look at the woman in man's clothing;" "Isn't he a beautiful man?" "Look at him blush;" and others too coarse to be repeated. Imagine the humiliating situation, from ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... most remarkable!" gasped the professor. "But you see, Mr. Philander, that I was quite right, as usual; and but for your stubborn willfulness we should have escaped a series of most humiliating, not to say dangerous accidents. Pray allow yourself to be guided by a more mature and practical mind hereafter when in need ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the Duc de Gontaut, the King was told that the valet had come to a knowledge of the business from a letter which he had found in his master's clothes. The King took his revenge by humiliating the Archbishop, which he was enabled to do by means of the information he had obtained concerning the conduct of the lady, his protegee. She was found guilty of swindling, in concert with her beloved valet; but, before her punishment was inflicted, the Lieutenant of Police was ordered ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... days, a crisis arrived when they found that they could interpose. Both parties had become somewhat weary of the contest. Neither could prevail over the other, and yet neither was willing to yield. The Sabines could not bring themselves to submit to so humiliating an alternative as to withdraw from Rome and leave their daughters and sisters in the captors' hands, after all the grand preparations which they had made for retaking them. And on the other hand the Romans could not take those, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... plain homespun and drank herb-tea,—and certainly nothing is more feminine than a cup of tea. And in this very struggle, the women of the Southern States have cut up their carpets for blankets, have borne the most humiliating retrenchments and privations of all kinds without a murmur. So let us exonerate the female sex of want of patriotism, ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... room—Susan's companions who loved her and appreciated her worth—even they looked oppressed and discomfited. The romance of Dreda's triumph had appealed to their young imaginations; they understood even more keenly than their elders the suffering involved in that humiliating confession. "Poor Dreda!" they whispered to each ...
— Etheldreda the Ready - A School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a Means of Sexual Enjoyment.—There is a form of sexual perversion in which the pervert takes delight in being subjected to degrading, humiliating, and cruel acts on the part of his or her associate. It was named masochism from Sacher-Masoch, an Austrian novelist, whose works describe this form of perversion. The victims are said to experience peculiar ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... it in the world, and I was feeling rather aggrieved because somebody described me yesterday as 'that girl in the first class who is always getting up head; she is short and rather stout and wears her hair in a knot at the back of her head?' Now wasn't that humiliating? Not a word about my eyes or complexion ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... rationalizing surface consciousness are often mere veils which drape the crudeness of our real desires and reactions to life; and that before life can be reintegrated about its highest centres, these real beliefs and motives must be tracked down, and their humiliating character acknowledged. The ape and the tiger, in fact, are not dead in any one of us. In polite persons they are caged, which Is a very different thing: and a careful introspection will teach us to recognize their snarls and chatterings, their urgent requests for more mutton ...
— The Life of the Spirit and the Life of To-day • Evelyn Underhill
... who had been shoved aside as he had been, and wrote letters to them urging them to arouse the people to throw off the chains of bossdom. Five years ago he and a number of lonesome and forgotten ones, who formerly ruled the State with an iron hand, and whose arrogance had cost the party a humiliating defeat, organised the "Anti-Boss League," and held semi-annual conventions at the capital. They made long speeches and issued long proclamations, and called vehemently upon the people to rend their chains, but some way the people didn't heed the call, and the General ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... I love you absolutely. When I suggested your leaving for a time I did a desperately hard thing—and you misunderstood it. Unless you can understand it, dear, it would do no good to come back, it would only mean other humiliating memories. This is not an easy letter to write and it's not well done. If your attitude of this afternoon is anything more than the delusion of anger—in other words, if your love is not one of complete trust, it's better that ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... is sick, and I am trying to earn something to support her," sobbed Katy, who, with her independent notions of trade in general, and of the candy trade in particular, would not have revealed this humiliating truth, except under the severe pressure of ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... Westwood, "my designs upon her heart, which I was going to wring so unmercifully, did not meet with very brilliant success. To confess the humiliating truth, I soon found that I was torturing myself a good deal more than I was torturing her. As a last and desperate resort, what do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... cause them to find, in their labour, an infallible resource against indigence. Previously to the execution of this beneficent plan, a young blind child, born of poor parents, was reduced to the melancholy and humiliating necessity of standing in a public thoroughfare, exposed to all the inclemency of the weather, to beg its bread, and, at present, it has no occasion to owe its livelihood but ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... been done without applying to me," said Sussex, somewhat haughtily. "I at least, ought not to have been a counsellor when the object was a humiliating reference to Leicester; and I am suprised that you, Tressilian, a man of honour, and my friend, would assume such a mean course. If you said so, I certainly understood you not in a matter which sounded ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... was a really remarkable book: but neither of them aimed at giving a full picture of Oxford life. And the interest of Miss Broughton's 'Belinda' and Mr. Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' lies outside the proctor's rounds. Yes (and humiliating as the confession may be), with all its crudities and absurdities, Verdant Green does mark the nearest approach yet made to ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of success, my friends, when, with an enemy close to their gates, the Jews are slaying more of their fellow countrymen than the Romans themselves? Did ever a country present so humiliating and terrible a spectacle? Were such atrocities ever perpetrated by men upon their brothers? And yet, the madmen still believe that the Almighty will deliver them—will save from destruction that Temple which they have polluted, the altars that ...
— For the Temple - A Tale of the Fall of Jerusalem • G. A. Henty
... viewing with a compassion, most rare in those days, the impending fate of the heroic mountaineers, the powerful Count of Toggenborg tried to negotiate a peace with the Duke. Leopold's terms, however, were so humiliating and evidently so insincere that ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... was remanded by the magistrate to The Tombs without bail to await the action of the grand jury, which was soon to convene. Both he and his family had foreseen the event, and he had made the necessary arrangements for the conduct of his business. Humiliating as his arrest was, they all bore it with Spartan courage, and prepared to ransack the earth, if need be, ...
— An American Suffragette • Isaac N. Stevens
... within its rights in demanding such an inquiry and due punishment of every one found to be connected with the tragic deed. But Austria went farther than this. It was willing to accept nothing less than a complete and humiliating submission on the part of Servia. And the impression was widely entertained, whether with or without cause, that in this Austria was not acting alone but that it had the full support of Germany. That country also may be supposed to have had its ends to gain. What these ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... the miserable story. There is not much to say, but that little is humiliating. It was soon after this that I noticed a change in Mr. Cunliffe's manner. Scarcely perceptible at first, it became daily more marked. He came less often, and when he came he scarcely spoke to me. It was then that Etta began to torment me, and, under the ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... heard of the low view of woman entertained in India, and of the humiliating customs to which she is subjected; but nature asserts itself there as elsewhere, and notwithstanding all the inferiority with which she is charged, she exercises a profound influence on the male portion of the community. ...
— Life and Work in Benares and Kumaon, 1839-1877 • James Kennedy
... that the artist's manner toward Ida had indeed been humiliating. During the previous week he had sought her society; but in the emphatic language of his action, he had almost the same as said ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... night. I know I did because I woke up three times and I was just furious every time. But this morning it was over. I wasn't in a temper anymore—and it left a dreadful sort of goneness, too. I felt so ashamed of myself. But I just couldn't think of going and telling Mrs. Lynde so. It would be so humiliating. I made up my mind I'd stay shut up here forever rather than do that. But still—I'd do anything for you—if you really ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
