"Plebeian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was thinking of Pierre Delarue, who had just taken honors at the Polytechnic school, and who seemed to have a brilliant career before him. This woman, humbly born, was proud of her origin, and sought a plebeian for her son-in-law, to put into his hand a golden tool powerful enough to ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... of a very superior description. There are grades in pawning as in everything else, and distinctions must be observed even in poverty. The aristocratic Spanish cloak and the plebeian calico shirt, the silver fork and the flat iron, the muslin cravat and the Belcher neckerchief, would but ill assort together; so, the better sort of pawnbroker calls himself a silver-smith, and decorates ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... etiquette prescribed a scratch on the door, like that of a pet animal; the knock was too rough and plebeian ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... house of correction. Since that time he had vanished from Halfdan's horizon. He had still the same broad freckled face, now covered with a lusty growth of coarse red beard, the same rebellious head of hair, which refused to yield to the subduing influences of the comb, the same plebeian hands and feet, and uncouth clumsiness of form. But his linen was irreproachable, and a certain dash in his manner, and the loud fashionableness of his attire, gave ...
— Tales From Two Hemispheres • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... detriment. For Beth was a lady to her finger tips, born to a natural gentility that put to confusion the mannerisms of the "smart" finishing school which had not succeeded in concealing the strain of a plebeian origin, and Beth's dropped g's and her quaint inversions and locutions were infinitely more pleasing to Peter than Miss Peggy's slang and self-assurance, which reflected the modernity of the fashionable ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Wherein was the object of keeping it open for Belle Todd and himself when more and more he wished for semi-solitude? Noise and crowds and luxuries irritated him. He liked meals such as the one he had ordered, the plebeian joy of taking off tight shoes and putting on disreputable slippers, sitting in an easy-chair with his feet on another, while he read detective stories or adventurous romances with neither sense nor moral. He liked to relive in ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... also the beginning of colonial empire. Virginia was a cavalier settlement, proceeding from the epoch of exploration and the search for gold; and New England was a plebeian and sectarian establishment, planted by men who fled from oppression. They did not carry with them very clear notions of human right; but these ripened under their oppressive rule among those whom they persecuted. There were local self-government and federation in Connecticut, ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton
... her, in a whisper loud enough to be heard all over the room, whether (indicating Harry) that was the little ploughboy whom she had heard Mr. Barlow was attempting to bring up like a gentleman? Mrs. Merton answered "Yes." "Indeed," said the lady, "I should have thought so by his plebeian look and vulgar air. But I wonder, my dear madam, that you will suffer your son, who, without flattery, is one of the most accomplished children I ever saw, with quite the air of fashion, to keep ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the path strolled a nurse-girl, wheeling a baby-carriage. He looked at the girl—yes, she was Irish, as Cordon had said, and answered all specifications; and then he looked at the baby, and his heart sank into his boots. Oh, such a baby! With red hair and a pug-nose, plebeian and dull-looking—such a baby! Thyrsis stared at the maid again—and she smiled at him. Then she passed on, and he sank down upon a bench. Great God, could it be that that was his child? That he would have to go through life with something so ugly, so alien to him? A terror ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... and the brutal permissible in art: a princess nailed by the hands like a sparrow-hawk to a pine by a brutal peasant; the daughter of a noble house submitting to a loathed marriage with a foul-mouthed plebeian in order to ...
— Recent Developments in European Thought • Various
... of women from all direct contact with affairs can be made far more perfect in a republic than is possible in a monarchy, where even sex is merged in rank, and the female patrician may have far more power than the male plebeian. But, as matters now stand among us, there is no aristocracy but of sex: all men are born patrician, all women are legally plebeian; all men are equal in having political power, and all women in having none. This is a paradox so evident, and such an ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... home by seizing the first opportunity that offered to do his duty and protect the property of those who had taken him in. I have no doubt that Don Quixote, intelligent, faithful, kind, with not a drop of plebeian blood in his noble body, will fulfill all the expectations of his friends, and we shall hear of many a brave and gallant deed of his performing; but when you have heard what Tommy Tompkins has to tell, I think you will say that not even ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... the least, questionable. Of course we never associated with such characters, and plenty of estimable people besides ourselves frequented Bertrand's. The place was not in bad odor at all, but merely a little miscellaneous, and suited our plebeian fancies all the more on that account. If young fellows want to be really comfortable in life, we thought, and see a little at first hand just what sort of people make up the world, they must not be ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... aspect. Her pure white skin was flat on the bone; the lips came forward in a soft curve, and, if they were not artistically stained, were triumphantly fresh. Here, in any case, she beat her rival, whose mouth had the plebeian beauty's fault of being too straight in a line, and was not trained, apparently, to tricks of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the natives of Samoa. The Romans had an official college of augurs, the members of which were originally three patricians. About 300 B.C. the number of patrician augurs was increased by one, and five plebeian augurs were added. Later the number was again increased to fifteen. The object of augury was not so much to foretell the future as to indicate what line of action should be followed, in any given circumstances, by ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... genuflexion)—and he would sell a fowl on a holiday for the asking and the few copper carcie that it would bring him, as though he were quite all Mussulman and not half Christian, as his contemptuous nickname signified—a mixture of royal linen and plebeian cotton! His touch might well defile ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... cannot away with his peasant morality—moralizing rather—his provincialism, and the grossness of his method. From the beginning to the end of his works there is neither pure thought nor pure feeling—nothing but a point of view which is now perceived to be ridiculously plebeian. Nevertheless, Carlyle had one positive gift that the younger generation is perhaps not very well qualified to appreciate, he was an extraordinarily capable man of letters. His footnotes, for instance, might serve as models; he had a prodigious ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... distinguished manner; she did her best to please—and nothing came of it. Why? she asked herself afterward. He had held her hand and talked about "the woman who gives purpose to a man's life" and all that. (Alas, that plebeian paw of Milly's!) ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick
... first place it was coral itself, then the reefs which surrounded it were coral, and the rocks were coral, and the sand was composed of bits of coral. The palace of the king was built of coral, and so were the houses of the people, only his was red, which is scarce, and theirs of plebeian white. It had a very pretty effect, I can assure you. The chairs and tables would, I doubt not, have been made of coral, only they did not use them; in fact, their notion of furnishing a house is very different to ours. A few mats, and baskets, ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... aristocracy, locally designated the gente ilustrada and the pudientes (Intellectuals and people of means and influence). Education, thus limited, divided the people into two separate castes, as distinct as the ancient Roman citizen and the plebeian. Residing chiefly in the ports open to foreign trade, the Intellectuals acquired wealth, possessed rich estates and fine houses artistically adorned. Blessed with all the comforts which money could ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... leading spirits were John van der Dors, the commander, better known by his Latinized name of Dousa; and Peter van der Werf, the burgomaster. Plebeian names these, but loftier natures never possessed the hearts of kings or nobles! Beside their deeds, the chivalry of knighthood looks trivial and mean. Under the management of these two men every precaution was adopted for the defense of ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... loaded themselves with the sacred things, that they might secure those hallowed treasures from profanation. "They were proceeding" (says Livy lib. V, c. XXII) "along the way which passes over the Sublician bridge, when they were met on the declivity by L. Albinus a plebeian, who was fleeing with his wife and children in a plaustrum or cart: he and his family immediately alighted: then placing in the cart the virgins and sacred things he accompanied them to Caere where ...
— The Ceremonies of the Holy-Week at Rome • Charles Michael Baggs
... original owners of Kildrummie, less rich and powerful suzerains than their equals in South Britain, were probably contented with merely a stout wall to divide their own sovereign residence from their more plebeian followers. The keep itself, constructed like all other similar buildings of the age, was a massive tower, covering but a small square, and four or five stories high. There were attempts at luxury in the chambers within, but to modern taste the Norman luxury ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... and Plebeian in Virginia; or, The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... he picked her up at Rome; but never mind where—somewhere. Now (this is entirely between ourselves), is she very plebeian?' ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... also," said Grant to me, in his heavy abstracted way, when I had urged this view, "that the very vileness of the life of these ordered plebeian places bears witness to the victory of the human soul. I agree with you. I agree that they have to live in something worse than barbarism. They have to live in a fourth-rate civilization. But yet I am practically certain that the majority of people here ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... purple-black heartseases, and thin-filmed silvery pods of honesty; tall white lilies mingled with the blossoms of currant bushes, and at their feet the narcissi of old classic legend pressed their warm-hearted paleness into the plebeian thicket of the many-striped gardener's garters. It was a lovely type of a commonwealth indeed, of the garden and kingdom of God. His whole mind was flooded with a sense of sunny wealth. The farmer's neglected garden blossomed into higher glory in his soul. The bloom and the richness ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... sums amounting to about twenty-seven thousand livres for which he received lands and castles as security.[609] Fortunately the Royal Council included a number of Jurists and Churchmen who were good business men. One of them, an Angevin, Robert Le Macon, Lord of Treves, of plebeian birth, had entered the Council during the Regency. He was the first among those of lowly origin who served Charles VII so ably that he came to be called The Well Served (Le Bien Servi).[610] Another, the Sire de Gaucourt, had ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... wood-shed, how proudly the old rooster struts along the weather-board, enjoying the discomfiture of his wives, who have been trying for this half-hour from the corn-house steps to reach the same desirable elevation. And ever and anon he crows to answer the tumultuous cackle of the plebeian fowl in the barn-yard, with whom he never mingles, save when a hawk threatens them with common danger; and then, forgetting all his aristocracy, he seeks the same sheltering apple-tree or clump of briars in the fence-corner, where the enemy cannot penetrate. Friend Peter, just ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... classic company, smiling or frowning upon him from the oaken shelves, where Petronius Arbiter, exquisite, rubbed shoulders with Balzac, plebeian; where Omar Khayyam leaned confidentially toward Philostratus; where Mark Twain, standing squarely beside Thomas Carlyle, glared across the room at George Meredith, Henry Leroux pursued the ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... office in the gift of the imperial court. Hitherto this title had been borne exclusively by members of the Fujiwara family, and it must have been a severe blow to their aristocratic pride to have a humble plebeian who had risen solely by his own talents thus elevated by imperial appointment to this dignified position. He also received at this time the name of Toyotomi(163) by which he was afterward called, and in recognition of his successful conquest of much territory he received ...
— Japan • David Murray
... of Alba and Rome, of which the evidence is of course purely legendary. If the legends represent fact in any sense, they point, if I understand him rightly, to a kingship held by a non-Latin race, or, as he calls it, plebeian. Binder, Die Plebs, p. 403 foll., believes that the original Latin population, i.e. the plebs of later ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... windows I ever saw in an American home were in a thereby glorified hen-house. They had been taken from the discarded front door of a remodelled old Falmouth house. The hens and their owner were not of antiquarian tastes, and relinquished the windows for a machine-made sash more suited to their plebeian tastes and occupations. Many colonial doors had door-latches or knobs of heavy brass; nearly all had a knocker of wrought iron or polished brass, a cheerful ornament that ever seems to resound a welcome to the visitor as well as a notification to ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... measure. How his sagacity first discovered at all that so petty a thing would vex me, is a question I never could solve; but, having discovered, he habitually practised the annoyance. I had always felt aversion to my uncourtly patronymic, and its very common, if not plebeian praenomen. The words were venom in my ears; and when, upon the day of my arrival, a second William Wilson came also to the academy, I felt angry with him for bearing the name, and doubly disgusted ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Hebrides, and that, though large for its kind, its whole bulk did not nearly equal that of a single vertebral joint of the fossil saurians of Eigg. The reptile, since his deposition from the first place in the scale of creation, has sunk sadly in those parts: the ex-monarch has become a low plebeian. ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... pretty well, I have not seen him, but hear often of him from Alsop, who sends me hares and pheasants twice a week. I can hardly take so fast as he gives. I have almost forgotten Butcher's meat, as Plebeian. Are you not glad the Cold is gone? I find winters not so agreeable as they used to be, when "winter bleak had charms for me." I cannot conjure up a kind similitude for those snowy flakes—Let them keep ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... the Christian era], from which Roman pride shrank contemptuously, but, by industry, shrewdness, and speculative daring, they are becoming great capitalists and landowners on a senatorial scale."[787] "The plebeian, saturated with Roman prejudice, looking for support to the granaries of the state or the dole of the wealthy patron, turned with disdain from the occupations which are in our days thought innocent, if not honorable."[788] "After all reservations, the ascent of the freedmen remains ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... banished!) might have termed the very matins of Cupid. Hard and inexorable was the fate that sent thee thither, Piercie Shafton, to waste thy wit upon country wenches, and thy valour upon hob-nailed clowns! But that insult—that affront—had it been offered to me by the lowest plebeian, he must have died for it by my hand, in respect the enormity of the offence doth countervail the inequality of him by whom it is given. I trust I shall find this clownish roisterer not less willing to deal in blows than ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... Coriolanus is one of the most amusing of our author's performances. The old man's merriment in Menenius; the lofty lady's dignity in Volumnia; the bridal modesty in Virgilia; the patrician and military haughtiness in Coriolanus; the plebeian malignity and tribunitian insolence in Brutus and Sicinius, make a very pleasing and interesting variety: and the various revolutions of the hero's fortune fill the mind with anxious curiosity. There is, perhaps, too much bustle ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... liked Lillian, though they were of different religious beliefs; and they went driving or shopping together, the younger woman a little critical and ashamed of the elder because of her poor grammar, her Irish accent, her plebeian tastes—as though the Wiggins had not been as plebeian as any. On the other hand the old lady, as she was compelled to admit, was good-natured and good-hearted. She loved to give, since she had plenty, and ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... display, the coxcombry permitted in a peer, must be carefully avoided by a parvenu. Thus Oxford interests classes who care very little for its educational, antiquarian, or architectural resources, as one of the institutions of the country by which any capable man may cut off his plebeian entail, and start according to the continental ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... all was a deserted nest, a pile of coveted stones. All the surrounding rookery made their way to and fro, each husband acquiring merit, for, after each journey, he gave his wife a stone. This was the plebeian way of doing things; but my friend who stood, ever so unconcerned, upon a rock knew a trick worth two of that: he and his wife who sat so cosily upon ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... The Gens to which Pompeius belonged was Plebeian. Cn. Pompeius Strabo, the father of Pompeius Magnus, was consul B.C. 89. Strabo, a name derived like many other Roman names from some personal peculiarity, signifies one who squints, and it was borne by members of other Roman Gentes also, as the Julia, and Fannia. It is said that ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... community did not exist on the Pacific Coast. Visit the Pikes when you would, you could never see any one working. Of churches, school-houses, stores and other plebeian institutions, there were none; and no Pike demeaned himself by entering trade, or soiled his ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... extensively worn in Southern than in Northern Europe; more, as it is, in Southern England than in Northern Scotland. Hence, although we find many iron skull-caps, like hats, used by the military in the fifteenth century; and although we find traces of hats even in the plebeian costumes of the middle ages—yet we look upon the Spanish and Italian hat of the sixteenth century, as the more immediate origin of its degenerate successor, the actual chapeau. We need not trace the variations ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... little inclosure, resting one hand on the cross-bar and waving the other as he spoke. His voice was full of passion, his eyes flashed fire, and his brow was bathed in sweat. There seemed to be some weird power in his words as in those of the prophets of old. The more than plebeian simplicity of his dress still further increased the pride of his gestures and the impressiveness of his voice. The French Revolution has shown since that in the ranks of the people there was no lack of eloquence or of pitiless logic; but what I saw ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... and features. In America there would be a good deal of grace and beauty among a hundred and fifty children and budding girls, belonging to whatever rank of life. But here they had universally a most plebeian look,—stubbed, sturdy figures, round, coarse faces, snub-noses,—the most evident specimens of the brown bread of human nature. They looked wholesome and good enough, and fit to sustain their rough share ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... by the Parliament, but was buried and saved by the brazier who purchased it, and so reappeared after the Restoration. To the left, the familiar words "Morley's Hotel" designate an edifice about half windows, where the plebeian traveller may sit and contemplate Northumberland House opposite, and the straight-tailed lion of the Percys surmounting the lofty battlement which crowns its broad facade. We could describe and criticize the statue as well as ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old; only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries. ...
— Early Reviews of English Poets • John Louis Haney
... thoroughly established himself—a plebeian had taken root in a forest of belted earls and lisping aristocrats. But it stopped at that. A retired "cowboy" was all very well in a club. If he chose to take up "gun-throwing" or garrotting, there was always a score or two ...
— Colorado Jim • George Goodchild
... shall be set the no less picturesque peasants sowing the seed, whose harvest is at once waving grain and a regenerated Israel. The stains of sordid traffic shall be cleansed by the dews and the rains. In the Jewish peasant behold the ideal plebeian of the future; a son of the soil, yet also a son of the spirit. And what fair floriage of art and literature may not the world gain from this great purified nation, carrying in its bosom the experience of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... Pike's Peak, and cannot be scaled by means of a cog-wheel railway or any other contrivance that uses steam or electricity as a motor. Indeed, the only motor available at the time of our ascent—that is, for the final climb—was "shank's horses," very useful and mostly safe, even if a little plebeian. We had been wise enough not to plunge at once among the heights, having spent almost a week rambling over the plains, mesas, foothills, and lower ranges, then had been occupied for five or six days more in exploring the valleys ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... Europe. The tale, however, is doubted; but there is an air of probability about it, which makes me fancy that it has its foundation in truth, and I can no more speak of Madeira without thinking of the unfortunate, high-born, and lovely Anna D'Abret, and the bold plebeian, Robert Machin, than I can of the Mauritius, and forget Paul and Virginia, or of Juan Fernandez, without believing that Robinson Crusoe ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... thou shake? Dishonour not the vengeance I designed: A queen, and own a base Plebeian mind! Let it drink deep in thy most vital part; Strike home, and do me reason ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... he acted as his colleague in the command of a military force, and also filled the office of archon. On the death of Perikles, Nikias at once became the foremost man in Athens, chiefly by the favour of the rich and noble, who wished to make use of him to check the plebeian insolence of Kleon; yet Nikias had the good-will of the common people, and they were eager to further his interests. Kleon, indeed, became very powerful by caressing the people and giving them opportunities for earning money from ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... account of his high-class mediocrity. He did his best, according to his lights. He endeavored to improve the shining hour, and admired the busy little bee, as he had been taught to do in the nursery. If he had not the air of a thoroughbred, he had none of the plebeian clumsiness of the cart-horse. Though he was not the man to lead a forlorn hope, he was no coward; and though he had not invented gunpowder, he had the requisite intelligence to make use of already existing inventions under the direction of others. ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford
... Chamant, who was originally a box-maker, and a man of genius, considering box-making a plebeian occupation, was for deducing a logical position, not exactly perhaps by fair argument, but at all events through the teeth, and was determined, although he could not, like Dr. Pangloss, mend the cacology of his friends, at least to give them an opportunity ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the odium of his circle, but the other would not; and the odium of that circle is the only kind of odium he dreads. Appius Claudius apprehended no odium from his own order—the patrician—from the violation of the daughter of Virginius, of the plebeian order; nor did Sextus Tarquinius of the royal order, apprehend any from the violation of Lucretia, of the patrician order—neither would have been punished by their own order, but they were both punished by the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a hundred villas, four hotels, a church and a casino, that lie scattered along the Norman coast like beads of a broken necklace. Living is dear in these stylish little out-of-the-way places, and this naturally keeps away the more plebeian element that frequents the great centres. About the fifteenth of August begins the week of races at Deauville, the principal event of the Norman circuit, bringing together not unfrequently as many as a hundred and sixty horses, and ranking, in fact, as third in importance in all France, the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... before; who had come home triumphant to reign like the doges of old, and, only after the ducal cap was on his head and the palace of the state had become his home, found out that the doge—like the unconsidered plebeian—had been reduced to bondage; his judgment and experience put aside in favor of the deliberations of a secret tribunal, and the very boys, when they were nobles, at liberty to jeer at his ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... friend, William Nicol, he wrote in the same strain. 'I never, my friend, thought mankind very capable of anything generous; but the stateliness of the patricians in Edinburgh, and the servility of my plebeian brethren (who perhaps formerly eyed me askance) since I returned home, have nearly put me out of conceit altogether with ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... thought that enough to account for her state; but when the children began to tell their eager story, and hold up their grapes to her, she burst again into tears, and cried: 'Oh, my dear sister, if you would be warned. It is making a scandal, indeed it is! They call you a plebeian.' ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... same plant, a low bush, with strong, prickly leaves, growing much like a juniper. The contrast of its very brilliant yellow, pea-shaped blossoms, with the dark green of its leaves, is very beautiful. It grows here in hedges and on commons, and is thought rather a plebeian affair. I think it would make quite an addition to our garden shrubbery. Possibly it might make as much sensation with us as our mullein does ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... and when meek admirers had murmured, "How dreadful," she had tossed her head and had said, "But I can't help it, you know, all of my family have had tempers," and as Judy's family was known to be aristocratic and exclusive, her more plebeian friends had envied and had tried to emulate ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... there." Gem obeyed softly, and Tom disappeared around the corner of the house, followed by the dogs, who understood from their master's low order, that a secret reconnaissance was to be made, and moved stealthily behind him single file, big Turk first, then Pete Trone, Esq., and last of all plebeian Grip, his tail fairly sweeping the ground in the ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... tradesmen, of merchants, of naval officers, of scholars; it has produced some of the greatest ornaments of their time; and the feeling among the boys themselves is, that it is a medium, between the patrician pretension of such schools as Eton the Westminster, and the plebeian submission of and charity schools. In point of University honors, it claims to be equal with the best; and though other schools can show a greater abundance of eminent names, I know not where many will be found who are a greater host in themselves. ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... yore the head, of the world, there dwelt a young man, Pietro Boccamazza by name, a scion of one of the most illustrious of the Roman houses, who became enamoured of a damsel exceeding fair, and amorous withal—her name Agnolella—the daughter of one Gigliuozzo Saullo, a plebeian, but in high repute among the Romans. Nor, loving thus, did Pietro lack the address to inspire in Agnolella a love as ardent as his own. Wherefore, overmastered by his passion, and minded no longer to endure ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... and mechanically back to the scene of the overwhelming cataclysm where all his hopes lay irretrievably buried. He walked on—majestic as he had never been before, in the brilliant throne-room of the Tuileries or the mystic vastness of Notre Dame when the Imperial crown sat so ill upon his plebeian head. . . . He walked on—silent, exalted and great—great through the magnitude ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... What conglomerate plebeian speech of our time could utter the stately grandeur of these Lucretian words, every one of which is ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... of his in the Rospigliosi Palace—or rather, to give an example which is nearer at hand, and fresh in my memory, there is in the gallery here, his Madonna del Rosario. It represents a beautiful young woman, evidently of plebeian race: the form of the face is round, the features have nothing of the beau-ideal, and the whole head wants dignity: yet has the painter contrived to throw into this lovely picture an inimitable expression which depends on nothing external, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... entering into conversation with one of them, I found that he as well as several others of them had served under Napoleon, and had even been patronised and promoted by him; but I suppose that being the sons of the ancient noblesse they thought that gratitude to a parvenu like him was rather too plebeian a virtue. Some of them, however, with whom I conversed after dinner seemed to regret the step they had taken. "If we are successful," said they, "it can only be by means of the Allied Armies, and who knows what conditions they may impose on France? ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... think that the Venetian girl has done the deed," said Manutoli, whose opinion was no doubt in some degree warped by his desire that the criminal should turn out to be a foreign plebeian rather than a Ravenna noble. "After all Leandro is not the man to do such a deed. He is such a poor creature. Besides, it seems to me that the girl's motive for hate was the stronger. I don't know ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... dollars per window. To be sure, they make the rooms close and sombre as the grave; but they are of the most splendid stuffs; and if the sun would only reflect, he would see, himself, how foolish it was for him to try to force himself into a window guarded by his betters. If there is anything cheap and plebeian, it is sunshine and fresh air! Behold us, then, with our two rooms papered, carpeted, and curtained for two thousand dollars; and now are to be put in them sofas, lounges, etageres, centre-tables, screens, chairs of every ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... life with a retrograde movement; they imitate the crabs: in other words, they are launched stern foremost. Whether great or small, long or short, whether clothed in patrician copper or smeared with plebeian tar, they all start on their first voyage with their stern-posts acting the part of cut-water, and, also, without masts or sails. These necessary adjuncts, and a host of others, are added after they have been ...
— Man on the Ocean - A Book about Boats and Ships • R.M. Ballantyne
... renders them more deserving of admiration than Alexander, or any king, is, that some of these acted in the office of dictator, which lasted only ten, or it might be twenty days, none, in a charge of longer duration than the consulship of a year; their levies obstructed by plebeian tribunes; often late in taking the field; recalled, before the time, on account of elections; amidst the very busiest efforts of the campaign, their year of office expired; sometimes the rashness, sometimes the perverseness of a colleague, proving an impediment ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... written in all the stock-books of all the dividend-paying companies. His narrow study expands into a stately library, his books are counted by thousands instead of hundreds, and his favorites are dressed in gilded calf in place of plebeian sheepskin or its pauper substitutes of ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... whom, however, except one, died very young. A month before the birth of her in whom our interest centres, Maurice Dupin married Sophie Delaborde. The marriage was a civil one and contracted without the knowledge of his mother, who was opposed to this union less on account of Sophie's plebeian origin than ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... 20th of April, Lady Frances returned to her father's roof. The winter had certainly not been a happy time for her. Early in the autumn she had been taken off to the German castle in great disgrace because of her plebeian lover, and had, ever since, been living under so dark a cloud, as to have been considered unfit for the companionship of those little darlings, the young lords, her half-brothers. She had had her way no doubt, ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... reformation of the coin could furnish only a faint pretence to a party already powerful and discontented. Rome, though deprived of freedom, was distracted by faction. The people, towards whom the emperor, himself a plebeian, always expressed a peculiar fondness, lived in perpetual dissension with the senate, the equestrian order, and the Praetorian guards. [91] Nothing less than the firm though secret conspiracy of those orders, of the authority of the first, the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... some particularly favored mortals. There was no family, aristocracy to back him up, no melancholy recollections of past grandeur to add the interest of romance to his endeavors. His father had been a poor man of the people, a farmer. And yet Warrington was by no means plebeian. Somewhere there was a fine strain. It had been a fierce struggle to complete a college education. In the summer-time he had turned his hand to all sorts of things to pay his winter's tuition. He had worked as clerk in summer hotels, as a surveyor's assistant in laying ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... the glorious Incarnation of the Son of God, the Signory was composed of fourteen Magistrates chosen from among the hosiers, butchers, locksmiths, shoemakers, and stonemasons, who together formed a Great Council known as the Mount of the Reformers. They were a plebeian band, rough and hard as the bronze She-Wolf, emblem of their city, which they loved with an affection at once filial and formidable. But the People, which had set them up over the Commonwealth, had suffered another ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... the Prince d'Athis, sir,' replied Raymond, with a plebeian's satisfaction in uttering the word 'prince.' 'He has been taking douches for some time past, and generally comes in the morning. But he is later to-day, on account of a ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the neighbouring families, and Mrs. Rennie did the honours for me. Mr. Dalzell, with his mother, and two young lady cousins, were of the party. I thought the county people would have held themselves aloof from the more plebeian society of an Edinburgh banker, but he at least has condescended to accept Mrs. Rennie's invitation to her own house. The exclusiveness of classes, and sects, and cliques, is extremely amusing to me. But I am engaged to dance this dance with Miss Rennie, so you must ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence
... she liked. She at once suppressed O'Iwa's rather futile attempts to aid in her rough household work. It had been the lady's part to direct her maids in their more repugnant tasks, and now brought right under her hand in this plebeian household. O'Iwa never had undergone the harsher lot ...
— The Yotsuya Kwaidan or O'Iwa Inari - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 1 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... power to the settlement of a point so obscure. What we have wished to protest against, is the spirit of partisanship in which this question has too generally been discussed. For, whilst some with a foolish affectation of plebeian sympathies overwhelm us with the insipid commonplaces about birth and ancient descent, as honors containing nothing meritorious, and rush eagerly into an ostentatious exhibition of all the circumstances which favor the notion of a humble station and humble connections; others, ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... to choose his mate; he does not blunder into heroic fooleries in the way of self-abnegation; for, if his choice is judicious, the lady will prevent him from hurting his own prospects. Whether he be aristocrat or plebeian, he knows the worth of money, and he knows how to despise the foolish beings who talk of "dross" and "filthy lucre" and the rest. Mere craving for money he despises; but he knows that the amount of "dross" ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... ballad is hardly one of the forms of high art, like the epic, the tragedy, the Pindaric ode. It is simple and not complex like the sonnet: not of the aristocracy of verse, but popular—not to say plebeian—in its associations. It is easy to write and, in its commonest metrical shape of eights and sixes, apt to run into sing-song. Its limitations, even in the hands of an artist like Coleridge or Rossetti, are obvious. It belongs to "minor poetry." The ballad revival has not been an unmixed blessing ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Nineteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... great straggling wet wafer having been first put upon it. It was safely deposited, a few minutes afterwards, with the old lady at Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap's; and then the two West-End gentlemen hastened away from that truly plebeian part of the town! Under three different gas-lights did they stop, take out the newspaper, and spell over the advertisement; by which ingenious processes they at length succeeded in satisfying themselves that there was something in ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... any of your aristocratic airs,"—retorted Mikhalevitch, good-naturedly:—"but thank God, rather, that in thy veins flows honest, plebeian blood. But I perceive, that thou art now in need of some pure, unearthly being, who shall wrest thee from this apathy ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... end of his term. Cincinnatus gave it up at the end of eight days. The dictator was forbidden to dispose of the public funds without the authority of the Senate, or to go out of Italy. He could not even ride on horseback without the permission of the people. He might be a plebeian; Marcius Rutilus, and Publius Philo were dictators. That magistracy was created for very different objects: to organize fetes for saints' days; to drive a sacred nail into the wall of the Temple of Jupiter; on one occasion to appoint the Senate. Republican Rome had ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... looked! How she stamped the floor with her dainty foot when I hinted at the fact that my maternal grandfather was neither duke nor lord! How she hushed my 'impertinence,' as she styled it, with such invectives as 'fool, idiot, plebeian'! Heigho! But I felt that it was unmanly in me to provoke mother so, and I begged ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... of the chateau and estate of Frapesle near Sache in Touraine. Friend of the Vandenesses; he introduced their son Felix to his neighbors, the Mortsaufs. The son of a manufacturer named Durand who became very rich during the Revolution, but whose plebeian name he had entirely dropped; instead he adopted that of his wife, the only heiress of the Chessels, an old parliamentary family. M. de Chessel was director-general and twice deputy. He received the title of count under Louis XVIII. [The ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... facilities for intercommunication, and, as we have seen, a diversity of social and political forces interrelated, and acting and reacting upon each other in a manner quite unprecedented. The inquiry and criticism of plebeian minds were becoming more daring, and there was a stir and a restlessness in society, which made bad subjects for an absolute monarch. The religious Reformation, which began in Germany and spread to the westward, was but the legitimate result of the intellectual agitation which preceded ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... suited to such an art than the rest: his very qualities, his plebeian force, were obstacles in the way. He could only conceive it, and with the aid of Francoise realize a few ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... dangerous shoals, generally with overcrowded whale-boats; and this went on for three months. I had nothing to do, and amused myself by comparing the boys from the various islands, who were quite different in looks, speech and character. There were the short, thick-set, plebeian natives from the New Hebrides, the well-built men from the Solomons, with their long faces and open, energetic expression, the languid, sleepy boys from the Torres Islands and the savage ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... friction between the Albemarle or Carteret and the Charleston set, the former being from Virginia, while the latter was, as we have seen, a little given to kindergarten aristocracy and ofttimes tripped up on their parade swords while at the plough. Of course outside of this were the plebeian people, or copperas-culottes, who did the work; but Lord Shaftesbury for some time, as we have seen, lived in a baronial shed and had his arms worked on the left ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... children! To his breast The tenderest nurslings gained a free admission. Rank he despised, nor, if they came well dressed, Cared if they were plebeian or patrician. Shade of Leigh Hunt! Oh, guide this laggard pen To write of one who loved his ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... soon drove the populace from the squares. They fortified themselves, however, in the streets and lanes, which they barricadoed. They made fortresses of their houses, and fought desperately from the windows and the roofs, and many a warrior of the highest blood of Granada was laid low by plebeian hands and plebeian weapons ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... Burns spent a few days with his mother at Mossgiel: he had left her an unknown and an almost banished man: he returned in fame and in sunshine, admired by all who aspired to be thought tasteful or refined. He felt offended alike with the patrician stateliness of Edinburgh and the plebeian servility of the husbandmen of Ayrshire; and dreading the influence of the unlucky star which had hitherto ruled his lot, he bought a pocket Milton, he said, for the purpose of studying the intrepid independence and daring magnanimity, and noble ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... friendships: one, with the small daughter of our concierge and one with a little Russian princess, a month younger than himself. He calls them both 'boys,' having no idea yet of the less sublime sex, but he likes the plebeian best. May God make you happy ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... future, wherein gallant deeds in arms should place him among the most renowned knights of Christendom. The ideal character he proposed for himself involving a certain regard for his word, Francis's mind revolted from imitating the plebeian duplicity of his wily predecessor, Louis the Eleventh—a king who enjoyed the undesirable reputation of never having made a promise which he intended in good faith to keep. The memory of the disingenuous manner in which Louis, by winking at the ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... sliced parsnip and carrot, a few bits of turnip, and a half-dozen dumplings. When these are done, remove them; season and thicken, serving a dumpling with meat and vegetables to each plate of stew. This may be rather plebeian, but is certainly palatable,—unless there be choice company to dine. We might call ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... social rating is largely marked by altitude. The city, lying in the lap of the hills and looking a little down upon the valley—plebeian business together with those who do the work of Fairlands occupies the lowest levels in the corporate limits. The heights are held by Fairlands' Pride. Between these two extremes, the Fairlanders are graded fairly by the levels they occupy. It is most gratifying to observe how ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... fact behind circumlocutions and proceed to eradicate the disease with all despatch. That the physicians of Napoleon did otherwise is evidence that at the beginning of the century the disease in question enjoyed a very different status. At that time itch, instead of being a most plebeian malady, was, so to say, a court disease. It enjoyed a circulation, in high circles and in low, that modern therapeutics has quite denied it; and the physicians of the time gave it a fictitious added importance by ascribing to its ...
— A History of Science, Volume 4(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... I had noticed that Rodney Prescott listened with marked attention to the captain's cousin, a Virginia lady, as she advanced a theory that Jeannette had negro blood in her veins. 'Those quadroon girls often have a certain kind of plebeian beauty like this pet of yours, Mrs. Corlyne,' she said, with a slight sniff of her high-bred, pointed nose. In vain I exclaimed, in vain I argued; the garrison ladies were all against me, and, in their presence, not a man dared come to my aid; ...
— Castle Nowhere • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... understood, it throws upon the individual. Even yet the word "Eugenics," the name of this science, and this art, sometimes arouses a smile. It seems to stand for a modern fad, which the superior person, or even the ordinary plebeian democrat, may pass by on the other side with his nose raised towards the sky. Modern the science and art of Eugenics certainly seem, though the term is ancient, and the Greeks of classic days, as well as their successors ...
— Little Essays of Love and Virtue • Havelock Ellis
... English supply of that beverage; but it proves insufficient. The thirst of my burglarious intruders is not easily sated. The cry is still: 'Cerveza!' Convinced that I have exhausted all my beer, they are content to fall back upon aguardiente; which very plebeian liquor, to judge from their alcoholic breath, my guests have been falling back upon ever since ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... Cyprus. Still, from all that appears, the compensation thus received was honorary or gratuitous merely. Among the early institutions of Rome, the relation of patron and client, which existed between the patrician and plebeian, bound the former to render the latter assistance and protection in his lawsuits, with no other return than the general duty, which the client owed to his patron. As every patrician could not be ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... have been the ironical name of "Friend Haskall." The mother and child were now separated. The boy was levied to a Virginian named Freeland, who bore the military title of Major, and carried on the plebeian business of a publican. This man was of an extremely brutal disposition, and treated his slaves with most refined cruelty. His favourite punishment, which he facetiously called "Virginian play," was to flog his slaves severely, ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... have just indicated there is the social symptom. It is not rare for the neatherd's boy nowadays to bear the name of Arthur, Alfred, or Alphonse, and for the vicomte—if there are still any vicomtes—to be called Thomas, Pierre, or Jacques. This displacement, which places the "elegant" name on the plebeian and the rustic name on the aristocrat, is nothing else than an eddy of equality. The irresistible penetration of the new inspiration is there as everywhere else. Beneath this apparent discord there is a great and a ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... conquered such suspicion as contemptible, and cast out the passing weakness. The bare memory of it angered her now, causing her to fire a volley of yellow corn at a lordly peacock, which sent him scuttling down the steps on to the gravel in most plebeian haste. Yes, she had speedily cast out her weakness, thank heaven! What was all the pother about after all? This was not the first time she had played merry games with the affairs and affections of men. Madame de Vallorbes smiled to herself, recalling certain episodes, and shook her charming shoulders ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... of one piece. He was, besides, a mighty toper; he could sit at wine until the day dawned, and pass directly from the table to the bench with a steady hand and a clear head. Beyond the third bottle, he showed the plebeian in a larger print; the low, gross accent, the low, foul mirth, grew broader and commoner; he became less formidable, and infinitely more disgusting. Now, the boy had inherited from Jean Rutherford a shivering delicacy, unequally mated with potential violence. In the playing-fields, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... from the Monet pier through the village, the party had the innocuous, cheerful, plebeian, only-man-is-vile air of all large parties of pleasure ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... not the courage to imitate Luther. He has told us that he wanted courage; he again repeats it: he says that he, a plebeian, trifling as a man, and having but little learning, has nothing in him which could deserve celebrity. And yet he essayed a timid protest in favor of certain Huguenots who had been burned on the public square. "The work," says Prince Masson, "of a double-faced writer, a Catholic in his writings ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... Bluff Head. The master, feeling that at least he paid for the necessity, ate in peace; but Saxton, who fell between the aristocracy of Devant's ideas and the Quintonite ideal, suffered cruelly from his plebeian position. Only a vague hope of city life and pleasures held him to his position. And Devant was undecided as to what he should do. Thornly had not "looked him up" after seeing Katharine. Indeed, that rigid young man had sailed, within the week, for Point Comfort, and Devant, fearing ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... quite insupportably tame. The whole object is to keep carefully along a certain level of the expected and the commonplace; it may be low, but it must take care also to be flat. Never by any chance in it is there any of that real plebeian pungency which can be heard from the ordinary cabman in the ordinary street. We have heard of a certain standard of decorum which demands that things should be funny without being vulgar, but the standard of this decorum demands ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... large proportion of a handsome fortune, he would still have a competence left, and that well secured—proposed to visit Saratoga, as usual. There was not a dissenting voice—no objecting on the score of meeting vulgar people there. The painful fact disclosed by Uncle Joseph, of their plebeian origin, and the marriage of Mr. Armand—whose station in society was not to be questioned—with Mary Jones, the watchmaker's daughter, had softened and subdued their tone of feeling, and caused them to set up a new standard of estimation. The old one would not ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... humans to dumb, driven cattle, going, going, for ever going, but non-comprehending the why or the wherefore of it all, beyond the arrogant assumption of "welt-politik." Every refining trait was subordinated to the exigencies of the gospel of force. Not only the plebeian mass, but the exclusive aristocracy, revelled in the brutish impulse that associated all appeals to reason with effeminacy and invested the sword-slash on the student's cheek with the honor ordinarily claimed by ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... the gates of the Mythe House; great iron gates, a barrier as proud and impassable as that which in these times the rich shut against the poor, the aristocrat against the plebeian. John, glancing once up ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik |
