"Groveling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hearts is an expression worth an empire, and is always used with peculiar emphasis and enthusiasm. For a favourite topic of these epistles is the groveling spirit and sordid temper of the parents, who will be sure to find no quarter at the hands of their daughters, should they presume to be so unreasonable as to direct their course of reading, interfere ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... that the candle went out, and we groped along in total darkness toward the rear of the house from where the sounds were coming. The cries had died down by this time into a horrible inarticulate wail, half animal, half human. I recognized the tones with a cold thrill; it was Mose. We found him groveling on the floor of the little passage that led from the dining-room to the serving room. I struck a light and we bent over him. I hated to look, expecting from the noise he was making to find him lying in a pool of blood. But he was entirely whole; there ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... away of millions. Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter of his given word, yet so treacherous where his sly mind could nose out a way to evade the spirit of his agreements that his name was a synonym for unfaithfulness. An assiduous and groveling snob, yet so militantly democratic that, unless his interest compelled, he would not employ any member of the "best families" in any important capacity. He seemed a bundle of contradictions. In fact he was ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... were possible only by the subjection of the black race under the white, loathed civil equality as but another name for private companionship, and spurned, as dishonor and destruction in one, the restoration of their sovereignty at the price of political copartnership with the groveling race they had bought and sold and subjected easily to the ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... strange, a phenomenal thing occurred. An unseen hand appeared to strike down both Mallow and his accomplice where they stood, and it smote them, moreover, with appalling force and terrifying effect. One moment they were in complete mastery of the situation, the next they were groveling in the road, coughing, sneezing, barking, retching, blaspheming poisonously. Baffled fury followed their first surprise. Mallow tore the mask from his face and groped blindly for the weapon he had dropped, but before he could recover it, pain mastered him and ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... higher personages,) and yet my friends abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old masters—because I fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in their productions. I can not help but see it, now and then, but I keep on protesting against the groveling spirit that could persuade those masters to prostitute their noble talents to the adulation of such monsters as the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes of two and three hundred years ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... with minds vivacious and hopeful, to stand these day-and-night-long solid drenchings. No one can imagine how fatal it was to boys whose vitality was sapped by long months in Andersonville, by coarse, meager, changeless food, by groveling on the bare earth, and by hopelessness as ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... They were groveling there in a tangle of legs and arms when "Happy Tom" came down the grade, leading a charge ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... long rapture for the two strange comrades. Joel told stories till Celia tired of a passive role and entertained him with some of those flights of fancy compared with which the most audacious attempts of the adult imagination seem tame and groveling. Then they took a walk, hand in hand, after which Celia discovered that she was hungry and a raid was made upon the pantry. Perhaps nothing so conclusively proved the completeness of Joel's subordination as the overthrow of his dietetic ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... nearest, and seized him by the horns, and up and down they wrestled, till the bull fell groveling on his knees. For the heart of the bull died within him, beneath the steadfast eye of that dark witch-maiden and the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... of a molehill than a keisar's slave: Better it is 'mongst fiddlers to be chief, Than at [a] player's trencher beg relief. But is't not strange, this mimic ape should prize Unhappy scholars at a hireling rate? Vile world, that lifts them up to high degree, And treads us down in groveling misery. England affords those glorious vagabonds, That carried erst their fardles on their backs, Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, Sweeping[128] it in their glaring satin suits, And pages to attend their masterships: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... bishop, forsooth! can compare them, pagans in thought and act and habit though they be, with the most moral and religious people in the world, to his own shame. It is the English lie working. The Irish are inferior, and of a low, groveling, filthy nature; they are buried both in ignorance and superstition; their ignorance can be seen in their hatred of British rule, and their refusal to accept the British religion; wherever they go in the wide world, ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... than to become the property of that excellent princess, Amelie, who then presided in the Palais Royal, the daughter and sister of a king, but with as little prospects as desires of becoming a queen in her own person. This wish of mine was treated as groveling, and even worse than republican, by the cote droit of our piece, while the cote gauche sneered at it as manifesting a sneaking regard for station without the spirit to avow it. Both were mistaken, however; no unworthy sentiments entering ...
— Autobiography of a Pocket-Hankerchief • James Fenimore Cooper
... forked one of the other closes up; and the smoke stops. The soul that had become a brute fled hissing along the valley, and behind him the other speaking spits. Then he turned upon him his new shoulders, and said to the other,[2] "I will that Buoso[3] run, as I have done, groveling along this path." ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... him the most groveling Attentions and bright eyes grew brighter yet when he suggested pulling a little Supper, with a ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... actually results from them than good. The mind and heart are injured,—the one but half trained; the other corrupted. Mental and moral training are divorced; hence one-sided, and the very end of education defeated. The child has no incentive to a virtuous and a noble life, and sinks down to the groveling drudgery of money-making. It is educated for nature, but not for God,—for this, but not for the ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... almost a groveling servility. But one felt that this servility resulted from something potent and secret. One looked to see Rodman take Solomon's ring out of his ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... beautiful woman in Rome, the Countess—Countess—Countess—Nevill, what was that woman's name? Oh—I forget her name, but she was the loveliest woman I ever saw in my life. Everybody was in love with her—down on their knees groveling, you couldn't help it. Fancy, she was engaged to ten people at once! I suppose she had ten engagement rings—one for each finger, one for each man. I should never have known which was which. But oh! I oughtn't to have told you. My husband said I wasn't to talk about her. ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... by creeds they can't expound, Prepare a fancied bliss or woe? Shall reptiles, groveling on the ground, Their great Creator's ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... for the honor. This because he showed himself perfectly ready to serve and flatter every one, even ordinary persons, and he spared no speech or action for getting possession of the objects for which he strove. He paid no heed to temporary groveling when weighed against subsequent power, and he cringed as before superiors to those men whom he was ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... singular man was morally a blank, and can only be described by negations. He did not love; he did not hate; he did not hope; he did not worship. He separated himself from his fellow-men and from his God. There was nothing earnest, enthusiastic, heroic, in his nature, and as little that was mean, groveling, or ignoble. He was passionless, wholly destitute of emotion. Everything that required the exercise of fancy, imagination, faith, or affection, was distasteful to Cavendish. He had a clear head for thinking, a pair of eyes for observing, hands for experimenting and recording, and these were all. ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... might have been to the South the Palinurus to steer the bark in safety over the perilous sea. Truly did Mr. Webster—his personal friend, although his greatest political rival—say of him in his obituary address, "There was nothing groveling, or low, or meanly selfish, that came near the head or the heart of Mr. Calhoun." His prophetic warnings speak from the grave with the wisdom of inspiration. Would that they could have been appreciated by his countrymen while he ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... perhaps, a great part of the old time manner of communion with God because we first lost the old time spirit of supplication and the groveling spirit of the outside world, but we have ...
— Freedom Talks No. II • Julia Seton, M.D.
... transports, then in deeds, her mood became dangerous. She counted them up—a girl music pupil, then an art student, then the wife of a banker at whose house Harold played socially. There followed strange, sullen moods on the part of Rita, visits home, groveling repentances on the part of Harold, tears, violent, passionate reunions, and then the same thing over again. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... the holiest emotions of the human soul. The presence of life is, indeed, necessary to its beauty, but of life congenial with its character; and that life is not congenial which thrusts presumptuously forward, amidst the calmness of the universe, the confusion of its own petty interests and groveling imaginations, and stands up with the insolence of a moment, amid the majesty of all time, to build baby fortifications upon the bones of the world, or to sweep the copse from the corrie, and the shadow from the shore, that fools ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... petit maitre traveler, or ill-informed of the character and circumstances of his poor countrymen, or deficient in good and manly sentiment, who would not rejoice to transplant into these boundless regions of freedom the millions he has left behind him groveling ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... only from a creature weak as well as wicked. I think it was all his keen sense of humor could do to save him from a melodramatic outbreak. He slipped into his habitual pose, rose and withdrew without another word. All this fright and groveling and treachery for plunder, the loss of which would not impair his fortune—plunder he had stolen with many a jest and gibe at his helpless victims. Like most of our debonair dollar chasers, he was a good sportsman only when the game ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... nothing should be wanting on his part to the accomplishment of a glorious and happy destiny. He fell himself suddenly animated by this determination to gain a noble prize by noble exertions, for nothing is more certain than that none but groveling, abject beings, to whom nature has denied the ordinary faculties of mind, can remain insensible to the excitement of glory, or the ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... capture his visitor in a low armchair's 'sofa-lap of leather,' and from a most unfair vantage of height to tyrannize, to walk around the victim, in front, behind, on this side, on that, weaving magic circles, now with gesticulating arms thrown high, now groveling on the floor to find some reference in a folio, talking all the while, a redundant turmoil of thoughts, fancies, and reminiscences ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... as a good beginning—modest, but not groveling. He continued, tapping quite a respectably deep vein of philosophy ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... heart. Such, beyond all doubt, in the case of our great poet, was the source of many "a malignant truth and lie," fondly penned, and carefully corrected for the press, by a class of calumniators that may never be extinct; for, by very antipathy of nature, the mean hate the magnanimous, the groveling them who soar. And thus, for many a year, we heard "souls ignoble born to be forgot" vehemently expostulating with some puny phantom of their own heated fancy, as if it were the majestic shade of Burns evoked from his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... are trying with all our might to do our level best, our whole nature improves. Everything looks down when we are going down hill. Aspiration lifts the life; groveling ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... we are all groveling worms of the dust." I thought she meant that we all looked like wriggling red earthworms, and tried to make out the resemblance in my mind, but could not. I unburdened my difficulty at home, telling the family that "Aunt Nancy got down on the floor and said ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... the living God. I declare, at this moment, that earth will not forever receive her laws from such a depth. The hour must come when these million wires will be broken beyond repair, and all you fiends go groveling under penal ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... gratitude for so much kindness and charity. But hush! Listen to the voice of God speaking to the conscience of the priest, through the Church of Rome! "Have you not" she asks him, "heard the confession of women simply to foster or gratify the groveling passions of your fallen nature and ...
— The Priest, The Woman And The Confessional • Father Chiniquy
... I do not mind saying that it has changed my view of the desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, made life a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is an upright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch. It does away with the necessity of the hinge in the back. The handle is seven and a half feet long. There are two narrow blades, sharp on both edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and as you walk along with this hoe before ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... are called Episcopalians, where do the Scriptures own such persecutors, false prophets, tithemongers, deniers of revelations, opposers of perfection, men-pleasers, time-servers, unprofitable teachers?" The Separatists are similarly cudgeled: they are "groveling in beggarly elements, imitations, and ...
— William Penn • George Hodges
... to flee back into the lesser terrors of the gloomy corridors and apartments from which he had just emerged, but the frightful men anticipated his intentions. They blocked the way; they seized him, and though he fell, groveling upon his knees before them, begging for his life, they bound him and hurled him to the ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Humour to a Hair! How I admire such generous sprightly Virtue, your Reasoning, Madam, darts amazing brightness, 'where groveling Souls want courage to think freely, ay, Liberty's the Source of all Enjoyments, a nourishing Delight, innate and durable. I love the Harmony of Foreign Courts; your downright English Women are meer Mopes, sit dumb like Clocks that speak but once an Hour, ...
— The Fine Lady's Airs (1709) • Thomas Baker
... profest poet, that his poetry did ever afford him so much as a competency. Ay, your god of poets there, whom all of you admire and reverence so much, Homer, he whose worm-eaten statue must not be spewed against, but with hallow'd lips and groveling adoration, what was ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson |
