"Humiliating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... much take to heart, either the conduct of their father, or the coolness of their relation, he was pretty well assured; but he was too well acquainted with Isabel's character, not to know that she would deeply feel the humiliating situation in which she was placed, and that it would prey upon her generous and sensitive mind. As, however, there was no remedy, he almost congratulated himself that, as the colonel's message was to be delivered, the commission had been placed in ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat
... unfortunate opinion I had incautiously advanced and tore it into tatters. The result was a spirited argument, in which Miss Gussie held her own with such ability that I was utterly routed and found another grievance against her. It was very humiliating to be worsted by a girl—a country girl at that, who had passed most of her life on a farm! No doubt she was strong-minded and wanted to vote. I was quite prepared to believe ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... unhappy family that could not vindicate its right except by such treachery—by such dark intrigue and base agents. There were designs against King William that were no more honourable than the ambushes of cut-throats and footpads. 'Tis humiliating to think that a great prince, possessor of a great and sacred right, and upholder of a great cause, should have stooped to such baseness of assassination and treasons as are proved by the unfortunate King James's own warrant and sign-manual given to his supporters ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was a thousand-fold more wonderful—more the story—than anything she had been able to invent. She would give much to have known it long before. She felt that she had missed much. There was something humiliating in the thought of having lived one's life without knowing what life was. It made one seem such a dead thing. Now she was on fire ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... Fitzgerald, desperately. He began to entertain, for the first time, the horrible suspicion that the pedler's story might be true—that he might after all be his cousin. But he resolved that he never would admit it—NEVER! Where would be his pretentious claims to aristocracy—where his pride—if this humiliating discovery were made? Judging of his school-fellows and himself, he feared that they ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to be the youngest of five children who, soon after I was born, were left motherless. I had to bear the humiliating name "Hak[a]dah," meaning "the pitiful last," until I should earn a more dignified and appropriate name. I was regarded as little more than a plaything by the ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... obtaining conversions with confiscations and betrayal of friends than to provoking martyrdoms.... The really effective weapons of the Holy Office, the real curses with which it afflicted the people, can be looked for in its dungeons and its confiscations, in the humiliating penances of the saffron crosses, and in the invisible police with which it benumbed the heart and soul of every man who had once fallen into its hands."[588] It is evident that these means of tormenting and coercing dissenters went much ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... It was really too humiliating! It was more than Nan could bear. She sprang to her feet and without a word—with nothing but a glance of withering scorn at Delia—swept out of the room ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... opportunity to mediate, to hush up, to divert the lightning-flash, with every other assistance of the kind; in the course of which, as well in my own person as through others, I could not fail to come to the knowledge of many afflicting and humiliating facts. To relieve myself I designed several plays, and wrote the arguments [Footnote: "/Exposition/," in a dramatic sense, properly means a statement of the events which take place before the action of the play commences.—TRANS.] of most ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... humiliating and afflicting, had this record of the Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy, in which there is so much to admire, been closed with the details of a calamity in any way disgraceful to the service. Truth has required that the words 'dismay' and 'panic' ...
— Narratives of Shipwrecks of the Royal Navy; between 1793 and 1849 • William O. S. Gilly
... a disastrous effect on the child's morale; most parents, though they may love the child most affectionately, look somewhat askance at it; and continuous vaginal treatment somehow or other has a humiliating effect on the child, which begins to consider itself as an outcast, as something apart from other children. Fifth, the child's education is very frequently seriously and permanently interfered with, because it must often be taken out of school, ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson
... against the illness that was hurrying her to the grave, was the first to notice the sad alteration in him, and the first to hear of his last worst trouble with his wife. She could only weep bitterly on the day when he made his humiliating confession, but on the next occasion when he went to see her she had taken a resolution in reference to his domestic afflictions which astonished and even alarmed him. He found her dressed to go out, and on asking ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... to this, not with any sense of humiliating Leaf by disparaging him after an open confession, but because it was an accepted thing that Leaf didn't in the least mind having no head, that deficiency of his being an unimpassioned matter of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... to me as though I were leaving the world, as I travelled on day after day through the desert marches. Then followed a sad and humiliating impression of Konigsberg, where, in one of the poorest-looking suburbs, Tragheim, near the theatre, and in a lane such as one would expect to find in a village, I found the ugly house in which Minna lodged. The friendly and quiet kindness of manner, however, which was peculiar to her, soon ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... favourite play, a passage like that in Act i. Scene 1, where old Barnacle proclaims, unblushing, his own shame and that of his fellow- merchants. Surely, if Charles ever could have repented of any act of his own, he must have repented, in many a humiliating after-passage with that same city of London, of having given those base words ...
— Plays and Puritans - from "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... roguishly. "Mr. Johnson," said I, "I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it." I am willing to flatter myself that I meant this as a light pleasantry to sooth and conciliate him, and not as a humiliating abasement at the expense of my country. But however that might be, this speech was somewhat unlucky, for with that quickness of wit for which he was so remarkable, he seized the expression, "come from Scotland!" which I used In the sense of being of that country; and, as if I had come ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... past life, to comfort herself with ease, and the confidence of her own worth that it gave her. Without wine she was despondent and abashed. There was the choice of two things before her; either the humiliating occupation of a servant, with the certain unwelcome attentions of the men, or a secure, quiet and legitimatized position of everybody's mistress. She wished to revenge herself on her seducer, as well as the clerk, and all ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... neither asked nor given. With the exception of six, five of whom belonged to the disciplinary court, all the prelates of the Kingdom were struck by it: some were degraded and turned out to subsist as they might, on charity or by the sale of their holy vestments; others were sentenced to humiliating punishments; and {209} where no plausible excuse for a trial could be discovered, exile or confinement was inflicted arbitrarily. On the other hand, as many as repented received plenary absolution. For instance, the Bishops of ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... Wonderful and humiliating is it to observe how little these first impressions of the Indians and these elevated Christian aspirations influenced his conduct in dealing with them, once he ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... to the Senora that she had lost the good-will of her old friends, and the respect that had always been given to her social position. It was difficult for her to believe this, and she only accepted the humiliating fact after a variety of those small insults which women ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr
... the Colonel; "the young woman concerned was a very remarkable person; if you could have heard her sing, for instance, you would have said so yourself. It is a humiliating confession, but I doubt whether one young man out of a hundred, single, engaged, or married, could have resisted being attracted by her to just such an extent as she pleased, especially if he were flattered by the knowledge that she ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... his sister, seeing no one else; and in the evening shadows he slipped quietly away. He was very wretched, for he really loved Mary Damer, and his disappointment was bitterly keen and humiliating. Besides which, he felt that his business efforts for two years were forfeited, and that he had the world to begin over again. Without a friend to wish him a Godspeed the wretched man went on board the Southern packet, and in her dim ...
— The Maid of Maiden Lane • Amelia E. Barr
... apostles were imprisoned, and the Jesus Christ of Krivoziersk was sent for to the town of Kostroma, that he might give account of himself, his visions, and his crimes. Ultimately he was condemned to a spell of confinement, and forced to perform the most humiliating duties. His asceticism, his many virtues, his fasting and prayers, the love which God had manifested for him—all were forgotten, and Israil, who had held the Queen of Heaven in his arms, was in future obliged to clean out the stables of the monastery of Makariev, to light ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot
... most methodically and most passionately, Darwin, though scarcely confessing it to himself, loses confidence at every step, and retreats before the unexpected and the irreconcilable. Would you have before you the nobly humiliating spectacle of human genius battling with infinite power, you have but to follow Darwin's endeavours to unravel the strange, incoherent, inconceivably mysterious laws of the sterility and fecundity of hybrids, or of the variations of specific and generic characters. ...
— The Life of the Bee • Maurice Maeterlinck
... the answer; "the soldiers are glad that the bishops are acquitted." "Do you call that nothing?" exclaimed the king. And then he repeated, "So much the worse for them." He might well be out of temper. His defeat had been complete and most humiliating. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... resort to arms would betray his own weakness and the power of the rebels, and completely prostrate the dignity and authority of government. It was necessary to temporize, therefore, however humiliating such conduct might be deemed. He had detained the five ships for eighteen days in port, hoping in some way to have put an end to this rebellion, so as to send home favorable accounts of the island to the sovereigns. The provisions of the ships, however, were wasting. The Indian prisoners on ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... firmly as a mummy in its cloths. Small birds as well as lusty pigeons, spiders and all manner of insects; flies, bees, beetles, moths and mosquitoes, as well as the seeds of other trees are ensnared. Spiders are frequently seen sharing the fate of the flies, fast to seeds in the humiliating posture in which Br'er Fox found Br'er Rabbit on the occasion of the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... family, Mrs. Pennel had always been able to comfort herself with the idea that the child under her particular training was as well-behaved as any of those of her more demonstrative friend. But now, all this consolation had been put to flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge without most humiliating recollections. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... performance which is never abashed by any failure, but steadily pursues its right and human design in a scene of imperfection, I might hope to strike in the long-run a conduct more tender to others and less humiliating to myself. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her hair rolled all up in a huge knob on top of her head, to keep it out of the way, and her pistol held out at arm's-length, pointed falteringly, directly at the stars. She will inform the reader confidentially—tell it not in Gath—of a humiliating discovery she made exactly four weeks afterward, and which she has never before imparted to a human ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... his pride," I said curtly. "What about hers? It would be worse than humiliating for a woman to be obliged to go! He must have ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... to take it that way," he answered, and his eyes kindled with admiration. "I wonder how many men would have gone through this morning's humiliating experience and to-night's capture with ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... one day, standing by him closely, I made the humiliating discovery—as humiliating to me as to him—that the date of the protruding copy of The Times was a year or so past, and, looking more narrowly at the paper itself, I realised that it had been folded thus for months and months and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various
... regeneration. The cultivation of the arts and sciences in the reign of Augustus may have been beneficial to a few, by diverting them from the pursuit of vulgar pleasures, and opening up to them sources of more rational enjoyment; but it is a most humiliating fact that, during the brightest period in the history of Roman literature, vice in every form was fast gaining ground among almost all classes of the population. The Greeks, though occupying a higher position as to mental accomplishments, were still more dissolute than the Latins. ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... put directly to Dacoma by the speaker on the other side. The proud Indian, who seemed exasperated with the humiliating situation in which he was placed, with an angry wave of his hand and a short ejaculation, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... of De Monts's colonial enterprise was defective, containing in itself a principle which must sooner or later work its ruin, the disappointment occasioned by its sudden termination was none the less painful and humiliating. The monopoly on which it was based could only be maintained by a degree of severity and apparent injustice, which always creates enemies and engenders strife. The seizure and confiscation of several ships with their valuable cargoes on the shores of Nova Scotia, had ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... insignificance of feature which is not unfrequently alleged to be characteristic of English beauty. Her mouth would be charming if she ever smiled, but, exposed as she is to the ridiculous whims and fancies of a capricious mistress, her lips rarely relax from their ordinary grave expression. Yet, humiliating as her posi- tion must be, she never utters a word of open complaint, but quietly and gracefully performs her duties, accepting without a murmur the paltry salary which the bumptious ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... and his devoted sister Wilhelmina. "You as a follower of Epicurus put a value upon life; as for me, I regard death from the Stoic point of view. I have told you, and I repeat it, never shall my hand sign a humiliating peace. Finish this campaign I will, resolved to dare all, to succeed, or find a glorious end." Then came the victory of Torgau, the last and one of the most desperate of his battles: a success dearly bought, and bringing ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... answer. So they passed everything off, without mention, after Helena's fashion, ignoring all that might be humiliating; and to ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... was—such as it was. At Laing's Nek and Majuba the Boers beat us, as Mr. Carter fairly puts it, 'when they were on the top of the hill and we were at the bottom, and when we were on the top of the hill and they were at the bottom.' The narrative of these events is about as humiliating a one as an Englishman can read. Here and there it is redeemed by the heroic conduct of individuals in the midst of general disaster. In the smaller affairs, such as the particularly gallant defences of Standerton, Potchefstroom, and Rustenberg, where little ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... will not, I cannot say how humiliating it is to think that you can, for an instant, believe I would again forget myself so much as to wish to desert him whom God has given me for a protector, for one chosen by my own erring passions. And you, Andrew Merry! Learn to respect the child of your mother's sister, if not for her own sake, ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... As he could not well turn his arms against him, and the whig settlements on Pedee were left exposed to his depredations, it was good policy to awe him, and to endeavour to keep him quiet. After a little time Horry negociated a treaty, humiliating enough to Ganey; by which, among other matters, he and his officers agreed to lay down their arms and remain neutral, to deliver up all those who refused to comply with the treaty and all deserters from the Americans, and also to restore all ...
— A Sketch of the Life of Brig. Gen. Francis Marion • William Dobein James
... Marrisdale came back to her. They were in the woodpath. She crept inside her husband's arm and put up her face to him, swept away by an overmastering impulse of self-humiliating love. ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... displeasure to the cordiality or injustice of their sentiments. She was occasionally severe and imperious in her resentments; and, when she strongly disapproved, was apt to express her censure in terms that gave a very humiliating sensation to the person against whom it was directed. Her displeasure however never assumed its severest form, but when it was barbed by disappointment. Where she expected little, she was not very rigid in her ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... on every feeling of justice, and thereby finally goaded the nations to resist him. In 1810 he exclaimed triumphantly, 'Three years yet, and I shall be master of the world!' And when he lately took the field against Russia, he said, 'After humiliating Russia and reducing her to an Asiatic power, I shall establish at Paris a universal European court and universal archives!' He believes himself to be the master of the world; he thinks the thunderbolts ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... by which we can escape happily out of this crisis—I mean, preserve the country and recover the Constitution. I thought for four years that calamity would bring us to our senses: but alas! we have none left to be brought to. We shall now suffer a greal deal, submit at last to a humiliating peace, and people will be content.—So adieu, England! it will be more or less a province or kind of province to France, and its viceroy will be, in what does not concern France, its despot—and will be content too! I ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... it is small wonder that Donald passed as little time as possible at Angora Heights. The time he was not occupied with his trial hung heavy on his hands. Distrustful of his friends, sensitive to criticism, and dreading the humiliating ordeal to come, he spent one of the most wretched months of his life. He tried to write, but fancy fled before the glare of the actual. The only place where he found temporary peace was under the roof of the grim-looking house ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... Princess's share in the Treaty of Utrecht—At the culminating point of her greatness, a humiliating catastrophe is impending—Philip negotiates for the erection of a territory into a sovereignty for Madame des Ursins—The sudden death of Queen Marie Louise causes a serious conjunction for the Princess—Her power begins ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... Bonaparte. We should not like to be the second Duke of Wellington, nor Charles Dickens, jr. It is a terrible thing one would say, to a mind of honorable feeling, to be pointed out as somebody's son, or uncle, or granddaughter, as if the excellence were all derived. It must be a little humiliating to reflect that if your great uncle had not been somebody, you would be nobody,—that in fact, you are only a name, and that, if you should consent to change it for the sake of a fortune, as is sometimes done, ...
— The Potiphar Papers • George William Curtis
... except the small cloth in front formerly mentioned; and, immediately on entering the court, he falls down on his knees, bows down his head to the ground, and scatters dust with both hands on his own head and shoulders; neither is even the nearest relations of the lords exempted from this humiliating expression of their duty and obedience. The person, who receives an audience continues in this humble posture a great while, strewing himself with sand and crawling on his knees, till he approaches the great man; and when ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. II • Robert Kerr
... They were revised by Mr. Jefferson in 1818, when he was seventy-five years old, after, as he says, the passions of the time were passed away,—with the intention that they should be published. It is humiliating to record this act. No justification for it is possible. It is idle to say that these revelations were made to warn the country of its danger. As evidence they are not entitled to a thought. More flimsy gossip never floated over a tea-table. Besides, for such a purpose they should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... that commanded a view of the vale and buildings of Clawbonny. What a moment was that in my existence! I cannot say that I was born to wealth, even as wealth was counted among us sixty years since, but I was born to a competency. Until I lost my ship, I had never known the humiliating sensations of poverty; and the feeling that passed over my heart, when I first heard that Clawbonny was sold, has left an impression that will last for life. I looked at the houses, as I passed them in the streets, and remembered that I was houseless. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... and sighed. This was very humiliating. It was unpleasant to rank in the public mind somewhere between Constance Kent and Laura Bridgman. But I had ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... friendship. I've done two things for you quite lately. The first was that letter to the editor you're going to see to-morrow, and the second is what I've done now with our new backer. It's this. They wanted to sack you or to offer you humiliating conditions. I said if you didn't stay I wouldn't stay either. I gave in on other points to get my way about this. I shall have their final answer to-morrow, and I know I shall succeed if I stick to ...
— Woman on Her Own, False Gods & The Red Robe - Three Plays By Brieux • Eugene Brieux
... mouths and crystal eyes, and masses in Latin recited mechanically by priests? And thou, Religion preached for suffering humanity, hast thou forgotten thy mission of consoling the oppressed in their misery and of humiliating the powerful in their pride? Hast thou now promises only for the rich, for those who, can ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... be the death of you some of these days," said Stella to Ted once when Gladiator, resenting Ted's intrusion into the herd for the purpose of cutting out some calves, charged him. But Ted in the end threw the bull with his rope, humiliating him before all the herd. From that time forth Gladiator's eyes always became red with anger when he saw Ted, but he did not misbehave, because he respected Ted's lariat and quirt, and the strong arm ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... star-gazer, a good-for-nothing." [Footnote: 2 Bk. VI, 488-489.] But this wistful admission, though it protects him against whatever was the Greek equivalent for the charge that he lacked a sense of humor, furnished a humiliating tailpiece to a solemn thought. He becomes defiant and warns Adeimantus that he must "attribute the uselessness" of philosophers "to the fault of those who will not use them, and not to themselves. The pilot should not humbly beg ...
— Public Opinion • Walter Lippmann
... it cost her to come back and look after Colin. That knowledge was beyond Adeline Fielding. She congratulated Anne and expected Anne to congratulate herself on being "well out of it." Her safety was revolting and humiliating to Anne when she thought of Queenie and Cutler and Dicky, and Eliot and Jerrold and all the allied armies in the thick of it. She had left a world where life was lived at its highest pitch of intensity for a world where people were ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... excesses: drink need scarce be named, for we are writing to men of better and of nobler minds, than can be tempted to that humiliating vice. Those who in this disorder have too great an appetite, must not indulge it; much eaten was never well digested: but of all excesses the most fatal in this case is that of venery. It is the excess we ...
— Hypochondriasis - A Practical Treatise (1766) • John Hill
... A few minutes of hard climbing brought me near enough to get my glass on the little lyrist, and then I found it was only the house-wren! "How could you be led astray by so familiar a song?" you inquire. Well, that is the humiliating part of the incident, for I have been listening to the house-wren's gurgling sonata for some twenty years—rather more than less—and should have recognized it at once; only it must be remembered that I was in a ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Georgiana in going to the Melmottes had not behaved herself, and therefore she had determined to drop Georgiana. 'Heartless, false, purse-proud creature,' Georgiana said to herself as she wrote the following letter in humiliating agony. ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... of the Rabbis, that there are two meanings; that there are two advents of the Messiah, a glorious and an humiliating one, according to their desert; that the prophets have prophesied of the Messiah only—the Law is not eternal, but must change at the coming of the Messiah—that then they shall no more remember the Red Sea; that the Jews and the Gentiles shall ...
— Pascal's Pensees • Blaise Pascal
... anger he staggered back from the window and knocked against the writing-table. He was a laughing-stock. A faint hatred against the woman whom he had to thank for this humiliating scene, began to stir within him, but his love acquitted her. He was incensed against the jesters down below, and swore to bring them ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... all danger to commerce was overpast, and a navy would be an extravagant toy. But when, not long afterward, French cruisers seized American ships, and English cruisers claimed the right (and exercised it) to take seamen from our vessels without leave, Congress perceived the folly of their humiliating action. ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Juve had been conducted to the Depot by his colleagues. No sooner were they seated in the taxi, under the charge of Inspector Michel and his companion, than Juve made himself known to his gratified, unsuspecting colleagues. It was a humiliating surprise for the two policemen: ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... so. It is as insane and inhuman to force two people to remain in wedlock after it has become odious to them, as it would be to force them into that marriage at first. Oh, my tender-hearted little one, can you not see that the bondage is more humiliating, more craven than is the idea of the veriest chattel mortgage? Yet you refuse to let the injured one go free, as you would not refuse the poorest prodigal whose one chance for home and happiness ...
— A Man and a Woman • Stanley Waterloo
... praying to the beast, is a spectacle so humiliating that, for the sake of our common humanity, we may seek the explanation of it least degrading to the dignity of our race. We must remember that as a hunter the primitive man was always matched against the wild creatures of the woods, so superior to him in their dumb certainty of instinct, their ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... old Turk, seedy in appearance, but extremely entertaining, owned to six languages, not counting others of which he had only a smattering. Serb he didn't count as he said he could only talk on easy subjects in that tongue. It is very humiliating, that sort of thing, it is liable to lower the opinion of one's own intelligence. We kept late hours, too, at ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... him. But it was to him rather a depressing than an ennobling thought, that he was one of a class, fettered by the same disabilities, the same weaknesses, as millions of similar objects. Perhaps it was a wholesome humiliation, but it was none the less humiliating. On the one hand he was conscious of the vast power of imagination, the power of standing, as it were, side by side with God upon the rampart of heaven, and surveying the whole scheme of created things. Yet on the other hand there fell the sense of a baffling and miserable impotence, a despairing ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... most enlightened and holy men, who, since the decease of the apostles, have served God and his Christ; in the fathers of the ancient Church; in those who headed the Protestant Reformation, and lived as saints, or died as martyrs; in Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Knox, we discover humiliating proofs of imperfection and fallibility. And, while the fundamental truths of Christianity have been preserved in the Catholic Church, those truths have been mingled or associated with errors so injurious and degrading, that no blind faith is to be rested on any ...
— On Calvinism • William Hull
... thus dragged, the thought of Hari, (And she herself cried aloud, saying), 'O Govinda, O thou who dwellest in Dwaraka, O Krishna, O thou who art fond of cow-herdesses (of Vrindavana). O Kesava, seest thou not that the Kauravas are humiliating me. O Lord, O husband of Lakshmi, O Lord of Vraja (Vrindavana), O destroyer of all afflictions, O Janarddana, rescue me who am sinking in the Kaurava Ocean. O Krishna, O Krishna, O thou great yogin, thou soul of the universe, Thou creator of all things, O Govinda, save me ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... large body in Oxford, have gradually become practically extinct under the growing liberality of the age. They carried in their academic dress a mark of their inferiority; they waited at dinner on those of higher rank, and performed other menial services, humiliating to themselves, and latterly felt as no less humiliating to the general name and interests of learning. The better taste, or rather the relaxing pressure of aristocratic prejudice, arising from the vast diffusion of trade and the higher branches of mechanic art, have gradually ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... interrupted the former; "but let me go on. I have still another and more humiliating duty to perform. Bart," he continued, turning, with an agitated countenance, to the young man, "as forsaken and guideless as you have been, many a parent has had a less deserving offspring. And had you not done more for ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... will not take the position of rich wife to a poor man; it is humiliating to both. I will not marry you until ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... no respect for Antony, and but little admiration. I speak of such mad infatuation as a humiliating exhibition of human weakness. Any one under its fearful spell is an object of pity. But I have more sympathy for him than for Cleopatra, although she was doubtless a very gifted woman. He was her victim; ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... a large discretion to be exercised according to circumstances. These were, first, that if happily any arrangements for trade, either general or special, were made, it was to be distinctly stipulated that, under no circumstances and in no degree, would the Americans submit to the humiliating treatment so long borne by the Dutch in carrying on their trade. The citizens of our country must be dealt with as freemen, or there should be no dealings at all. The second point was that, in the event of any of our countrymen being cast, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... "It's not humiliating to do something that you can do well—I know you can do it well—and get a large salary for it, and make the success of a big enterprise by it. If ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... days of continued sufferings, the Assembly became weary of insulting and humiliating longer those who had been robbed of their power and dignity; and it was announced to the royal family that they would hereafter reside in the Temple, and be perpetual prisoners ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... Educational Service, (which afterwards merged in the present Indian Educational Service), he was not admitted to the full scale of pay of the Service. He, being an Indian, was allowed to draw only two-thirds the pay of his grade. This humiliating distinction was, however, removed in his case, on the 21st September 1903, when the bureaucracy could not any longer ignore the pressure of enlightened opinion that was brought to bear ...
— Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose - His Life and Speeches • Sir Jagadis Chunder Bose
... longer interval than usual. Anne's hands and feet became nerveless bits of ice. Had his courage given out? Had he run away? Worse still, was he nerving himself to an ordeal to which he would prove unequal? A humiliating breakdown! Anne's blood pounded through her body as he finally emerged from the curtains, and she broke her fan, much to the amusement ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... perhaps I am, in years; but you should have thought of that before. You married me, and made me a woman. You took away my gay childish heart, and yet in all humiliating things you still treat me like ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... he uttered the sentiments of the Northern people; whereas, as a matter of fact, but for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, I believe the great majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their government. They believed, I have no doubt, as I did, that besides being the mildest, it ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... established a settlement in the fourteenth century; of having been the first who discovered the great river of the Amazons; and also the first who sailed up that of St. Lawrence. Even to the present day, they carry on a considerable traffic in small ornaments made of ivory, a humiliating memento of their connection with Senegal: but all the rest of their commerce is dwindled into the fishery, and a ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... be accompanied with deep humiliation. If you labored under the privation of some bodily organ, requisite to the discharge of an animal function, you would feel it as in some degree a humiliating circumstance; but what would be any defect of this kind, however serious, in comparison with that great want under which you labor—the want of piety, the calamity of a soul estranged from the love of God! What are the other subjects of humiliation compared ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 3 - Massillon to Mason • Grenville Kleiser
... working-man, since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the gallant stand ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... been the same: incessant work under similar more or less humiliating conditions, and with no more result than being ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... of this mean jealousy, so humiliating to human nature, has influenced Lord Halifax, in his Advice to a Daughter, the school of art, prudery, and selfish morals, to caution her against all friendships, or, as he calls them, dearnesses, as what will make the world ...
— The History of Emily Montague • Frances Brooke
... Hole-in-the-Day had made on the Sioux a short time before, Major Plympton decided not to execute the prisoners. They were turned over to their own people to be flogged in the presence of the officers. More humiliating than death was their punishment. Their blankets, leggins, and breech-cloths were cut into small pieces, and finally the braves whipped them with long sticks while the ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... distinguish between Mohammedans and other dark-complexioned people and held himself aloof from the former, thereby escaping any humiliating races with the heavy boots of the gunbearers and other followers of Allah. He made friends with little Ali, the monkey's valet, a small Swahili boy who looked like a chocolate drop in color, and like a tooth-powder ad in disposition. It ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... Spanish interests. The queen's relations with her husband's chief of state were well known to all save Charles himself, and, on one occasion at least, Napoleon, by threatening to reveal the whole shameful story to the king, bent Godoy to his will and forced him to humiliating concessions. The queen supported him blindly, however, in every measure, and put her evil ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... said diffidently, "it was quite a humiliating situation for the old man. He was a person of some consequence once—a rather famous assayer and mineralogist—and I think he ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... granddaughter in a thousand little snobberies and affectations. And she had taken a mischievous pleasure in thwarting Harriet whenever possible, emphasizing the difference in her position and Nina's, humiliating the companion whenever it was possible, in ways that were far less subtle than Madame Carter ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... all, worth while to talk to that man? You understand how provoking this was. I looked in my mind for something appallingly stupid to say, with the object of distressing and teasing Mrs. Fyne. It is humiliating to confess a failure. One would think that a man of average intelligence could command stupidity at will. But it isn't so. I suppose it's a special gift or else the difficulty consists in being relevant. Discovering that I could find no really telling stupidity, ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... humiliating service, Nelson was ordered to hoist his broad pendant on board the MINERVE frigate, Captain George Cockburn, and with the BLANCHE under his command, proceed to Porto Ferrajo, and superintend the evacuation of that place also. On his way, he fell in with two Spanish ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey
... thought would be the case should they on rising face about in our direction, we slowly retreated towards our camp. On looking back, we saw that they were still crawling about on hands and knees; and as the spectacle was rather humiliating than interesting, we did not feel inclined to watch ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... Union were called on to declare expressly and unequivocally its intentions. It was now their turn to yield to superior strength. They had not calculated on so formidable an opponent; but they themselves had taught the Roman Catholics the secret of their strength. It was humiliating to their pride to sue for peace, but they might think themselves fortunate in obtaining it. The one party promised restitution, the other forgiveness. All laid down their arms. The storm of war once more rolled by, and a temporary calm succeeded. The insurrection in Bohemia then ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... at Bettiah, where a Christian community at present exists. Not long after he had conquered Nepaul, the Ghorka monarch organized an expedition into Tartary, which was so signally successful that the H'Lassa Government was obliged to treat on humiliating conditions. This advantage was followed, in defiance of the treaty, by another invasion, which was only arrested by the forces of the Emperor, who, having heard of the violent proceedings in this distant part of his dominions, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... Governments and the reality and strength of the Entente engagement. In private life, if a fourth person confidentially told one of the three partners in a firm that the other two partners had invited him to join them in humiliating him to the dust, there would have been a pretty brisk, not to say acrimonious correspondence between the proposed victim and his partners. Governments, it appears, look on things differently, and so far as the public knows, England simply took ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... or what remains of it, has much to repent of; many humiliating reflections must pass through the minds of those who compose it, and they must learn the hard lesson to be thankful for them as a discipline indispensible to their amendment. Thus only can they furnish a sufficient nucleus for the formation ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... that Shakspeare can ever lose his empire while the language lasts, it is humiliating to be obliged to acknowledge one great cause that is operating to keep him from thousands of our young countrymen and women, namely, the wide-spread mediocrity that is created and sustained by the universal diffusion of our so-called cheap literature;—dear enough it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... water-spout then swept the whole concern away, after which, like a wild-horse set free, it took a leap of full thirty feet—a straight column of solid water—before it burst itself on the ground, and rushed wildly down to the lake! It was a humiliating termination— and showed how terrible it is to create a power ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne |
