"Cringing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... mercy of the avarice and caprice of Rome. He heard with indignation how scornfully the 'rough and simple Germans' were spoken of in Italy, how even on German soil the Roman emissaries openly paraded their arrogance, how some Germans, unworthy of the name, pandered to such scorn and contempt by a cringing servility which made them crouch before the Papal chair and sue for favour and office. He warned them to prepare for a mighty outburst of German liberty, already well-nigh strangled by Rome. At the same time he denounced the vices of his own countrymen, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... scoffs at sword and crown, Or panic-blinded stabs and slays: Blatant he bids the world bow down, Or cringing begs ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... well understood, Hath frequent power of doing good: Then fancy that the thing is done, As if the power and will were one. Thus oft the cheated crowd adore The thriving knaves that keep them poor. 20 The cringing train of power survey: What creatures are so low as they! With what obsequiousness they bend! To what vile actions condescend! Their rise is on their meanness built, And flattery is their smallest guilt. What homage, rev'rence, adoration, In every ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... should repent of his present sincere intentions. Once again, then, I revisited this abhorred manor with the ancient chief of the brigands transformed into a Trappist. He showed himself so humble and cringing in my presence, he made so light of his brother's life, and expressed such abject submission that I was filled with disgust, and after a few moments begged him not to speak to me any more. Keeping in touch with the mounted police outside, we began our search for the secret chamber. ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... had once a chaplain, who gave me a surfeit of the whole tribe. The meanest sycophant, yet the most impertinent busy-body—always cringing, yet always intriguing—wanting to govern the whole family, and at the same time every creature's humble servant—fawning to my lord the bishop, insolent to the poor curate—anathematizing all who differed from ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... sense of equality is noticeable. Shopkeepers and their assistants are not the cringing, obsequious slaves that we know so well in England. There is none of that bowing and smirking, superfluous "sir"-ing and "ma'am"-ing, and elaborate deference to customers that prevails at home. Here we are all freemen and equals; and the Auckland shopman meets his customer with a shake of ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... made only to be duped, and spendthrift sons; of jealous husbands, and dull wives; of witty, cunning, and wholly unscrupulous slaves; of parasites, lost to all self-respect; of traffickers in vice of both sexes, sometimes cringing, sometimes threatening, but almost always outwitted by a duplicity superior to their own; of members of the demi- monde, whose beauty is only equalled by their shameless venality, though some of them enlist our sympathies by constancy in love, others ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... the individual whom Duncan had observed to stand forth with his friend, previously to the desperate trial of speed; and who, instead of joining in the chase, had remained, throughout its turbulent uproar, like a cringing statue, expressive of shame and disgrace. Though not a hand had been extended to greet him, nor yet an eye had condescended to watch his movements, he had also entered the lodge, as though impelled by a fate to whose ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... business to howl at him. We are answerable for his living, and moving, and having his being—the few impulsive people who gird at him should rather turn in shame and try to make some impression on the huge, cringing, slavering crowd who make the plutocrat's pompous ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... that, when their parson propounded a theory that gave a shock to their natural affections, they submitted with a kind of heroic pride, however much their hearts might make silent protest, and the grounds of such a protest they felt a cringing unwillingness to investigate. There was a determined shackling of all the passional nature. What wonder that religion took a harsh aspect? As if intellectual adhesion to theological formulas were to pave our way to a knowledge of the Infinite!—as if our sensibilities were to be outraged ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... scenes. Alternate drunkenness and inordinate affection for me, or sullen silence and cringing fear. Oh, of all the frightful moments there are in life, there can be none so dark as those that some women have to suffer from the drunken ...
— The Reflections of Ambrosine - A Novel • Elinor Glyn
... contingency was always uppermost in his mind. Not from any feeling of personal pride, for of a truth vanity is a mortal sin, but because Mistress Charity had of late cast uncommonly kind eyes on that cringing worm, Master Courage Toogood, and the latter, emboldened by the minx's favors, had been more than usually ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... whose sweet voices had so long gone up like a spirit's on the air, now sped their way with a faint and death-like gurgle; the laurel, pine, and cedar, disdaining to be poor pensioners on the bounties of a gushing sunshine, or, with a cringing obsequiousness, to yield conformity to the golden mutations of a passing hour, expanded their foliage of living green, unchanged amidst the bleakest ruins of winter, while the stern-browed year, old, wrinkled, and hoary, drew nearer and nearer his death-time. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... leaving the women to serve them, came forth. He ordinarily gave himself out as an Afrikander. You see in him a whiskered, dark-complexioned, good-looking man of twenty-six, but looking older, whose regard was either insolent or cringing, according to circumstances, and whose smile was an evil leer. The owner of the waggons stood waiting near the closed-up foremost one, the yellow-haired child on his arm. He looked keenly at the landlord, Bough, and the man's hand went involuntarily ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... protruding forehead, retreating eyes, and hair of a deep red. He wore a long black surtout reaching nearly to his ankles, short black trousers, high shoes, and cotton stockings of a bluish grey. He had a cringing manner, but a very harsh voice; and his blandest smiles were so extremely forbidding, that to have had his company under the least repulsive circumstances, one would have wished him to be out of temper that ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... little. I'm going to put them in my bungalow—the two little upstair rooms shall be theirs. When I run down to find myself it will be homey to see the two shining, old faces there to greet me. They are not a bit cringing; I think they know how much they will mean to me. They consider me rather immoral, I know, but that ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... Augsburg and left her there. But I said to myself then that, like many men, he had his moods of the beast which he could not control, and thought no more about it. Now his mood of the beast touches me. Society keeps such men in check; he will marry Laura Lindsay and make an excellent, cringing husband, waiting for Lindsay's savings. You see," he ended, turning to his work-table, "I suppose he felt released from the bonds of society by the way we live, ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... high they built the gallows to hang a man, and discussed the probability of the event being public. They speculated on the manner in which Joe would go to his death, whether boldly, with his head up that way, or cringing and afraid, his proud heart and spirit broken, and whether he would confess at the end or carry his secret with him to the grave. Then they branched off into discussions of the pain of hanging, and wondered whether it was a ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... murder or arson before our eyes, we had as lief hang a dozen as one: but when it comes to tracing complicity and responsibility in the deaths of a few screaming tenants of firetrap tenements, a death unnecessary perhaps, but for the bursting of the fire hose—then we are at fault. The cringing wretch who lit the oilsoaked rags in the cellar we seize in triumph. He did it. Him we can hang. "The soul that sinneth it shall die." But if the fire is "an accident," owing to "a defective flue," if the fire-escape breaks, the stairs give away under a little extra weight, or ill-built ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... a note of consciousness in her rapture, something like a patronizing approval of the sky by one who looked at it with a professional eye. Nevertheless, I felt that my poor soul was cringing before her ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... that was offered to the Queen by such men as Spenser, Raleigh, Essex, Shakespeare, and Sidney, the most noble, chivalrous, and gifted spirits that ever gathered round a throne, is not to be judged of as the flattery which cringing courtiers pay to a dreaded tyrant; but rather as the outpouring of a general enthusiasm, the echo of the stirring voice of chivalry, and the expression of the feelings of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... writing just as I felt in those fervent days of my youth, when the quick blood would throb at my heart and burn in my cheek at any slight to the real manhood and worth I saw in him, and preference for the poor cringing courtiers I despised. The thought of those old days has brought me back to the story as all then seemed to me—the high-spirited, hot-tempered maiden, who had missed all her small chances of even being mild and meek in the troubles at ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... confederated whole? In whatever situation we are placed, our greater or less degree of happiness must be derived from ourselves. Happiness is in a great measure the result of our own dispositions and actions. Let us conduct uprightly and justly; with propriety and steadiness; not servilely cringing for favor, nor arrogantly claiming more attention and respect than our due; let us bear with fortitude the providential and unavoidable evils of life, and we shall spend our days with ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster
... the cruel chains Clasped the slim ankles and the wounded hands, But with soft, cringing attitudes in vain She strove to shield her from that ardent glance. So, clinging to the walls of some old manse, The rose-vine strives to shield her tender flowers, When the rude wind, as autumn weeks advance, Beats on ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... time when he was cringing before you and making protestations of devotion! Oh, the mean wretches! I will have nothing to do with your Pushkin, and your daughter shall not set foot in ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... most children, she had always dreamed of a mysterious fate for herself, different from the commonplace routine around her. Ruth's revelations, far from daunting her, far from making her feel like cringing before the world in gratitude for its tolerance of her bar sinister, seemed a fascinatingly tragic confirmation of her romantic longings and beliefs. No doubt it was the difference from the common lot that had attracted Sam to her; and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... mien as he entered and reluctantly showed himself were more than enough to dissipate any doubts which the courtiers had hitherto entertained; the former being as gloomy and downcast as the latter was timid and cringing. It is true he made some attempt at first, and for a time, to face the matter out; stammering and stuttering, and looking piteously to the Queen for help. But he could not long delay the crisis, nor deny ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... back into his corner like a scared child, and Rachel's eyes began to dance. Something in the situation pleased her wonderfully. That Dan, who had scarcely spoken to her since the tragedy of his brother's death, should be cringing and pleading before her, all his prideful gloom quivering into a girlish terror of being seen in old clothes, was very satisfying to her. She would have liked to prolong the situation, but could not bring herself ...
— Joyce's Investments - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... as I foretold! The wretches will forswear the sacred'st ties, Cringing for life. Serpents, ye all shall die. So wills the Landgrave; so the court affirms. Your daughter shall be first, whose wanton arts Have brought destruction on a ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... ambition can creep as well as soar. The pride of no person in a flourishing condition is more justly to be dreaded than that of him who is mean and cringing under a ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou
... that of the clergy can find its limit in the pulpit and the confessional. Let us go into the open. The sun of liberty is blazing bright for us all, under the blue skies of Canada. To witness at times, our cringing spirit, our childlike timidity, our cowardice, one would think that we were still under the penal laws and legal disabilities known by our fathers and forefathers. "What is there to check our dash forward?" we would ask with ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... utter disgust at the cringing form. Never had he seen anything in the world that he detested more. Pell's fingers were ...
— The Bad Man • Charles Hanson Towne
... head to speak, when suddenly a shadow fell upon them. It was that of the head eunuch, Mesrour, a fat, cunning-faced man, with a cringing air. Low he ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... The cringing subserviency of political men was equal to their corruption. When George I died, and it was believed that Sir Spencer Compton would succeed to the power of Sir Robert Walpole, at the king's reception "Sir Robert walked through these rooms as if they had been still empty; his presence, that used ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... an astronomer," cried Mr. Sagittarius, cringing in the voluminous waistcoat of Mr. Ferdinand. "I am an outside broker. I swear it. My dress, my manner proclaim the fact. Sophronia, tell the gentleman that I am an outside broker and that all Margate has ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... went. Sture at once issued a broadside to the people, calling them to arms. He likewise sent his messengers to Trolle, to beg him to use his influence against the enemies of Sweden. The deposed archbishop, now cringing before his victor, yielded his assent. Sture, thus emboldened, moved forward with his army to meet the Danes. Knowing that they were advancing through the province of Vestergoetland, and that their line of march in the winter season would be across the lakes, Sture took up ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... looked at her to see if she was in her senses: it was not the first time he had suspected her of being deranged on this one subject. But no: she was pale as death, she was cringing, wincing, quivering, and her eyes roving to and fro; a picture not of frenzy, but ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Coblenz they were servile, cringing, fawning, ready to lick the boots of the Americans, loading them with offers of every food and drink and joy they had. Thus they began. Soon, finding that the Americans did not cut their throats, ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... servility, and given the name of virtue to such imbecilities as meekness and self-sacrifice. He calls upon the individual to exalt himself. The man of {110} the future is to be the man of self-mastery and virile force, 'the Superman,' who is to crush under his heel the cringing herd of weaklings who have hitherto possessed the world. The earth is for the strong, the capable, the few. A mighty race, self-assertive, full of vitality and will, is the goal of humanity. The vital significance of Nietzsche's radicalism ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander
... this homily with a half-cringing, half-impudent air; when it was finished he lifted his ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... think it clever currying favour with aunt by—by crawling to her," she cried, "then I don't! If you want to—to keep my respect, you'll have to act like a man, a man with self-respect! I—I hate to see you cringing to aunt, it makes me detest you. What does it matter if she has money? Do you want her money? Do you want her money more than ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... his little grating, Simon quickly opens the door, and with fawning humility entreats her to step into his poor room, and there he stands, cringing and mopping his eyes, in dreadful apprehension, as having doubtless gathered from some about the house how matters stood ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... so absolute in the emperor's grace that one unacquainted with courts would scarce believe the servility with which all kinds of persons who entered the walls of the palace behaved towards me. A bow, a smile, a nod from me, as I passed through cringing crowds, were esteemed as signal favors; but a gracious word made any one happy; and, indeed, had this real benefit attending it, that it drew on the person on whom it was bestowed a very great degree of respect from all others; for these are of current value in ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... his veranda, awaiting this same judge, annoyed as two boats came in without the expected guest. And never for one instant did he dream that his creature sat closeted with Plank, tremulous, sallow, nearing the edge of cringing avowal—only held back from utter collapse by the agonising necessity of completing a bargain that might save himself from the degradation of the punishment that had seemed inevitable. All day long he sat with Plank. Nobody except those ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the galleys, you may imagine from what you know of him. He played the 'repentant criminal,' overflowing with professions of sorrow for the past, and amendment in future, and cringing and crouching at the feet of the officials of the prison. He carried on this comedy so successfully, that, after three years and a half, he was pardoned. But he had not lost his time in prison. ...
— The Clique of Gold • Emile Gaboriau
... extravagant way of life. Though he became the favourite and leader of young men who were much his superiors in wealth and station, he was much too generous to endeavour to propitiate them by any meanness or cringing on his own part, and would not neglect the humblest man of his acquaintance in order to curry favour with the richest young grandee in the university. His name is still remembered at the Union Debating ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... staring at Birdalone and moved not a while; and she stood with her hands before her face cringing before him. Then he raised his arm and cast the weapon far into the bushes of the bank- side, and then came forward and stood before Birdalone, and drew down her hands from her face and stared in the eyes of her, holding her by ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... cringing to her; at all events he scarcely minded it in a tete-a-tete; she was unique. He would have run to her whistle, and fawned at her kick. She had agreed to marry him in a few weeks' time, and his head swam at the prospect. Visions of the future dazzled him. When he saw ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... He was cringing, cowering, with closed eyes, flattened to the ground, and sniffing softly, in an agony ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... sat with bloated eyes across from her. The waiter looked on sardonically. At another table were two derelicts from one of the Garden side shows. A truculent and beady-eyed dwarf whose face hardly showed above the boards was brow-beating a cringing giant of unbelievable immensity. "You crabbed my act, you big stiff," shrilled the midget truculently—and his huge vis-a-vis fell into a volume of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... cringing letter. That is something else to think of. I'll answer it. I am in a fine humor ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... come to it—he'll go just like the rest." And so Young Denny's final weakening had not been so unexpected as it might have been. And more than once, too, when the Judge's harsh censure of him who had always been his stanchest supporter had left Old Jerry cringing in his place beside the stove, they had all felt the justice if not a premonition of final retribution to come. It was the debonaire dare-deviltry of Old Jerry's defiance rather than its unexpectedness which had proved its ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... remote, to the dwellers in Judah. Manasseh had mixed so much with Christians, and had been treated by the Protector so completely as an equal, that he retained but little of the servility of tone or manner, and less of the cringing and submissive demeanour, that characterised his tribe; he therefore spoke boldly to Sir Willmott Burrell, after a burst of strong and bitter feeling. He knew himself protected by the ruler of England, and felt ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... there, her every power of thought, of motion, numbed. Breathing not, she only stared in a wild kind of cringing amazement, as perhaps you might do if you should ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the catechism to which he was there forced to submit is very ominous. A seat in the House of Commons will cease to be an object of ambition to honourable and independent men, if it can only be obtained by cringing and servility to the rabble of great towns, and when it shall be established that the member is to be a slave, bound hand and foot by pledges, and responsible for every vote he gives to masters who are equally tyrannical and unreasonable. I know ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... to telephone, he encountered Lady, very woebegone and cringing, at the door. When he returned, he beheld the remorseful little gold-and-white vixen licking her mate's hurt shoulder and wagging a propitiatory tail in plea for forgiveness from the dog she had bitten and from the Master whose Law she ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... son to read. Naturally quick and intelligent, young Deschenaux made rapid progress and soon found something to do in the office of Intendant Hocquart where Bigot found him and succeeded in having him appointed clerk in the Colonial Office at Quebec. Industrious, but at heart a sycophant, by dint of cringing he won the good graces of Bigot, who soon put unlimited trust in him, to that degree as to do nothing without Deschenaux's aid, but Deschenaux was vain, ambitious, haughty and overbearing and of such inordinate greed, that he was in the habit of boasting 'that to get ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... and being only a human woman, naturally abused it a little. Thus to see white men, whom all her life she had revered, cringing for her favour, went ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... passion. The other, Conrad, after the escape from prison; a strong man broken in spirit, wasted with disease, a great shell of a man—one who is legally dead, with the prison pallor, the shambling walk, the cringing manner, the furtive eyes. But oh, that piteous salute at that point when the priest dismisses him, and the wrecked giant, timid as a child, humbly, deprecatingly touches the priest's hand with his finger-tips and then kisses them devoutly! ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... were too thick for two abreast, the officer would shove his captive ahead of himself to break the way, and until the breach was clear, a knife-point pressed sharply into the back effectively prevented a dash. But the seamen were not in such a fix. Little, in bursting through a cane brake, cringing with the pain of a sharp stab between his shoulders, found himself momentarily alongside one of the sailors of his own ship; and, daring even further visitation of the knife, he let fly the canes with a rattling ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... fray, Nor cut each others' throats, for pay. 40 Of beasts, it is confess'd, the ape Comes nearest us in human shape; Like man he imitates each fashion, And malice is his ruling passion; But both in malice and grimaces 45 A courtier any ape surpasses. Behold him humbly cringing wait Upon a minister of state; View him soon after to inferiors, Aping the conduct of superiors; 50 He promises with equal air, And to perform takes equal care. He in his turn finds imitators; At court, the porters, lacqueys, waiters, Their master's manners still contract, 55 And footmen, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... no way responsible. And factions flourish, because there is always a third party to whom to resort, who may be flattered if his rank be high, bribed if it be low, whose favour can be gained in either case by cringing and by subservience and tale-bearing. As regards the condition of agriculture in India and the poverty of the agricultural population, the Bureaucracy ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant
... his fare," Arnold said, austerely, "and he deserved nothing—but a fine, perhaps." The man was suppliant before them, cringing, salaaming, holding joined palms open. Hilda lifted her head and looked over the shoulders of the little rabble, where the sun stood golden upon the roadside and two naked children played with a torn pink kite. Something seemed to gather ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... enveloped in an ample gown, with his hat surrounded with a green cord and golden tassels, would mysteriously shut himself up in M. Isidore Gaufre's office for an hour; and then would be reconducted to the top of the steps by the cringing proprietor, profuse with his "Monseigneur," and obsequiously bowing under the haughty benediction of two fingers ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... She had passed beyond tears and pleading and crying out. It was given Kendric then to learn that when the crisis had come it found in the girl's heart a courage to sustain her. Her face was set, her attitude was no longer cringing. In such tender breasts as Betty's have beat the ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... hours ago, and we three were calmly working together," said West sadly; "and I looked upon Anson as an unsatisfactory fellow whom I never could like, but whose worst faults were being a cringing kind of bore and a perfect ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... to blame your reverence," said Rodin, cringing almost to the ground. "But all that will be required is to confine this man ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... to be thinking more of your job than of the poor lad that's lost," and Captain Barcus, who had risen to his feet, looked down in contempt upon the cringing man. "My log will say he was last seen leaning over the starb'rd rail. That he was not at dinner nor at tea, and that you didn't miss him till after tea and long after dark, though 'tis likely he was lost overboard before ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... turn into gold. His brain dwelt with an enthusiasm wholly new to him upon the dreams it conjured up. He felt twenty years younger. His fears had gone, and with them his humility. He saw himself no longer the poor librarian in his slippers and shabby clothes, cringing to his employer, spending his days in studying the forgeries he afterwards executed during the night, hoarding his ill-gotten gains with jealous secrecy, afraid to show to his few associates that he had accumulated a little wealth, ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... not dry," said the other excitedly; "he drules. One sees the fly-blown old fop drule and look wise. His vile wisdom is made the viler by his vile rheuminess. The bowing and cringing, time-serving old sinner—is such an one to give manly precepts to youth? The discreet, decorous, old dotard-of-state; senile prudence; fatuous soullessness! The ribanded old dog is paralytic all down one side, and ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... disgraced the Guard but we cannot for reasons of state publicly disgrace you. But you shall be shot—shot like a dog! You shall not meet death face to face as many a brave man has met it, but you shall be shot, cringing with your back to the gun-muzzles—like ...
— A Modern Mercenary • Kate Prichard and Hesketh Vernon Hesketh-Prichard
... himself in adversity. His gallantry, which was always delightful to the fair objects of it, was of a nature so kind, so gentlemanly, and so respectful, that not even a lover could have taken offence at it. If upon any occasion he shewed any symptoms of haughtiness, it was to the cringing nobles who lavished their adulation upon him till it became fulsome. He often took pleasure in seeing how long he could make them dance attendance upon him for a single favour. To such of his own countrymen as by chance visited Paris, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... blasted, his career an outlaw's, and his age not yet twenty-three. My father said that he was supposed to have changed his name; none knew what had become of him. And so this creature, brilliant and daring, whom if born under better auspices we might now be all fawning on, cringing to,—after living to old age, no one knows how,—dies murdered at Aleppo, no one, ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... listen to him. His quick brain was solving a strange problem—the problem of the price that these people, in their turn, should pay to Venice. When he had solved it, he turned to the cringing figure ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... opium and committed the traditional puputan, or, with their wives, threw themselves on the Dutch bayonets. But, though the Balinese have bowed perforce to the authority of the stout young woman who dwells in The Hague, they have none of the cringing servility, that look of pathetic appeal such as you see in the eyes of dogs which have been mistreated, so characteristic ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the enclosure to cast its vote for Varro—for Varro alone, until no one of the noble candidates, who received the half-hearted support of their fellows, got even enough pebbles to be proclaimed elected to the second consulship. To Varro alone, cringing and insolent, was the oath administered; for Varro alone was the prayer put up; for Varro was the declaration twice made, according to the laws of the Republic, and into Varro's hands was placed the presidency over the assembly that ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... eyes are eager, his teeth are keen, As he slips at night through the bush like a snake, Crouching and cringing, straight into the wind, To leap with a grin on the fawn ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... She is grasping the rope firmly—she is cringing. She looks like a spider winding her ...
— Hadda Padda • Godmunder Kamban
... had grown up with that one, awful, all-pervading idea of duty to accomplish, a most solemn oath to fulfil, one sworn to her dying father, and on the dead body of her brother. She had begged for guidance, prayed for release, and the voice from above had remained silent. Weak, miserable, cringing, the human soul, when torn with earthly passion, must look at its own ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Sproul, after the excitement of the dramatic entrance had subsided, the unhappy captive attempted excuses, cringing pitifully. ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... ended his story, the garrulous neighbour Open'd his mouth and exclaim'd:—"I only deem the man happy Who lives alone in his house in these days of flight and confusion, Who has neither wife nor children cringing beside him I feel happy at present; I hate the title of father; Care of children and wife in these days would be a sad drawback. Often have I bethought me of flight, and have gather'd together All that I ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... why gold and velvet bind The temples of that cringing thief? Is it so strange a thing to find A ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon
... Well, the change in him, from what he was before the operation, is shocking. Imagine a young dare-devil of twenty-two, who had no greater fear of danger or death than of a cold, now a cringing, cowering fellow; apparently an old man, nursing his life with pitiful tenderness, fearful that at any moment something may happen to break the hold of his aorta-walls on the stiletto-blade; a confirmed ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... London, that the censures cast on the memory of Pitt ought to have been levelled at the defender of Ulm, the Czar Alexander and his equally presumptuous advisers at Austerlitz, and most of all at the cringing ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... a useful one, and that the soldier perforce has; and that not in an abject, cringing way, but as realizing the necessity of it, and seeing the result of it in the good order and consequent effectiveness and success of the army as a whole, but more particularly of his own company and detachment. And if the soldier rises to office, the responsibility of command, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... face. George was ashamed to look at him and kept his eyes averted. Fred Allerton was suddenly grown old and bent; his poor face was sunken, and the skin had an ashy look like that of a dying man. He had already a cringing air, as if he must shrink away from his fellows. It was horrible to Lucy that she was not allowed to take him in her arms. He ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... as he came in, speaking with horrid rapidity, cringing and holding out her hands, "Mac, listen. Wait a minute—look here—listen here. It wasn't my fault. I'll give you some money. You can come back. I'll do ANYTHING you want. Won't you just LISTEN to me? Oh, don't! I'll scream. I ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... of cattle seemed to be eddying like a whirlpool, and from that Madeline understood the significance of the range word "milling." But when Madeline looked at one end of the herd she saw cattle standing still, facing outward, and calves cringing close in fear. The motion of the cattle slowed from the inside of the herd to the outside and gradually ceased. The roar and tramp of hoofs and crack of horns and thump of heads also ceased in degree, but the bawling ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... they are, for the most part, what's as good, very proud and promising, Sir, most liberal of their Word to every fauning Suiter, to purchase the state of long Attendance, and cringing as they pass; but the Devil of a Performance, without you get the Knack of bribing in the right Place and Time; but yet they ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... resignation to what could no longer be prevented, what had already probably taken place, and feverish endeavors to prevent it notwithstanding. In accordance with these two moods his behavior toward Apollonius took the form of unconcealed obstinacy or of cringing and vigilant dissimulation. When the first mood governed him he sought forgetfulness day and night. Unfortunately the discharged workman had found employment in a quarry near by and was his companion on many a night. The important people turned away from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the manner of Mr. Brann's death there is only to be said that he expected it. He judged from the characters of those he attacked, that they would assassinate him. He died as he expected to die, without any cringing to his enemies. Some people he attacked who did not deserve his vitriolic attentions, but he thought they did. In the main he scourged and sacrificed only those who deserved. The manner in which he was killed and the cause in which he was killed—the cause of an institution in which ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... house, where she kept it wrapped up in tissue paper, and squeezed it into her pocket. Rather hopelessly, but still keeping a careful look-out, she proceeded slowly on her way, when behold, just as she reached the top of the last flight, a little cringing grey figure crossed ...
— The Kitchen Cat, and other Tales • Amy Walton
... from the man's hand, mingling its clink (for it struck the floor this time and broke) with the cry he gave—which was not exactly a cry either, but an odd sound between a moan and a shriek. He had caught sight of the men who were seeking to detain him, and his haggard look and cringing form showed that he realized at last the terrors of his position. Next minute he sought to escape, but Styles, gripping him more firmly, dragged him back to where Mr. Gryce stood beside the bearskin rug on which lay the form of his ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... protector, choose a patron out, And like the crawling ivy round a tree That licks the bark to gain the trunk's support, Climb high by creeping ruse instead of force? No, grammercy! What! I, like all the rest Dedicate verse to bankers?—play buffoon In cringing hope to see, at last, a smile Not disapproving, on a patron's lips? Grammercy, no! What! learn to swallow toads? —With frame aweary climbing stairs?—a skin Grown grimed and horny,—here, about the knees? And, acrobat-like, teach my back to bend?— No, grammercy! Or,—double-faced ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... specimen of the whining, cringing beggar as could have been met with in any of the beggar-camps where these unhappy outcasts of society live. She was dressed in rags which seemed to be held together only by some invisible force. Her hair was tied up in disjointed ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... man, very thin, and almost bent double with perpetual cringing, came up to Mr Hobson, and pulling him by the sleeve, whispered, yet loud enough to be heard, "It's surprizeable to me, Mr Hobson, you can behave so out of the way! For my part, perhaps I've as much my due as another person, but I dares to say I shall have it when it's convenient, and ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... cruelly in her exasperation. He gave a feeble squeak and she pushed him roughly down. Animals to her were a nuisance. She disliked them if she had any feeling at all. But Fou-Chow was an adjunct to her toilet sometimes, and was a coveted possession, envied by her many female friends. His tiny, cringing body irritated her though extremely when she was not using him for effect, and he was often kicked and cuffed out of ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... my friend: d-n it, gentlemen, don't be rude. That's coming the thing a little too familiar. There is a medium: please direct your moist appropriations and your improper remarks in their proper places." The girl, cringing beneath the ruffian's hand, places the necessary receptacle ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... did not amount to much. Groote, the porter, came in, cringing and wretched, in the abject state of a man who has lately been drugged and is now slowly recovering. Although sharply questioned, he had nothing to add to ...
— The Rome Express • Arthur Griffiths
... sees purse-pride, pompous and outrageous arrogance, a cringing of the pregnant hinges of the knee, false standards, and a thousand faults in this admission. And yet the optimist finds the "very rich," with but few exceptions, amiable, generous, and kindly, often regretting that poorer friends will allow their wealth to ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... Athens is not commendable. It puts a stigma upon the glory of honest manual labor. It instills domineering, despotic habits into the owners, cringing subservience into the owned. Even if a slave becomes freed, he does not become an Athenian citizen; he is only a "metic," a resident foreigner, and his old master, or some other Athenian, must be his patron and representative in every kind ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... again, somewhere, some time, he knew not when nor how. The heir of don Ramon, the hope of the District, strode furiously on, his arms aquiver with a nervous tremor. And aggressively, menacingly, addressing his own ego as though it were a henchman cringing terror-stricken in front of him, ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and the self-confidence needed are certainly admirable. And then there is a cringing and almost contemptible littleness about honesty, which hardly allows it to assert itself. The really honest man can never say a word to make those who don't know of his honesty believe that it is there. He has one foot in the grave before his neighbours have learned that he is possessed of ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... two children representatives of the two extremes of society. The fair, high-bred child, with her golden head, her deep eyes, her spiritual, noble brow, and prince-like movements; and her black, keen, subtle, cringing, yet acute neighbor. They stood the representatives of their races. The Saxon, born of ages of cultivation, command, education, physical and moral eminence; the Afric, born of ages of oppression, submission, ignorance, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... them—I have been disposed not only to overlook the offence, but to forgive and forget it. Thus there are many cadets who would associate, etc., were they not restrained by the force of opinion of relatives and friends. This cringing dependence, this vassalage, this mesmerism we may call it, we all know exists. Why, many a cadet has openly confessed to me that he did not recognize us because he was afraid of ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... piano, and I also have thoughts of composing a new grand mass, and dedicating it to the Elector. Adieu! I will write to Prince Zeill next post-day to press forward matters in Munich; if you would also write to him, I should be very glad. But short and to the point—no cringing! for that I cannot bear. It is quite certain that he can do it if he likes, for all Munich told me so [see ...
— The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, V.1. • Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
... smile of guilty embarrassment upon their vis-a-vis' face had begun to swell into the cringing leer familiarly precedent to an appeal for leniency, when the fellow leaned forward, stared fearfully at the Judge, and, dropping the pullet with a screech, ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... was something, though, that was almost deadly about it. It pierced like a lancet. It seared like a red-hot iron. It humbled almost too much. Here was no exaggerated humility, no pleading to be borne with, no cringing, and no doubt. A man who knew was standing up, and, with a sort of indifference to outside opinion that was almost frightening, was saying some of the things he knew about men, ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. He who would be respected must respect himself. The best friend of the Negro is he who would rather see, within the borders of this republic one million free citizens of that race, equal before the law, than ten million cringing serfs existing by a contemptuous sufferance. A race that is willing to survive upon any other terms is scarcely ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... attain to a certain shallow prettiness,[655] for the most part they do not rise above the pornographic. And even though he shows a real capacity for friendship, he also reveals an infinite capacity for cringing or impudent vulgarity in his relations with those who were merely patrons or acquaintances. His needy circumstances led him, as we shall see, to continual expressions of a peevish mendicancy, while the artificiality and pettiness of the life in which he moved induced ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... life subjected to vexations, affronts, and exactions, from Mahometans of every rank. Spoiled of their goods, insulted in their religion and domestic honor, they could rarely obtain justice. The slightest flash of courageous resentment brought down swift destruction on their heads; and cringing humility alone enabled them to live in ease, or even in safety." Stooping under this iron yoke of humiliation, we have reason to wonder that the Greeks preserved sufficient nobility of mind to raise so much as their wishes in the direction of independence. ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... as less and less she did, the unlawful spying of hers on the west chamber of Ridge House, she set her lips in a firm line. She had gone far enough on her upward way to detest the cringing, deceitful methods of her childhood and she sternly sought to right herself, with her burdening conscience, by putting away forever what possible significance lay in the strange coming of that first and second ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... to make it up to you, Gerrie, I'm goin' to make it up to you. Don't you be afraid. You're safe to be the most envied girl in this county. You'll make some splash, let me tell you, when my plans are carried out." He patted her cringing shoulder, and with one more longing look turned and ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... hero a mere Collegiate Councillor—a mere person with whom Aulic Councillors might consort, but upon whom persons of the grade of full General [8] would probably bestow one of those glances proper to a man who is cringing at their august feet. Worse still, such persons of the grade of General are likely to treat Chichikov with studied negligence—and to an author studied ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... dishonest to those he regards as his betters; if his wife is a silly, shallow, gossiping spendthrift, unfit to rear the children she occasionally bears, perpetually snubbing social inferiors and perpetually cringing to social superiors, it is probable that we have to blame the home, not particularly any specific class of homes, but our general home atmosphere, for the great part of these characteristics. If we would make the average man of the coming years gentler in manner, ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... deformities, all beneath the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen of the State. Just imagine the motley crew from the ten thousand dens of poverty and vice in our large cities, limping, raving, cringing, staggering up to the polls, while the loyal mothers of a million soldiers whose bones lay bleaching on every Southern plain, stand outside sad and silent witnesses of this wholesale desecration of republican institutions. When you say it would degrade woman to go to the polls, do you ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... stepped forward, and with cringing gestures began to explain something to the King in a low voice. Meanwhile, the two ladies became suddenly interested in Cicely, and one of them, a pale but pretty woman, splendidly dressed, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... in their own words, and mark its simplicity and majesty: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." There is no cringing reservation here, no alternative, and no delay. Here is the voice of the plain men of Middlesex, promising Yorktown, ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... his feet and scream. I had seen a young girl, not long before, awake in the midst of an operation, with the knife already in her frail body. Surely, after those definite horrors, no unknown danger would send me cringing back to the man who was waiting so ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... things; but assets have elastic qualities in many men's minds and seem capable of any extension in an emergency. Buyers who impress themselves most favourably upon the business house are frank in their statements. The explicit, candid man of few words will merit consideration. The cringing or pleading kind predisposes one unfavourably. Stephen Girard said of one who in tears asked for a loan: "The man who cries when he comes to borrow will cry ...
— Up To Date Business - Home Study Circle Library Series (Volume II.) • Various
... everything in their determination to make the unreal, real. He did not now desire to be a drivelling repentant; he wanted, God knew he really wanted, a chance to be decent and live; but in order to live he must go on acting a part and cringing and hiding. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... red ears. The best run I ever had. Tried to get in the crotch of a hickory tree at the end. Was so exhausted he couldn't stir a foot when the hounds got him." While they waited at the crossroads before a little country store, where the pack of hounds, lean, cringing, habitually hungry creatures, started from beneath an old field pine on the right, Virginia heard the broken phrases blown on the wind, which carried the joyous notes of the horn over the meadows. The ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... you sit down, and for two or three hours you write; you have it whole in your memory now—you have but to put it down. And this forlorn, wet, bedraggled thing—this miserable, stammering, cringing ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... captains. It is only your greenhorns who endeavour to make their way by fawning and cringing to every member of the establishment. It is a miserable mistake. No one likes his dependants to be treated with respect, for such treatment affords an unpleasant contrast to his own conduct. Besides, it makes the toadey's blood unruly. There are three persons, mind you, to be attended to: my ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Cringing and flattering, thought Jane; and that is just what these magnificent ladies like in the wide field of inferiors. But aloud she could not help saying, 'My principal objection to Mrs. Stebbing is that I have always thought her rather a gossip—-on the scandalous side.' Then, bethinking ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to manhood. It would have been a terrible school even for a noble nature; for a nature corrupt and bloodthirsty like that of Caius it was complete and total ruin. But, though he was so obsequious to the Emperor as to originate the jest that never had there been a worse master and never a more cringing slave,—though he suppressed every sign of indignation at the horrid deaths of his mother and his brothers,—though he assiduously reflected the looks, and carefully echoed the very words, of his patron,—yet not even by the deep dissimulation ...
— Seekers after God • Frederic William Farrar
... body seemed to rush into his face. "D—n the purse," said he, as he snatched it up. He dashed a handful of money on the ground before the pale, cringing waiter. "There—be off," cried he; "John, order the ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... emptiness—the same motive will lead us back again. That, too, is an adventure, the greatest adventure of all. Because, when we go back we shall not find the same God—or rather we shall recognize him in ourselves. Autonomy is godliness, knowledge is godliness. We went away cringing, superstitious, we saw everywhere omens and evidences of his wrath in the earth and sea and sky, we burned candles and sacrificed animals in the vain hope of averting scourges and other calamities. But when we come back it will be with a knowledge of his ways, gained at a price,—the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... change in Horace Lansing's demeanour. From a blustering braggart, he became a pale and cringing coward. But with a desperate attempt to bluff it out, he exclaimed, "What do you mean?" but even as he spoke, he shivered and staggered backward, as if ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... a pedestrian light, and a sports model bounced jauntily to a stop beside it. The driver cocked an eyebrow at Marlowe and chuckled. "Say, Fatso, which one of you's the Buick?" Then the light changed, the car spurted away, and left Marlowe cringing. ...
— Citadel • Algirdas Jonas Budrys |
