"Plebeian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... certain moroseness and melancholy seemed to brood like a delayed storm among them, and to cloud the very atmosphere they breathed, but apart from this, intellectuality was the dominant spirit suggested by their outward looks and bearing. Plebeian faces and vulgar manners are, unfortunately, not rare in representative gatherings of men whose opinions are allowed to sway the destinies of nations, and it was strange to see a group of individuals who were sworn to upset existing law and government ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... My Lord, I will deliver your reply; It cannot much import—he's a plebeian, The master ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... deep-windowed rooms of the Palace, where now the pictures hang and hundreds of plebeian feet tramp daily, the gardens gave forth a burning yet pleasant glow of heat and color in the full sunshine. Tims and Mr. Fitzalan, having eaten their frugal lunch early under the blossoming chestnut-trees in Bushey Park, went into the Picture Gallery in the Palace at an hour ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... rough sketch of one or two of those people whom you see every day, and call "dregs," sometimes,—a dull, plain bit of prose, such as you might pick for yourself out of any of these warehouses or back-streets. I expect you to call it stale and plebeian, for I know the glimpses of life it pleases you best to find; idyls delicately tinted; passion-veined hearts, cut bare for curious eyes; prophetic utterances, concrete and clear; or some word of pathos or fun from the old friends who have endenizened ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... any nearer approach. No doubt, he argued, his brother's daughter was deeply imbued with similar principles, and would blush to own a 'Mr Budge' for her uncle! This name he had adopted as the condition of inheriting a noble fortune unexpectedly bequeathed by a plebeian, but worthy and industrious relative, only a few years previous to the period when Providence guided his footsteps to Fairdown Farm ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... spurious, alloyed, counterfeit could be used? When mean, despicable, contemptible, shameful, disgraceful, dishonorable, discreditable, scandalous, infamous, villainous, low-minded could be used? When ignoble, servile, slavish, groveling, menial could be used? When plebeian, obscure, untitled, vulgar, lowly, nameless, ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... August, 1428, he advanced sums amounting to about twenty-seven thousand livres for which he received lands and castles as security.[609] Fortunately the Royal Council included a number of Jurists and Churchmen who were good business men. One of them, an Angevin, Robert Le Macon, Lord of Treves, of plebeian birth, had entered the Council during the Regency. He was the first among those of lowly origin who served Charles VII so ably that he came to be called The Well Served (Le Bien Servi).[610] Another, the Sire de Gaucourt, had aided ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... or Scrogie I know not, but which led them so often into opposition, that the offended father, Reginald S. Mowbray, turned his recusant son Scrogie fairly out of doors; and the fellow would have paid for his plebeian spirit with a vengeance, had he not found refuge with a surviving partner of the original Scrogie of all, who still carried on the lucrative branch of traffic by which the family had been first enriched. I mention these particulars to account, in so far as I can, for the singular predicament ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... you very much," echoed Gwenda. Will was in danger of losing his head as well as his heart. To have his name (from which, by the by, he had dropped the plebeian "s") bracketed with Miss Gwenda Vaughan's was a state of things which, though occasioned only by a simple coincidence, elated him beyond measure. He had indeed, he thought, stepped out of the old order of things and made his ...
— Garthowen - A Story of a Welsh Homestead • Allen Raine
... Louis de Blanc!'" began my sister; "'L'honorable A. Declouet'; 'Le comte Louis le Pelletrier de la Houssaye'! Ah!" she cried, throwing the packet upon the table, "the aristocrats! I am frightened, poor little plebeian that I am." ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... fraught with the pathetick, John remain'd dumb, as a Pythagorean; Seeming to hint, "Roger, you're a plebeian Peripatetick." ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger
... proceeds to choose his mate; he does not blunder into heroic fooleries in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth of money, and he knows how to despise the foolish beings who talk of "dross" and "filthy lucre" and the rest. Mere craving for money he despises; but he knows that the amount of "dross" ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... be a snob!" retorted Mihalevitch, good-naturedly, "but thank God rather there is a pure plebeian blood in your veins too. But I see that you want some pure, heavenly creature to draw you out ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... from being either real or relevant to her listener. What had he to do with a bundle of old-world memoirs, even when edited and brought up to date by an interesting woman! What to him was the spotless character of the ignoble Francois, son of a butcher, created a Clairville for his plebeian virtues, or the lives of each succeeding descendant of Francois, growing always a little richer, a little more polished, till in time the wheel turned and the change came in the fortunes of the house which culminated in the present! All these were mere abstractions, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... to endless disputes and tumults, and to drive the nobles into dangerous and desperate courses. In instance whereof might be cited the case of Rome itself, wherein the tribunes of the people being vested with this authority, not content to have one consul a plebeian, insisted on having both; and afterwards laid claim to the censorship, the praetorship and all the other magistracies in the city. Nor was this enough for them, but, carried away by the same factious spirit, they began after a time to pay court ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Rossin: her household consisted of a housekeeper and an old man, both devoted to a mistress whose character they well understood, and to whom they had every motive to be faithful. Here it was, then, that the lady hastened to await the arrival of the new object of her plebeian inclinations. Young Moireau (for such was the shopman's name) was not long ere he arrived with his parcel. Madame d'Egmont was ready to receive him: she had had sufficient time to exchange her shabby walking dress for one which bespoke both coquetry and voluptuousness; the softness of ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... telephone lines, trying to walk a tight rope, and parachute acts and experiments in chemistry. When the family were not worried lest he should break his neck or blow his head off investigating, they were irritated by a certain plebeian strain in him which kept all kinds of company. His mother disapproved of his picking an acquaintance with a group of acrobats in order to improve his skill on the trapeze. His excuse for his supple friends ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... desert utmost Hell Many a dark League, reduc't in careful Watch Round thir Metropolis, and now expecting Each hour their great adventurer from the search 440 Of Forrein Worlds: he through the midst unmarkt, In shew plebeian Angel militant Of lowest order, past; and from the dore Of that Plutonian Hall, invisible Ascended his high Throne, which under state Of richest texture spred, at th' upper end Was plac't in regal lustre. Down a while He sate, and round about him saw unseen: At last ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... was thinking of Pierre Delarue, who had just taken honors at the Polytechnic school, and who seemed to have a brilliant career before him. This woman, humbly born, was proud of her origin, and sought a plebeian for her son-in-law, to put into his hand a golden tool powerful ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... resumed the Cardinal, "of an aged man of no plebeian mien or bearing, albeit most shabbily attired in the skins, now fabulously cheap, of the vermin that torment us; who, professing to practise as an herbalist, some little time ago established himself in an obscure street of no good repute. A tortoise hangs ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... years later, gives four points of departure from the Cambridge polity by the Reforming Synod. First, occasional officiations of ministers outside their own churches were authorized; secondly, there was a movement to revive the authority and office of ruling elder and other officers; thirdly, "plebeian ordination," or lay ordination, ordination by the hands of the brethren of the church in the absence of superior officers, was no longer allowed;[d] and fourthly, there was a variation from the "personal and public confession" in favor of a private examination ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... settlers in 1634, and proved thoroughly unsuitable and undurable; but probably no china—not even Delft ware—came over on the Mayflower. For when the Pilgrims made their night trip through the Delft-producing cities, no such wares were seen on the tables of plebeian persons. Early mentions of china are in the estate of President John Davenport in 1648—"Cheney L5," and of Martha Coteymore ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... pauses which fill not only the room, but the universe with a fury of sound. There were times when Gabriella felt that she could stand anything if only her mother would fly into a rage—when she positively envied Florrie Spencer because her plebeian parent scolded her at the top of her voice instead of maintaining a calm and ladylike reticence. But Mrs. Carr was one of those women who never, even in the most trying circumstances, cease to be patient, who never lose for ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... timidity, and was doubtless a leading cause of the cordial reception which in England the idea of women's political emancipation has long received among politicians. Bebel's book, speedily translated into English, furnished the plebeian complement to Mill's. ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... The fishermen, however, got over the difficulty by always calling the father Jemmy and his son Young 'un; but this did not suit Vince and Mike, with whom there had always been a feud, the fisherman's lad having constantly displayed an intense hatred, in his plebeian way, for the young representatives of the patricians on the isle. The manners in which he had shown this, from very early times, were many; and had taken the forms of watching till the companions were below cliffs, and then stealing to ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... thy Sire's approach Homeward? or came he to receive a debt Due to himself? How swift he disappear'd! 520 Nor opportunity to know him gave To those who wish'd it; for his face and air Him speak not of Plebeian birth obscure. Whom answered thus Telemachus discrete. Eurymachus! my father comes no more. I can no longer now tidings believe, If such arrive; nor he'd I more the song Of sooth-sayers whom my mother may consult. But this my guest hath known in other days ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... bear, fellows, and I happen to know our hired girl's going to have corned beef and cabbage for noon today. That's said to be a plebeian dish, but it always appeals to me ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... constantly alienated from them; and if we pass in review the population of the world, from the oldest to contemporary times, and from savages tribes to the most highly civilized nations, we find the plebeian bowing before the patrician, the poor man serving the wealthy. The conception of human equality before the law is not a congenital endowment, but an accomplishment, arduously acquired and easily forfeited. The first impulse of weakness in the presence ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... conquered such suspicion as contemptible, and cast out the passing weakness. The bare memory of it angered her now, causing her to fire a volley of yellow corn at a lordly peacock, which sent him scuttling down the steps on to the gravel in most plebeian haste. Yes, she had speedily cast out her weakness, thank heaven! What was all the pother about after all? This was not the first time she had played merry games with the affairs and affections of men. Madame de Vallorbes ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... plebeian splutter of rage from our well-bred friend there," said Mackworth, pointing contemptuously at Kenrick, who stood with dilated nostrils, still ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... herself hated her name, and saw keenly how ridiculously it sounded after such a name as Beatrice, only made her feel the more indignant with Brandon. "His own name," she thought, bitterly, "is plebeian—not so bad as mine, it is true, yet still it is plebeian. Why should he feel so shocked at mine?" Of course, she knew him only as "Mr. Wheeler." "Perhaps he has imagined that I had some grand name, and, learning my true one, has lost his illusion. ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... much to tell in detail all the movements that followed. The search for Prince Charles continued with unrelenting severity. Daily, noble and plebeian officers of the defeated army were seized. The country was being scoured, high and low. Frequently the prince saw the forms or heard the voices of those who sought him diligently. But "Will Jones," the woodman, was not easily to be recognized as Charles Stuart, the prince. He was dressed ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of Coriolanus is one of the most amusing of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Virgilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety: and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is, perhaps, too much bustle in the first act, ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... always there were some men and women who out of wide knowledge or a natural justice recognized and loved the people of the whole land. But too frequently, in those days, the Southerner saw in the North only a mass of plebeian laborers excited by political and religious fanaticism; while the Northerner looked south to a group of tyrannical and arrogant slaveholders lording it over their victims. To the one, the typical figure of the North was John Brown; to the other, the representative ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... community like ours, is with many a secret vexation and shame. People boast here of the equality of our institutions, and then try their best to break up the social level. In a genuine Aristocracy, where they have endeavored to preserve a gulf-stream of noble blood in the midst of the plebeian Atlantic, and a man holds his distinction by the color of the bark on his family tree, and the kind of sap that circulates through it, there is no danger of any unpleasant mistakes. The hard palm of Labor may cross the gloved hand of Leisure, ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... justice, his person and mind were of no plebeian mould. He was a daring, venturous fellow, ready at any emergency, cool and collected in danger, had a pleasure in the excitement created by the difficulty and risk attending his nocturnal pursuits, caring little or nothing for the profits. He, as well as his wife, had ...
— The Poacher - Joseph Rushbrook • Frederick Marryat
... Favorita seventeen times during the winter, may feel at times the need of a violent distraction, and go to drink white wine with his servant. Amedee will be full of indulgence, only one must pardon him for his plebeian heart and native uncouthness; for at the moment when he shall have fathomed the emptiness and vanity of this worldly farce, he will keep all of his sympathy for those who retain something like nature. He will esteem infinitely more the poorest of the workmen—a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... virgins loaded themselves with the sacred things, that they might secure those hallowed treasures from profanation. "They were proceeding" (says Livy lib. V, c. XXII) "along the way which passes over the Sublician bridge, when they were met on the declivity by L. Albinus a plebeian, who was fleeing with his wife and children in a plaustrum or cart: he and his family immediately alighted: then placing in the cart the virgins and sacred things he accompanied them to Caere where they were received ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... the most able Kabalist of modern times, and it constituted the corner-stone upon which was built his greatness. Someone not familiar with the faith of the plebeian Israelites would suppose that the population of Szybow was a branch of a numerous gloomy sect of Hassid, which puts at the head of all religious and secular learning, the Kabala. No; the inhabitants of Szybow did not consider themselves heretics. On the contrary, they ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... one delight of his life. Some birds have wings, others have "pinions." The buzzard enjoys this latter distinctions. There is something in the sound of the word that suggests that easy, dignified, undulatory movement. He does not propel himself along by sheer force of muscle, after the plebeian fashion of the crow, for instance, but progresses by a kind of royal indirection that puzzles the eye. Even on a windy winter day he rides the vast aerial billows as placidly as ever, rising and falling as he comes up toward you, carving his way through the resisting ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... you always be DOING?' she retorted. 'It is so plebeian. I think it is much better to be really patrician, and to do nothing but just be ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... was condemned to be sold and broken up by the Parliament, but was buried and saved by the brazier who purchased it, and so reappeared after the Restoration. To the left, the familiar words "Morley's Hotel" designate an edifice about half windows, where the plebeian traveller may sit and contemplate Northumberland House opposite, and the straight-tailed lion of the Percys surmounting the lofty battlement which crowns its broad facade. We could describe and criticize the statue as well as if we stood under it, but other travellers ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... a point so obscure. What we have wished to protest against, is the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too generally been discussed. For, whilst some with a foolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm us with the insipid commonplaces about birth and ancient descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and rush eagerly into an ostentatious exhibition of all the circumstances which favor the notion of a humble station and humble connections; ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Teniers and Watteau are more convenient, and almost as cheap. Clarence Glyndon, with an easy fortune while single, has a large family which his fortune, unaided by marriage, can just rear up to callings more plebeian than his own. He retires into the country, to save and to paint; he grows slovenly and discontented; 'the world does not appreciate him,' he says, and he runs away from the world. At the age of forty-five what will be Clarence Glyndon? Your ambition ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... this sensible advice and stopped at a shop where they treated each other to soda, candy, and peanuts. There being nothing more thrilling to do, they sat down in the Park and ate the plebeian ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... Wilkinson, suavely, rising, nevertheless,—"and yet this is, in the plebeian phrase of the world of trade, my busy day. To be sure I have other occasional days when I handle transactions that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars; but I don't mind admitting to you that these usually take place in the last ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... the Search for the Absolute, Balzac traces the gradual impoverishment of a fond father by his two daughters, married, the one to a nobleman, the other to a banker, and whose husbands, when they have received the marriage dowry, give their father-in-law, who is a plebeian, the cold shoulder, and forbid their wives to see him unless in secret. Goriot's daughters, losing in their grand surroundings the little filial affection they ever had, exploit the old man's worship of them shamelessly. If they visit him in the boarding-house to which he has retired, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... and the Elysian fields, although we do not disclose the true opinion of our hearts, because we think it more advisable to keep the people in outward decency by means of these images. Or if we are less reflective, and ourselves fettered by the bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to the true plebeian level, by believing that which, so understood, would be foolish fable; and by finding, in those purely spiritual indications, nothing but the promise of a continuance, to all eternity, of the same miserable existence ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... her; her step never faltered, her eye never quailed. What a partial thing is fame," he continued, "and how poor a motive to duty! The names of Palafox and Zaragoza are forever wedded. How few remember the old plebeian, Tio Jorge, who counseled and spurred on both governor and populace to ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... lower orders of this country indicate their birth and station by their aspect and features. In America there would be a good deal of grace and beauty among a hundred and fifty children and budding girls, belonging to whatever rank of life. But here they had universally a most plebeian look,—stubbed, sturdy figures, round, coarse faces, snub-noses,—the most evident specimens of the brown bread of human nature. They looked wholesome and good enough, and fit to sustain their rough share of life; ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by the beauty of the prettiest woman in Forstadt." And she added, "The creature's as plebeian ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... and public drives are crowded. Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of every description, glide smoothly on. The promenades are filled with loungers on foot, and the road is thronged with loungers on horseback. Persons of every class are crowded together, here, in one dense mass. The plebeian, who takes his pleasure on no day but Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his, from year's end to year's end. You look in vain for any outward signs of profligacy or debauchery. You see nothing before you but a vast number of ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... young Bess of Sydenham, the queen Of Drake's deep heart, emprisoned in her home, Fenced by her father's angry watch and ward Lest he—the poor plebeian dread of Spain, Shaker of nations, king of the untamed seas— Might win some word with her, sweet Bess, the flower Triumphant o'er their rusty heraldries, Waited her lover, as in ancient tales The pale princess from some grey wizard's tower ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... Herbert at the same time. He started, and flushed with shame, not because of the theft of which he had been guilty, but because he was detected in an honest, but plebeian labor. ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... have transmitted to you, you may be generated again. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carry your name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side of which the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palest and poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity brings the good news that you may receive from the throne of God life from God, as directly as did Adam when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you may ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... less fortunate negroes of the community said of them and their offspring is really not worth while. Envy has a sharp tongue, and when has not the aristocrat been the target for the plebeian's sneers? ...
— The Sport of the Gods • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... of the chateau and estate of Frapesle near Sache in Touraine. Friend of the Vandenesses; he introduced their son Felix to his neighbors, the Mortsaufs. The son of a manufacturer named Durand who became very rich during the Revolution, but whose plebeian name he had entirely dropped; instead he adopted that of his wife, the only heiress of the Chessels, an old parliamentary family. M. de Chessel was director-general and twice deputy. He received the title of count under Louis XVIII. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... on suspicion of having utilized the emperor's illness as an occasion for conspiracy. On the other hand, there were Publius Afranius Potitus, a plebeian, who in a burst of foolish servility had promised not only of his own free will but under oath that he would give his life to have Gaius recover, and a certain Atanius Secundus, a knight, who announced that in the event of a favorable outcome he would fight as a gladiator. These, instead of ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... law. Thomas Woolston was poor, so his vitals were pierced by laws which Collins escaped—yet both committed the same offence. In later times Gibbon traced the rise of Christianity, and about the same time Paine accomplished another portion of the same risk—and the Government which prosecuted the plebeian, flattered the patrician. But Collins's time was rapidly drawing nigh. On the 13th of December, 1729, he expired, aged fifty-three years; and to show the esteem in which his character was held, the following notice was inserted in the newspapers of ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... only the refined circles habitually used gentle tones and gentle manners. For the same reason, those born in the higher circles were called "of gentle blood." Thus it came that a coarse and loud voice, and rough, ungentle manners, are regarded as vulgar and plebeian. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the lane. When older, the same child harnesses his little horse and wagon, he being the horse and a sheep's jawbone the wagon, and trots contentedly along, in almost the smallest amount of costume accessible to mortals. All this refers to the genuine, happy, plebeian baby. The genteel baby is probably as wretched in Fayal as elsewhere, but he is kept more ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... had expected, his reception was most cordial. Though his person was unknown, the magic of his name was not unfelt, even in the regions of the Kung. A prince of the peacock's feather was no common visitor to the home of a plebeian manufacturer; and when that prince was found to be in addition the leader of the fashions and the idol of the aristocracy, the marvel assumed a miraculous character. The guest was ushered in with many low obeisances. How the too gay Ching-ki-pin regretted those unlucky telegraphic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... creatures of tree and field and hill took form. Man's creature, the little stout church in their midst, thrust once more its plebeian outline against God's sky. Dim shapes moved athwart the vacancy of the meadows. Voices called through the gray. Close against the eaves a secret was twittered, was passed from beak to beak. In the nursery below a little twitter of waking children broke the stillness ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... never been known as a defaulter. The knowing ones declared this man worthy to rank high amongst the best of them; but no one knew where he lived, or what he was. He was rarely known to miss a race; and he was conspicuous amongst the crowd in those mysterious purlieus where the plebeian bookmen, who are unworthy to enter the sacred precincts of Tattersall's, mostly do congregate, in utter defiance of the police. No one had ever heard the name of this man; but in default of any more particular cognomen, they had christened him the Major; because in ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... The term implied rather an excess than a defect of nether garment and was applied in scorn by the fashionable wearers of culottes to the plebeian ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey
... a tortoise-shell eye-glass adorned with diamonds and hanging from a long pearl chain. Undine was instantly struck by the opportunities which this toy presented for graceful wrist movements and supercilious turns of the head. It seemed suddenly plebeian and promiscuous to look at the world with a naked eye, and all her floating desires were merged in the wish for a jewelled eye-glass and chain. So violent was this wish that, drawn on in the wake of the owner of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... as Canter and Canterbury gallop, of which the one was at first the mere shorthand expression of the other, were at one period interchanged, and for the same reason. The abbreviated form wore the air of plebeian slang at its first introduction, but its convenience favoured it: soon it became reconciled to the ear, then it ceased to be slang, and finally the original form, ceasing to have any apparent advantage of propriety or elegance, dropped into total disuse. Sortes, it is a clear case, inherited ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... old pawnbroker, Mordecai! How she looked! How she stamped the floor with her dainty foot when I hinted at the fact that my maternal grandfather was neither duke nor lord! How she hushed my 'impertinence,' as she styled it, with such invectives as 'fool, idiot, plebeian'! Heigho! But I felt that it was unmanly in me to provoke mother so, and I begged ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... Cowperwoods had become quite friendly. Mrs. Butler rather liked Lillian, though they were of different religious beliefs; and they went driving or shopping together, the younger woman a little critical and ashamed of the elder because of her poor grammar, her Irish accent, her plebeian tastes—as though the Wiggins had not been as plebeian as any. On the other hand the old lady, as she was compelled to admit, was good-natured and good-hearted. She loved to give, since she had plenty, and sent presents here and there to Lillian, the children, and others. "Now youse must ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... entertainer of counts of twenty quarterings and the neighbour of a king—am I to have a plebeian in my house so peasant that he ignores the topic of all society? He shall feel that he does not impose ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... bring down upon him the odium of his circle, but the other would not; and the odium of that circle is the only kind of odium he dreads. Appius Claudius apprehended no odium from his own order—the patrician—from the violation of the daughter of Virginius, of the plebeian order; nor did Sextus Tarquinius of the royal order, apprehend any from the violation of Lucretia, of the patrician order—neither would have been punished by their own order, but they were both punished by the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... to us is NOW as veritably dialect as to that old time it was the chastest English; and even then his materials were essentially dialect when his song was at best pitch. Again, our present dialect, of most plebeian ancestry, may none the less prove worthy. Mark the recognition of its own personal merit in the great new dictionary, where what was, in our own remembrance, the most outlandish dialect, is ...
— Complete Works of James Whitcomb Riley • James Whitcomb Riley
... the senate, and collectively constitute and govern the state. Yet, not all the heads of houses have seats in the senate, but only the tenants of the sacred territory of the city, which has been surveyed and marked by the god Terminus. Hence the great plebeian houses, often richer and nobler than the patrician, were excluded from all share in the government and the honors of the state, because they were not tenants of any portion of the sacred territory. There is here the introduction of an element ...
— The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny • A. O. Brownson
... call them ideas!" he returns, which is delicious and makes you love him. He, too, has his moments of misgiving, apparently in regard to his nobility, and his acceptance of Newman on the basis of something like "manhood suffrage" is very charming. It is of course difficult for a remote plebeian to verify the pictures of legitimist society in "The American," but there is the probable suggestion in them of conditions and principles, and want of principles, of which we get glimpses in our travels abroad; at any rate, they reveal ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... not all of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... peaked roof of the Nautilus Bank, dashed off at a speed of not less than four miles an hour—for it was anything but an Arabian courser which Lynde had hired of honest Deacon Twombly. She was not a handsome animal either—yellow in tint and of the texture of an ancestral hair-trunk, with a plebeian head, and mysterious developments of muscle on the hind legs. She was not a horse for fancy riding; but she had her good points—she had a great many points of one kind and another—among which was her perfect adaptability to rough ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... "Why, certainly," and proceeded to climb up on the car, from whence he cast down with remarkable celerity more than enough chunks to fill their baskets. Then as though not caring to linger any longer amid such plebeian company, he hastened across the network of tracks and was ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... were his only merits, and who yielded to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward us with an indignant countenance, as if he meditated avenging his wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian lineage, stood with his head drooping and his mane hanging about his eyes, with the grieved and sulky air of a lubberly boy sent off to school. Poor Pontiac! his forebodings were but too just; for when I last heard from him, he ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... into an adjoining shop, as they were unknown, the queen ordered one of the footmen to call a common hackney-coach, and they, both entering, drove to the opera-house, with very much the same sense of the ludicrous in being found in so plebeian a vehicle, as a New York lady would feel on passing through Broadway in a hand-cart or on a wheel-barrow. The fun-loving queen was so entertained with the whimsical adventure, that she could not refrain ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... humans to dumb, driven cattle, going, going, for ever going, but non-comprehending the why or the wherefore of it all, beyond the arrogant assumption of "welt-politik." Every refining trait was subordinated to the exigencies of the gospel of force. Not only the plebeian mass, but the exclusive aristocracy, revelled in the brutish impulse that associated all appeals to reason with effeminacy and invested the sword-slash on the student's cheek with the honor ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... now to get Mary and Maud as good husbands as they deserve." And Mary and Maud took the same view. It was in this plebeian household that Rickie spent part of the Christmas vacation. His own home, such as it was, was with the Silts, needy cousins of his father's, and combined to a peculiar degree the restrictions of hospitality with the discomforts of a boarding-house. Such pleasure as he had outside Cambridge ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... those trousers around the house in nesting season. Don't you know the birds are very sensitive just now?" And we have been paying board for our cat on Long Island for a whole year because the birds wouldn't like his society and plebeian ways. ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... had been, compared to the real gem! Mary Anne Kepp had seen varnished boots before the humble flooring of her mother's dwelling was honoured by the tread of Horatio Paget, but what clumsy vulgar boots, and what awkward plebeian feet had worn them! The lodger's slim white hands and arched instep, the patrician curve of his aquiline nose, the perfect grace of his apparel, the high-bred modulation of his courteous accents,—all these had impressed ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... shell-fish or a half-dozen; the element of uncertainty appealed to his sporting instincts. But fishing he had stricken utterly from his list. It was too hard and too dirty. Slogging at the heavy trawls and afterward dressing the catch was too plebeian a business for the son ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... plebeian, Gothical ideas—the ideas of a lawyer of old times, of a lawyer of the Rue Dragon; the lawyers of the Boulevard Malesherbes ...
— Parisian Points of View • Ludovic Halevy
... vice and town horror, dens of prostitution and creaking, overweighted gibbets, as in Villon's poems, utters not a word. All that we can hear is the many-throated yell of mediaeval poets, noble and plebeian, French, Provencal, and German, against the brutishness, the cunning, the cruelty, the hideousness, the heresy of the serf, whose name becomes synonymous with every baseness; which, in mock grammatical style, is declined into every epithet of wickedness; ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... on "the course," which embraced the Strand and the Red Road, to see the richer inhabitants of the city taking their evening drive. Later, however, the haut ton, evidently thinking the Strand was getting too plebeian, confined their evening drive to a place in the stately procession up and down the Red Road, which ...
— Recollections of Calcutta for over Half a Century • Montague Massey
... also," said Grant to me, in his heavy abstracted way, when I had urged this view, "that the very vileness of the life of these ordered plebeian places bears witness to the victory of the human soul. I agree with you. I agree that they have to live in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a fourth-rate civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the majority of people ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... when domiciled under the same roof as at Pisa. Indeed, by this time, if one may take Mr Hunt's own account of the matter, they appear to have become pretty well tired of each other. He had found out that a peer is, as a friend, but as a plebeian, and a great poet not always a high-minded man. His Lordship had, on his part, discovered that something more than smartness or ingenuity is necessary to protect patronage from familiarity. Perhaps intimate acquaintance had also tended to enable him ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... as great borrowers as the old; only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... her a noble and excellent wife, with all the sterling good qualities, which, had I married a fashionable woman, I could never have found. As for my inheritance, I would care little had I but some honest trade by which to live—but that my father thought too plebeian to be introduced in the education of his fashionable son—however, if I can pick his clerk's pocket of a few more bank deposits, with my part of our spoils to-night, I'll do. I'm not always going to be so bad. ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... calling a carriage as they always do. They have a garage full of machines at home, and I don't know how many horses. She said it in a way to make people who had always ridden in public conveyances feel mighty plebeian and poor-folksy, although she insisted that street-cars are lots of fun. 'They give you a funny sensation when they stop.' Those ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... as plebeian as a ripe peach swung in the sun across an old fence, almost and not quite within the grasp of any passer-by. She also inspired appetite, but always somehow escaped plucking and possession. It is doubtful whether anybody ever really tasted her soul—if ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... smug-faced church-and-chapel-goers at home. Labour Members are in the pay of Germany and frequent infamous flats in the West-End. Liberal Cabinet Ministers—sometimes, more shame to them, of decent birth—wince consciously when reminded of the taint of their association with plebeian colleagues. These things, and many more of equal moment, I have learnt from Mr. STANLEY PORTAL HYATT, who in The Way of the Cardines (WERNER LAURIE) describes how Sir Gerald, of that famous family, captured, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 28, 1914 • Various
... plebeian family, as is seen from the fact that he was afterwards tribunus plebis. According to the Pseud.-Cic. in Sallustium declamatio, 13-14, he led an evil life in youth, and brought his father with sorrow to ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton
... bless "Some youth desertless; come, and seek the shade, "Yon lofty groves afford,"—and shew'd the groves,— "While now Sol scorches from heaven's midmost height. "Fear not the forests to explore alone, "But in their deepest shades adventurous go; "A god shall guard thee:—no plebeian god, "But he whose mighty hand the sceptre grasps "Of rule celestial, and the lightening flings. "O fly me not"—for Ioe fled, amaz'd. Now Lerna's pastures, and Lyrcaea's lands With trees thick-planted, far behind were left; When with a sudden mist the god conceal'd The wide-spread earth, and ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Try "Blenheim House" (all the houses here either bear ducal, naval, or frankly plebeian names, I observe). Ring: startling effect—grey-mouldy old person, with skeleton hands folded on woollen tippet, glides in a ghastly manner down passage. They really ought to put up a warning to people with nerves, as M. VAN BEERS does at his Salon Parisien. Feel as if ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 3, 1887 • Various
... that his late Duchess was flirtatious, plebeian in her enthusiasm, not sufficiently careful to please her husband; but the evident truth is that he had a Satanic pride, that he was yellow with jealousy, that he was methodically cruel. His jealousy is shown by the fact that he would allow ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... sacrament four times a year. He was sometimes to be seen in his tent at midnight, on his knees before a crucifix with eyes and hands uplifted. He ate no meat in Lent, and used extraordinary diligence to discover and to punish any man, whether courtier or plebeian, who failed to fast during the whole forty days. He was too good a politician not to know the value of broad phylacteries and long prayers. He was too nice an observer of human nature not to know how easily ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... many places was unsound and even unsafe. Some attempts had been made, I noticed, to infuse new blood into this dwindling frame, by repairing the costly old wood-work here and there with common deal; but it was like the marriage of a reduced old noble to a plebeian pauper, and each party to the ill-assorted union shrunk away from the other. Several of the back windows on the staircase had been darkened or wholly blocked up. In those that remained, there was scarcely any glass; and, through the crumbling frames by which the bad air seemed ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... At this Madame Loiseau's plebeian tendencies got the better of her. "But surely we are not going to sit down calmly here and die of old age! As that is her trade, I don't see that she has any right to refuse one man more than another. Why, she took anybody she could get in ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... What conglomerate plebeian speech of our time could utter the stately grandeur of these Lucretian words, every one of which is ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... of fear as they fly. The starlings, which seemed to disappear for a time, have now returned to the fields near the sea. They have left their wonderful sheen somewhere behind them, and are mottled and plebeian. Still, to see a cloud of them alighting in a field at the end of a swift circle of flight is a pretty ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... alone did not feel that distinguished and predominating affection with which the rest of the family cherished Lucy. She regarded what she termed her daughter's want of spirit as a decided mark that the more plebeian blood of her father predominated in Lucy's veins, and used to call her in derision her Lammermoor Shepherdess. To dislike so gentle and inoffensive a being was impossible; but Lady Ashton preferred her eldest ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... disappointment of one to whom the real situation of affairs had never been revealed before; who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge—like the unconsidered plebeian—had been reduced to bondage; his judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to jeer at ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... completely the old regal authority within the city of Rome, as far as the limits enjoined by the democratic past of the new monarch; in other words, of magistrates additional to the king himself, to allow only the prefect of the city during the king's absence and the tribunes and plebeian aediles appointed for protecting popular freedom to continue in existence, and to abolish the consulship, the censorship, the praetorship, the curule aedileship and the quaestorship.(28) But Caesar subsequently departed from this; he neither accepted the royal title himself, nor did he cancel ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... common language! It has been made the vehicle of an incessant torrent of abuse and misrepresentation of our men, our manners, and our institutions, and even our women—it might be vulgar to designate our plebeian girls as ladies—have not escaped it; and all this is popular, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... heads, beaks, and feet. They fly in troops, and at night perch upon the trees. They are not republican, nor do they appear inclined to declare their independence, having kings, to whom it is said they pay so much respect, that if one of the royal species arrives at the same time with a plebeian sopilote, in sight of a dead body, the latter humbly waits till the sovereign has devoured his share, before he ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... proved false to me. I know that she meets this man. Adrian too knows it, and more of him than he will tell me; and he approves. I am treated like a child. The situation is strange upon every side; Madeleine loving a plebeian—a sailor, not a king's officer—stooping to stolen interviews! Adrian the punctilious, in whose charge Tanty solemnly left her, pretending ignorance, virtually condoning my sister's behaviour! For though ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... regard to this subject, superstitious terror, blank indifference, positive unbelief. The current fancy was that the souls of the chiefs were led, by a god whose name denotes the "eyeball of the sun," to a life in the heavens, while plebeian souls went down to Akea, a lugubrious underground abode. Some thought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others, that they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; others still, that they survived there, subsisting upon lizards and butterflies.5 ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... of in the thirteenth century, obscure and plebeian in the middle of the fourteenth, and wealthy bankers and leaders of the democratic party at its close, culminated in the early part of the fifteenth in the person of Cosmo. The Pater Patriae,—so called, because, having at last absorbed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... became a matter of common gossip that poor little Lady Arthur continued to worship her handsome husband in spite of his obvious neglect, and not having as yet presented him with an heir, she settled herself down into a life of humble apology for her plebeian existence, atoning for it by condoning all his faults and forgiving all his vices, even to the extent of cloaking them before the prying eyes of Sir John, who was persuaded to look upon his son-in-law as a paragon of all the domestic virtues ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy
... king, is, that some of these acted in the office of dictator, which lasted only ten, or it might be twenty days, none, in a charge of longer duration than the consulship of a year; their levies obstructed by plebeian tribunes; often late in taking the field; recalled, before the time, on account of elections; amidst the very busiest efforts of the campaign, their year of office expired; sometimes the rashness, sometimes the perverseness of ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... knocking; she took tea in bed in the morning, and tea in the afternoon in the drawing-room. She would have instituted dinner at seven, but she was a wise woman, and realized that too much tyranny often means revolution and the crumbling of-thrones; therefore the ancient plebeian custom of high tea at six was allowed to persist ...
— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... difference between Town and Gown, is not to be classed with the Tweedledum and Tweedledee difference. It is something more than a mere difference of two letters. The lettered Gown lorded it over the unlettered Town: the plebeian Town was perpetually snubbed by the aristocratic Gown. If Gown even wished to associate with Town, he could only do so under certain restrictions imposed by the statutes; and Town was thus made to feel exceedingly honoured by the gracious condescension ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... swore by him and pointed him out for an example. "I've a new chum, up here," Norris overheard him saying, "a young swell. He's worth any two in the squad." The words fell on the ears of the discarded son like music; and from that moment, he not only found an interest, he took a pride, in his plebeian tasks. ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... be right," I answered, "but after all I have something to offer. I am rich, and Marie is poor. I admit that she is a patrician and that I am a plebeian. But money, after all, counts for something, especially in these days. I don't see how Marie can spend a very happy existence now, but I am determined to make her life a dream of happiness. You will see, my dear Ruth, that my marriage ...
— If Only etc. • Francis Clement Philips and Augustus Harris
... regiments it was usual to promote one or two deserving sergeants every year. In others the necessary certificate of birth could be signed by any nobleman and was often obtained from greed or good-nature. Moreover, an order of 1750 had provided that officers of plebeian extraction should sometimes be ennobled for distinguished services. But in 1781, a new rule was established. No one could thenceforth receive a commission as second lieutenant who could not show four generations of nobility ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... civic troops, Feel with their friends; for who is he amongst them Whose brethren, parents, children, wives, or sisters, Have not partook[395] oppression, or pollution, From the patricians? And the hopeless war Against the Genoese, which is still maintained 470 With the plebeian blood, and treasure wrung From their hard earnings, has inflamed them further: Even now—but, I forget that speaking thus, Perhaps I pass the sentence ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... think a little warm drink before going to bed upon a night when owls hoot and chimnies are to be blown down, prepared by the small hands that one loves, and that all admire; where a dimple takes place of what in a plebeian hand is a knuckle, and the round fingers taper gently off toward points that are touched with damask and bordered with little rims of ivory; where bright eyes beam with kindness as well as wit; and words fall ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... only plebeian envy, and I dare say, if I were a lovely duchess of the realm, I would ride in a coach-and-six, with a coronet on the top of my bonnet and a robe of velvet and ermine even ...
— Little Travels and Roadside Sketches • William Makepeace Thackeray
... as the door opened again, and was surprised when he beheld the singular person who answered to the feudal name of Tudor, and the plebeian name of Brown. ...
— The Waif of the "Cynthia" • Andre Laurie and Jules Verne
... intentness of aspect. Her pure white skin was flat on the bone; the lips came forward in a soft curve, and, if they were not artistically stained, were triumphantly fresh. Here, in any case, she beat her rival, whose mouth had the plebeian beauty's fault of being too straight in a line, and was not trained, apparently, to tricks ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... deal of friction between the Albemarle or Carteret and the Charleston set, the former being from Virginia, while the latter was, as we have seen, a little given to kindergarten aristocracy and ofttimes tripped up on their parade swords while at the plough. Of course outside of this were the plebeian people, or copperas-culottes, who did the work; but Lord Shaftesbury for some time, as we have seen, lived in a baronial shed and had his arms worked on the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... well say to the poet who exhausts himself, and whose genius is consuming his health, 'Pause in the midst of the inspiration which carries you away!' No! I could not; I—I! abdicate this royalty which I exercised, and return, ruined, ashamed, mocked, to the state of a plebeian—unknown; give this triumph to my rivals, whom I had until then defied, ruled, crushed! No, no, I could not! not voluntarily, at least. The fatal day came, when, for the first time, my money was wanting. I was as surprised as if this moment ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... honour their humble home as long as she liked. She at once suppressed O'Iwa's rather futile attempts to aid in her rough household work. It had been the lady's part to direct her maids in their more repugnant tasks, and now brought right under her hand in this plebeian household. O'Iwa never had undergone the harsher lot of her ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... in which the distinctions of an aristocratic society and the differences of blood and country were obliterated. The distinctions of race and nationality, of magistrate and father of a family, of patrician and plebeian, of citizen and foreigner, were abolished; all were but men, and in order to recruit members, those religions worked upon man ...
— The Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism • Franz Cumont
... the prelate of the old regime disappearing by degrees, the younger son of a noble family, promoted by favor and very young, endowed with a large income and much more a man of the world than of the Church. In 1789, out of 134 bishops or archbishops, only 5 were of plebeian origin; in 1889, out of 90 bishops or archbishops there are only 4 of them nobles;[5221] previous to the Revolution, the titular of an Episcopal see enjoyed, on the average, a revenue of 100,000 francs; at the present day, he receives only ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 6 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 2 (of 2) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... and she chuckled audibly over the two schoolgirls' enjoyment of the fare. Then at last the meal was over, and she heaved a sigh of relief that all had passed off without catastrophe and with credit to the family. No one had broken the fragile glass, no one had betrayed a plebeian ignorance of the convenances, nor showed ill-bred surprise. They had examined the menu with an understanding air, as though every other name was not as Greek to their ears, and had refrained from any signs of approval more noticeable than pressures of feet under the table, ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... reason is always reason; they have an intrinsick and unalterable value, and constitute that intellectual gold which defies destruction; but gold may be so concealed in baser matter, that only a chymist can recover it; sense may be so hidden in unrefined and plebeian words, that none but philosophers can distinguish it; and both may be so buried in impurities, as not to pay the cost ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the moon on the open cotton-bolls in the fields. The forests were giving way, the region of swamp and bayou. The habitations of man were at hand, and when at last the dug-out was run in to a plantation landing, and Kenneth Gordon was released from his cramped posture in that plebeian craft, he felt so averse to his mission, such a frivolous, reluctant distaste that he marvelled how he was to go through with it at all, as he took his way along the serpentine curves of the "dirt road," preceded by his guide, still with ...
— The Phantom Of Bogue Holauba - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... was beside Deena, gave a sniff—if so fine a lady could be suspected of such a plebeian way ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... loads grumbled slowly along, so slowly that it was nearly evening, and their shadows preceded them by rods when they reached the little prairie town. They stopped to water their teams; and Ole, true to the instincts of his plebeian ancestry, went in search of a glass of beer. He returned, quickly, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... him onward in his impetuous career. The sun glanced between the trees as they passed the cottage door. Then came the Magistrate's Clerk, faultlessly attired, with florid face and glittering eyeglass, who, in an ambitious youth, finding his name too suggestive of plebeian blood, changed a vowel in it, and thereby gave an aristocratic flavour to the title of his partnership, and who acquired, with this new dignity, the taste for a monocle, a horse, and a good cigar. Following were the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... and honourable family, which had been allied to the crown; and requesting that, if he could not be favoured with the species of death which in cases of treason distinguishes the nobleman from the plebeian, he might at least, out of consideration for his family, be allowed to suffer in the Tower, rather than at the common place of execution; but this indulgence was refused. From his return to the Tower to the day of his execution, he betrayed no mark of apprehension or impatience, but regulated ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... itself was elaborate, and there was a butler whose majestic dignity and importance made even Edwards seem plebeian by comparison. ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Personage either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... means of a cog-wheel railway or any other contrivance that uses steam or electricity as a motor. Indeed, the only motor available at the time of our ascent—that is, for the final climb—was "shank's horses," very useful and mostly safe, even if a little plebeian. We had been wise enough not to plunge at once among the heights, having spent almost a week rambling over the plains, mesas, foothills, and lower ranges, then had been occupied for five or six days more in exploring ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... of atoms has its positive and negative electrical point, and as each atom in turn obeys the same law, so we see the positive and negative poles of North and South again reflected in the rapidly increasing divisions among us of Conservatives, who, by a singular fatality, still indicate the plebeian origin which they would now so gladly disown by the term Democrats; and, on the other hand, of Republicans, nick-named at present Radicals—somewhat unjustly; since the term is strictly applicable only to a very ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... it now. The Princess and her escort—the plebeian upstart—were quite near at hand, and, to the dismay of the smokers, apparently were unaware of their presence in the shadows. Chase's heart was boiling with disappointed rage. His idol had fallen, from a tremendous height to a depth which ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... weeks—the ceaseless mockery of Miss Catheron's soft, scornful tones, the silent contempt and derision of her hard black eyes. What should she wear? how should she act? What if she made some absurd blunder, betraying her plebeian birth and breeding? What if she mortified her thin-skinned husband? Oh! why was it necessary ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... Nicephorus; "is it for such as thou to suppose for a moment that the music which the wife and daughter of the Emperor might condescend to make, was intended to afford either matter of pleasure or of criticism to every plebeian barbarian who might hear them? Begone from this place! nor dare, on any pretext, again to appear before mine eyes— under allowance always ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... not sorry to have an excuse for paying a visit to the Carmelite Convent; and in case of failure, it will be as well to have a Florentine noble amongst us. Because the statutes of our glorious Republic are somewhat unequal in their application; thus, for instance, if a plebeian commit sacrilege, he is punished with death; but a patrician is merely reprimanded by the judge and mulcted in a sum which is devoted to religious purposes. In this latter case, too, the companions of the patrician ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question I never could solve; but having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance. I had always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were venom in my ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William Wilson came also to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted with the name because ...
— Selections From Poe • J. Montgomery Gambrill
... and waving the other as he spoke. His voice was full of passion, his eyes flashed fire, and his brow was bathed in sweat. There seemed to be some weird power in his words as in those of the prophets of old. The more than plebeian simplicity of his dress still further increased the pride of his gestures and the impressiveness of his voice. The French Revolution has shown since that in the ranks of the people there was no lack of eloquence or of pitiless logic; but what I saw ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... to be found low down in the social scale; they crawl and swarm all around us—even in the highest social positions. You have only to look at your own fine, distinguished Mayor! My brother Peter is every bit as plebeian as anyone that walks in two ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... social life for a reserved and difficult personality. His friends put no one else beside him; and his colleagues in the Cabinet were well aware that he represented the keystone in their arch. But the man in the street, whether of the aristocratic or plebeian sort, knew comparatively little about him. All of which, combined with the special knowledge of an inner circle, helped still more to concentrate public attention on the convictions, the temperament, and the ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... race, just as plainly marked by nature as of a higher and finer grade than the common run of people as the white pine is marked in its form, its stature, its bark, its delicate foliage, as belonging to the nobility of the forest; and the pitch pine, stubbed, rough, coarse-haired, as of the plebeian order. Only the strange thing is to see in what a capricious way our natural nobility is distributed. The last born nobleman I have seen, I saw this morning; he was pulling a rope that was fastened to a Maine schooner loaded with lumber. I should ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... placed the temple of patrician, and that of plebeian modesty. At the foot of this hill is seen the temple of Vesta, which yet remains whole, though it has been often menaced by the inundations of the Tiber. Not far from thence is the ruin of a prison for debt, where it is said a fine trait of filial piety was displayed, which is pretty generally ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... not in English novels but only in the drama. In characterization Richardson's great strength lay with his women—he knew the feminine mind and spirit through and through. His first heroine, Pamela, is a plebeian serving-maid, and his second, Clarissa, a fine-spirited young lady of the wealthy class, but both are perfectly and completely true and living, throughout all their terribly complex and trying experiences. Men, on the other ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... LORD, Sudden your noble limbs your coursers bore, From Berkshire's hills to Avon's distant shore: And eager to preserve from foul disgrace, Th' unsullied honors of a noble race, Rather than have it said you meanly stood To stain your faulchion with Plebeian blood, You yielded bravely to a harsher fate, And made submissions to the man you hate. To save their dignity from scandal's breath, Thousands have fearless fac'd approaching death; Your dauntless action merits more applause, Who courted infamy ...
— An Heroic Epistle to the Right Honourable the Lord Craven (3rd Ed.) • William Combe
... called up the picture of a brilliant future, wherein gallant deeds in arms should place him among the most renowned knights of Christendom. The ideal character he proposed for himself involving a certain regard for his word, Francis's mind revolted from imitating the plebeian duplicity of his wily predecessor, Louis the Eleventh—a king who enjoyed the undesirable reputation of never having made a promise which he intended in good faith to keep. The memory of the disingenuous ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... world, in a heap of tailings out here among these mines, would you immediately conclude that, because you had found it there, it must be indigenous to the spot? Look at that girl, and tell me if there is one trace in feature, in form, in manner, or in speech, of plebeian blood, and then will you tell me that she is in any way connected with people such as these? They are not merely plebeian, they are low, debased, criminal. They are criminals of the deepest dye, not only capable of any villainy, but already guilty, and to such a degree that their ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... it. Wherein was the object of keeping it open for Belle Todd and himself when more and more he wished for semi-solitude? Noise and crowds and luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered, the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor moral. He liked to relive ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... at a distance)—Ver. 11. One of the audience, probably a plebeian who has no seat, but is standing in a remote part of the theatre, is supposed to exclaim in a rude manner that he cannot hear what the actor says. On this the speaker tells him that he had better come nearer; and if he cannot find a seat, there is room for him to ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... his aides-de-camp who most pleased the Emperor was perhaps the Count of Narbonne, knight of honor of one of the daughters of Louis XV., Minister of War under Louis XVI. The most rigid, the most precise etiquette prevailed in the Imperial residences. The high dignitaries and marshals concealed their plebeian names under pompous titles of princes and dukes. Madame de Mailly, the widow of a marshal of the royal period, had been admitted to the rank and privileges of the wives of the grand officers of the crown, and had figured as a marshal's widow, at the reception of ...
— The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... derived from the same source as the exaggerated statement of Archbishop Des Ursins, that on another occasion Henry promised that his plebeian soldiers should be ennobled and invested with collars of SS. This cannot be taken directly from Des Ursins, whose history of the reign of Charles VI., though written in the fifteenth century, was ...
— The Battaile of Agincourt • Michael Drayton
... his lordship should have the prayer book, for his oath, belonging to the House of Peers. Here, also, his dignity was triumphant, though it cost the whole assembly a full quarter of an hour; while another prayer book was officially at hand, in the general post for plebeian witnesses. ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madam D'Arblay Volume 2 • Madame D'Arblay
... and very strongly marked. There was, in consequence of it, infinite difficulty in the election of consuls. At last the consuls were chosen, one from each party. The name of the patrician was Paulus AEmilius. The name of the plebeian was Varro. They were inducted into office, and were thus put jointly into possession of a vast power, to wield which with any efficiency and success would seem to require union and harmony in those who held it, and yet AEmilius ...
— Hannibal - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... mania for ancestors does not often take such extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian and obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons (a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are "a branch of the baronial family of Scalers, or De Scallariis, which flourished in Aquitaine ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... ancient noblesse, but in low circumstances, was in a coffee-house at Paris, where was Julien, the great manufacturer at the Gobelins, of the fine tapestry, so much distinguished both for the figures and the colours. The chevalier's carriage was very old. Says Julien, with a plebeian insolence, 'I think, sir, you had better have your carriage new painted.' The chevalier looked at him with indignant contempt, and answered, 'Well, sir. you may take it home and DYE it!' All the ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... in these small things when extreme political superstitions invest them, that in some royal instances even to idiot imbecility they have imparted potency. But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization. Nor, will the tragic dramatist who would depict mortal indomitableness in its fullest sweep and direct swing, ever forget a hint, incidentally so important in his art, as the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... travels without a guard, and the highways are safe.[3108] There is longer any class or category of citizens oppressed or excluded from the common law, the latest Jacobin decrees and the forced loan have been at once revoked: noble or plebeian, ecclesiastic or layman, rich or poor, former emigre or former terrorist, every man, whatever his past, his condition, or his opinions, now enjoys his private property and his legal rights; he has no longer to fear the violence of the opposite party; he may relay on the protection of the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... said Betty, softening a little. But she did not like the woman, who was not frankly plebeian, but had buttered herself over with a coat of third-rate pretentiousness. And her voice and method of speech were irritating. She had a fat inflection and the longest drawl Betty had ever heard. Upon every fourth or fifth ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton
... room," were rolled up, while the faint glimmer of a tallow candle within, indicated that the room possessed an occupant. Who could it be? Possibly it was John, the proud man, who lived in Kentucky, and who, to please his wealthy bride exchanged the plebeian name of Nichols, for that of Livingstone, which his high-born lady fancied was more aristocratic ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... extensively worn in Southern than in Northern Europe; more, as it is, in Southern England than in Northern Scotland. Hence, although we find many iron skull-caps, like hats, used by the military in the fifteenth century; and although we find traces of hats even in the plebeian costumes of the middle ages—yet we look upon the Spanish and Italian hat of the sixteenth century, as the more immediate origin of its degenerate successor, the actual chapeau. We need not trace the variations of its form through the seventeenth century, from the high-crowned ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various |
