"Plebeian" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for ancestors does not often take such extreme and reprehensible forms; its manifestations are usually rather amusing than criminal. A common weakness is, however plebeian and obvious in its origin a surname may be, to dignify it with a Norman or at least French cradle. Thus we are solemnly assured that the Smithsons (a name which bluntly proclaims its own derivation) are "a branch of the ...
— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall
... except that he had left him at the door of his home. Mme. Husson had just retired when they informed her that her protege had disappeared. She immediately put on her wig, dressed herself and went to Virginie's house. Virginie, whose plebeian soul was readily moved, was weeping copiously amid ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... Ned,' returned his father, laying down the newspaper at which he had been glancing carelessly, and throwing himself back in the window-seat, 'I believe you know how very much I dislike what are called family affairs, which are only fit for plebeian Christmas days, and have no manner of business with people of our condition. But as you are proceeding upon a mistake, Ned—altogether upon a mistake—I will conquer my repugnance to entering on such matters, and give you a perfectly plain and candid answer, if you will do me the ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... right, partner," he hastened to say in the boldest manner possible. "But really and truly, I have got some things I want to do, though of course they could be postponed if absolutely necessary. Some time perhaps you'll be having my plebeian dish over at your house; then try ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson
... defaulter. The knowing ones declared this man worthy to rank high amongst the best of them; but no one knew where he lived, or what he was. He was rarely known to miss a race; and he was conspicuous amongst the crowd in those mysterious purlieus where the plebeian bookmen, who are unworthy to enter the sacred precincts of Tattersall's, mostly do congregate, in utter defiance of the police. No one had ever heard the name of this man; but in default of any more particular cognomen, they had christened him the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... no doubt of it now. The Princess and her escort—the plebeian upstart—were quite near at hand, and, to the dismay of the smokers, apparently were unaware of their presence in the shadows. Chase's heart was boiling with disappointed rage. His idol had fallen, from a tremendous height to a depth which ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... to! What! a face that's speckled Like a common milking-maid's, Whom the sun hath freckled. Then the Wild-Rose is a flirt; And the trillium Lily, In her spotless gown, 's a prude, Sanctified and silly. By her cap the Columbine, To my mind, 's too merry; Gossips, I would sooner wed Some plebeian Berry. And the shy Anemone— Well, her face shows sorrow; Pale, goodsooth! alive to-day, Dead and gone to-morrow. Then that bold-eyed, buxom wench, Big and blond and lazy,— She's been chosen overmuch!— Sirs, I mean the Daisy. Pleasant persons ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... representative of a very ancient and honourable family, which had been allied to the crown; and requesting that, if he could not be favoured with the species of death which in cases of treason distinguishes the nobleman from the plebeian, he might at least, out of consideration for his family, be allowed to suffer in the Tower, rather than at the common place of execution; but this indulgence was refused. From his return to the Tower to the day of his execution, he betrayed no mark ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... elephant. Milo being of the number, and in his foolish exhilaration and sportive approbation of Sapor's feats having gone up to him and patted him on his side, the beast, receiving as an affront that plebeian salutation, quickly turned upon him, and taking him by one of his feet, held him in that displeasing manner—-his head hanging down—and paraded leisurely round the green, Milo making the while hideous outcry, and the whole ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... the tribunes of the people, and bid the Aediles take him to the Tarpeian rock, and without delay throw him headlong from the precipice. When they, however, in compliance with the order, came to seize upon his body, many, even of the plebeian party, felt it to be a horrible and extravagant act; the patricians, meantime, wholly beside themselves with distress and horror, hurried with cries to the rescue; and persuaded them not to despatch him by any sudden violence, but refer the cause to the general suffrage of the people. ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... most aristocratic lady can use the most plebeian conveyance. The "four-wheeler" is the favorite carriage. A servant calls them from the door-step with a whistle. They are very cheap—one-and-sixpence for two miles, including a call not to exceed fifteen minutes (the call). ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... or Carteret and the Charleston set, the former being from Virginia, while the latter was, as we have seen, a little given to kindergarten aristocracy and ofttimes tripped up on their parade swords while at the plough. Of course outside of this were the plebeian people, or copperas-culottes, who did the work; but Lord Shaftesbury for some time, as we have seen, lived in a baronial shed and had his arms worked on the ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... exposed herself, produce the slightest apparent effect upon her; her step never faltered, her eye never quailed. What a partial thing is fame," he continued, "and how poor a motive to duty! The names of Palafox and Zaragoza are forever wedded. How few remember the old plebeian, Tio Jorge, who counseled and spurred on both governor and populace ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... and breadth of the land. It numbered, I suppose, some adherents even in the aristocratic and governing classes,—thousands, no doubt, among the working and laboring millions; but its central strength was in that backbone of English philanthropic effort, the more plebeian section of the well-to-do middle class,—that section which gravitates towards Dissent, in religion, towards Radicalism in politics, towards Bible Societies, Temperance Movements, "Bands of Hope," and Exeter Hall. If this section of the British community ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... opening upon nothing by a loft-door—over a garage that had been a coach-house, at the end of the paved yard looking towards the rear of the tall, drab-stuccoed house whose high double plate-glass windows were shielded from plebeian eyes by softly-quilled screens of silk muslin running on polished brass rods. But when the electric lights were switched on, before the inner blinds were drawn down, you could see quite plain into the consulting-room, a little below your level, where the Doctor sat at his ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... despatched Finn O'Brollaghan, his Aes graidh or Steward, to collect his tribute in Connaught, and Finn, putting up at the house of O'Daly, near Drumcliff, and being a plebeian who knew no better, began to wrangle with the poet. The irritable master of song, seizing a sharp axe, slew the steward on the spot, and then to avoid O'Donnell's vengeance fled into Clanrickarde. Here he announced himself by a poem addressed to de Burgh, imploring his protection, setting ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... come to them in an unexpected manner. They had been credibly informed that an ancestor of plebeian Willowes was once honoured with intermarriage with a scion of the aristocracy who had gone to the dogs. In short, such is the foolishness of distinguished parents, and sometimes of others also, that they wrote that very day to the address Barbara had given ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy
... articles, is left here at Newport and for rent. What more natural, dear, than that I, needing a residence whose occupancy would in itself be an assurance of my social position, should snap it up with an eagerness which in this Newport atmosphere amounted nearly to a betrayal of plebeian origin?" ...
— Mrs. Raffles - Being the Adventures of an Amateur Crackswoman • John Kendrick Bangs
... door closed immediately, yet Eudoxia Pence had a clairvoyant sense of what was going on behind that rather plebeian partition of black walnut and frosted glass. She knew how they must all be hesitating, fumbling, floundering—snared by a problem wholly new and unfamiliar, and readily falling victims to intimidation from the humblest source. The entire situation was as clear as sunlight in the gesture ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... the association of men and women in refined circles shall be frank without freedom, friendly without familiarity. "Flirting" is a plebeian diversion. Every well-bred woman is a queen, for whose sake every well-bred man will hold a lance ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton
... life history two days after she had ceased to be afraid of him. She knew the distressing family affairs of the maids; how many were the ignoble progeny of the elevator-man, and what his plebeian wife did for their croup; how much rent the hall-boy's low-born father paid for his mean two-story dwelling in Jersey City; and how many hours a day or night the debased scrub-women ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... to Mr. Tennyson, as I did, I noticed the large size, and somehow plebeian shape, of his hands. They did not seem to belong to the same body as the head, indicating merely physical strength and fitness for physical labor. His dress also struck me as peculiar: he was wearing a shirt of coarse linen, starchless, with a large and loose turned-down collar, very like a farmer's ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... 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 eighty-eight dictators. ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... 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 ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... teacher of morality, Fielding shielded immorality; Richardson described artificial manners in a society which he did not frequent, Fielding, in the words of Coleridge, "was like an open lawn on a breezy day in May;" Richardson was a plebeian, a carpenter's son, a successful printer; Fielding was a gentleman, the son of General Fielding, and grandson of the Earl of Denbigh; Richardson steadily rose, by his honest exertions, to independent ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... she has proved false to me. I know that she meets this man. Adrian too knows it, and more of him than he will tell me; and he approves. I am treated like a child. The situation is strange upon every side; Madeleine loving a plebeian—a sailor, not a king's officer—stooping to stolen interviews! Adrian the punctilious, in whose charge Tanty solemnly left her, pretending ignorance, virtually condoning my sister's behaviour! For though he has distinctly refused to enlighten me or help me to enlighten ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... government did not dare to disclose it, were hung on trees or broken on the wheel.—Moreau de Jonnes, Etat Economique et Social de la France, p. 420. Who can wonder at the hostility of the French plebeian classes towards the aristocracy in the days of ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... Roman tribune and consul, of plebeian birth, author of several laws intended to minimise the distinction politically between patrician and plebeian, in office between 376 ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... with the eagerness of a Londoner discovering some new thing, fell into quick talk with Fenwick; looked him meanwhile up and down, his features, bearing, clothes; noticed his North-Country accent, and all the other signs of the plebeian. And presently Fenwick, placed at his ease, began for the first time to expand, became argumentative and explosive. In a few minutes he was laying down the law in his Westmoreland manner—attacking the Academy—denouncing certain pictures of the year—with a flushed, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... he afforded no incorrect type of the aristocracy of his nation: noble child that he was, with the passions, and perhaps the sins of a man; while over against him crouched the coarse build of the fettered plebeian, who pretended to sleep too, but often cast a malicious glance at ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... contribute any thing in our 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; ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... that commonly excites that individual. Hence it is that a joke may convulse one person while it bores another, and so there are jokes of the classes, bankers' jokes, politicians' jokes, the jokes of professional men, of the plebeian, of the artist, etc. If the joke fails, the integration products of the excitation may be used in physical ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... air, reiterating their solitary note of fear as they fly. The starlings, which seemed to disappear for a time, have now returned to the fields near the sea. They have left their wonderful sheen somewhere behind them, and are mottled and plebeian. Still, to see a cloud of them alighting in a field at the end of a swift circle of flight is a pretty ...
— The Pleasures of Ignorance • Robert Lynd
... common people I mean are not only to be found low down in the social scale; they crawl and swarm all around us—even in the highest social positions. You have only to look at your own fine, distinguished Mayor! My brother Peter is every bit as plebeian as anyone that walks in two shoes— ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... the boy called William after his late father, but Mrs. Wilkie would not have what she was pleased to term a plebeian designation, and insisted on calling him Alexander. The dowager opposed this with all her might, but "her usefulness was gone," and her feeble remonstrances were of little or no avail. This slight sank deep into her heart, and ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... and of him we shall hear much. A sharp contrast to Chrysantas, the Peer, with his pointed plebeian similes. His speech important again for Xenophon's sympathetic knowledge of children and ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... handing some Royal Personage either the trowel or the mortar. Be that as it may, he had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who in the nature of things must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... as to the misfortune itself, I rather think mine is the less grievous. For what could be more mortifying than that a man, who has been consul-designate, so to speak, ever since he was born, should fail in securing his election? Especially when he is the only (plebeian) candidate, or at most had but one opponent. If it is also the fact, which I rather think it is, that he[516] has in the register of his pocket-book some equally long pages of future, no less than of past consuls, what more humiliating ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... it was quite an event for the little town, and all classes of society were in a state of the greatest excitement. The pretty, plebeian girls, with her whom the Prince had first noticed at their head, appeared in all their innocence, in plain, washing dresses, according to the Prince's orders, with their hair plainly dressed, and without any ornaments, except their own fresh, buxom charms. When ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... era, the French nation, divided by caste, poor and oppressed, struggled in the triple net of royal absolutism, the tyranny of nobles and parliaments, and priestly intolerance. There was the right of the king and the right of the priest, the right of the patrician and the right of the plebeian; there were the privileges of birth, province, communes, corporations, and trades; and, at the bottom of all, violence, immorality, and misery. For some time they talked of reformation; those who apparently desired it most favoring it only for their own profit, and the people who were to be ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... nothing at all,' asserted her father. 'A plebeian can have her maidens in plenty, but it is not right that the wife of a high and mighty imperator,' and here again the words rolled majestically off his tongue, 'should not also have her male attendants. ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... remarked Hough dryly. "Next time you depict a plebeian scene you can remember this ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... cause of the insurrection, his 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 History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... only finds it. What Sculpture is to a Block of Marble, Education is to a Human Soul. The Philosopher, the Saint, or the Hero, the Wise, the Good, or the Great Man, very often lie hid and concealed in a Plebeian, which a proper Education might have disinterred, and have brought to Light. I am therefore much delighted with Reading the Accounts of Savage Nations, and with contemplating those Virtues which are wild and uncultivated; to see Courage exerting it self in Fierceness, Resolution in Obstinacy, ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... and gorgeously embroidered gloves, were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power, and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebeian order. In the array of funerals, too—whether for the apparel of the dead body, or to typify, by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors—there was a frequent and characteristic ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... to nothing but the cogent arguments of the whip, looked toward us with an indignant countenance, as if he meditated avenging his wrongs with a kick. The other, Pontiac, a good horse, though of plebeian lineage, stood with his head drooping and his mane hanging about his eyes, with the grieved and sulky air of a lubberly boy sent off to school. Poor Pontiac! his forebodings were but too just; for when I last heard from ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the room, whether that was the little ploughboy whom she had heard Mr Barlow was attempting to breed up like a gentleman. Mrs Merton answered it was. "I protest," 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 in my life, with quite the air of fashion, ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... provincial Custom, and may be compared with the fondness shown in some parts of Scotland for words such as "boatie," "lassie" or "lassock," etc. There are several Hebraisms. Some of the Greek words are frankly plebeian, such as a foreigner would pick up without realizing that they were inelegant. There are also some Aramaic words and phrases which the writer inserts with a true artistic sense and then interprets—Boanerges (iii. 17), Talitha cumi (v. 41), Corban (vii. 11), Ephphatha (vii. 34), Abba ...
— The Books of the New Testament • Leighton Pullan
... made the mother of our hero his wife, but he adopted her son as his son and heir—changing, at the same time, the name of the boy. In place of his former plebeian appellation of Ahenobarbus, he gave him now the imposing title of Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. He has since generally been known in history, however, by the ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... 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
... grows luxurious and becomes accustomed to such display, it may come to seem strange and hideous to see a wooden plate or a pewter spoon. A beautiful house will need to be in marble and the sight of plebeian brick will ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... hereditary distinction before he distinguished himself; whilst on the other hand the tramp and the street-walker may have as "royal" blood in their veins as any lineal princely personage. It is records, therefore, that differentiate "civilized" from uncivilized people, blue blood from plebeian; and as we see millions of people living without records to-day in various parts of the world, notwithstanding that for centuries, or even for millenniums, they have been surrounded by or in immediate ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker
... than ever after the expulsion of the decem'viri, but finally terminated in the complete triumph of the people. The Roman constitution became essentially democratical; the offices of the state were open to all the citizens; and although the difference between the patrician and plebeian families still subsisted, they soon ceased of themselves to be political parties. From the time that equal rights were granted to all the citizens, Rome advanced rapidly in wealth and power; the subjugation of Italy was effected within ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith
... as in France, and while they may not always possess the energy and business skill which characterize the French women, they are at least no more indolent and easy-going than their male companions. The women of the nobility are often less educated than their plebeian sisters, and for the most part lead a very narrow and petty existence, which produces little but vanity and selfishness and discontent. There are exceptions, however, and here and there may be seen a gentlewoman who has studied and travelled, and made herself not only a social but also ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... drives are crowded. Carriages, gigs, phaetons, stanhopes, and vehicles of every description, glide smoothly on. The promenades are filled with loungers on foot, and the road is thronged with loungers on horseback. Persons of every class are crowded together, here, in one dense mass. The plebeian, who takes his pleasure on no day but Sunday, jostles the patrician, who takes his, from year's end to year's end. You look in vain for any outward signs of profligacy or debauchery. You see nothing before ...
— Sunday Under Three Heads • Charles Dickens
... did not come from a plebeian origin. It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ostentatiously plain; but they are, on the contrary, susceptible of being rendered in the highest degree ornamental. Nothing is more agreeable to the eye, and even the touch, than an old book in contemporary gilt calf, with arms on the sides, or in the original vellum wrapper, or, again, in the plebeian mutton. ...
— The Book-Collector • William Carew Hazlitt
... Tweeddale for his riding. "There goes the minister," as he rode past at a swift canter. He had generally well-bred horses, or as I would now call them, ponies; if he had not, his sufferings from a dull, hardmouthed, heavy-hearted and footed, plebeian horse were almost comic. On his gray mare, or his little blood bay horse, to see him setting off and indulging it and himself in some alarming gambols, and in the midst of his difficulties, partly of his ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... Fame on high, and with the other was urging him to follow her; but Sloth and Idleness, who were behind the young man, were striving to detain him. Below these was a figure with an uncouth face, rather that of a slave and a plebeian than of one of noble blood, who had two great snails clinging to his elbows and was seated on a crab, and near him was another figure with the hands full of poppies. This invention, in which are other beautiful details and fancies, was executed by ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... aristocrat," answered Mikhalevich good-humoredly; "but rather thank God that in your veins also there flows simple plebeian blood. But I see you are now in need of some pure, unearthly being, who might rouse ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... 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, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... rough words and movements; while only the refined circles habitually used gentle tones and gentle manners. For the same reason, those born in the higher circles were called "of gentle blood." Thus it came that a coarse and loud voice, and rough, ungentle manners, are regarded as vulgar and plebeian. ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... ranks of the City Guards, which march from Lyons, Dijon, and Grenoble, to keep the inundation down. Throughout the country scattered chateaux are swallowed up by the popular tide, and, as the feudal rights are often in plebeian hands, it insensibly rises beyond its first overflow.—There is no limit to an insurrection against property. This one extends from abbeys and chateaux to the "houses of the bourgeoisie."[1343] The grudge at ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... utmost Hell Many a dark League, reduc't in careful Watch Round thir Metropolis, and now expecting Each hour their great adventurer from the search 440 Of Forrein Worlds: he through the midst unmarkt, In shew plebeian Angel militant Of lowest order, past; and from the dore Of that Plutonian Hall, invisible Ascended his high Throne, which under state Of richest texture spred, at th' upper end Was plac't in regal lustre. Down a while He sate, and round about him saw unseen: At last as from a Cloud his fulgent ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... but for my own part I think a little warm drink before going to bed upon a night when owls hoot and chimnies are to be blown down, prepared by the small hands that one loves, and that all admire; where a dimple takes place of what in a plebeian hand is a knuckle, and the round fingers taper gently off toward points that are touched with damask and bordered with little rims of ivory; where bright eyes beam with kindness as well as wit; and words fall in silvery tones from a beautifully-formed mouth, like the renewal of life upon the soul ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... knows that they were expiated truly!" croaked an old woman from a booth by the road. "Who does not know that, as Varro says, your patrician magistrates would rather lose a battle than that a plebeian consul should triumph! Varbo, the butcher, dreamed last night that his son's blood was drenching his bed, and when he awoke, it was water from the roof; and Arates, the Greek soothsayer, says that Varbo's son has been slain in ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... and Plebeian in Virginia; or, The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of ...
— Mother Earth - Land Grants in Virginia 1607-1699 • W. Stitt Robinson, Jr.
... instantly. The hunters now arrived with the hounds in full cry, and the foremost horseman, who anticipated the glory of possessing the brush, was the first to behold his victim stretched lifeless on the ground, pinioned to the earth by plebeian pitchforks. The hunters were very anxious to discover the daring culprit who had presumed to deprive the field and the pack of their prey; when the venerable sergeant made his appearance, with his book in his ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... am quite capable of reason. Oh! to feel again the terror of that fascination in which I was held by the schoolmaster, the plebeian, the man I kept at ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... and R[a]ma as still further types of the All-god. Thus it is that Vishnuism, whether as Krishnaism or as Ramaism, is to-day a pantheistic religion. But, while R[a]ma is the god of the philosophical sects, and, therefore, is almost entirely a pantheistic god; Krishna, who was always a plebeian, is continually reverting, so to speak, to himself; that is to say, he is more affected by the vulgar, and as the vulgar are more prone, by whatever sectarian name they call themselves, to worship one idol, it happens that Krishna in the eyes of his following is less of a pantheistic ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... with the rationale of such affairs, that the principal event of that golden holiday-summer was the falling in love with each other of Everett's sister and Everett's friend. Agnes was the only daughter and special pride of a rich and well-born man. Barclay was of plebeian birth, with nothing in the world to depend on but his own talents, which he had abused, and the before-named patrimony, which was already nearly exhausted. It will at once be seen that there could hardly be a more felicitous conjunction of circumstances ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... century ago, to see the long processions of sedans containing Lady Eglintoune and her daughters devolve from the Close,[286] and proceed to the Assembly Rooms in the West Bow, where there was usually a considerable crowd of plebeian admirers congregated, to behold their lofty and graceful figures step from the chairs on the pavement." Lady Margaret was greatly beloved in Skye. When she rode through the island, the people ran before ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... Goldie and Old Duke. So far so good out in the stables. Within the school Nelly was learning the difference between being the daughter of patrician blood come upon misfortune, and cheerfully making the best of things, and some extremely plebeian blood slopped unexpectedly into fortune, and trying to forget its origin. Had not Nelly possessed such loyal old friends as Peggy and Polly, and made such stanch new ones as Rosalie, Natalie, Stella and Marjorie, her position might have been a very trying one. ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... come for,' said Emmie, churlishly. Matilda looked a long time at the neat khaki figure. It had something of the charity-boy about it still; but now it was a man's figure, laconic, charged with plebeian energy. She thought of the derisive passion in his voice as he had declaimed against the propertied classes, ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... service in the quiet village church, and worshipping in the principal pew, under the blazonry of the Jocelyn arms, the Countess sealed her letter and addressed it, and then examined the name of Cogglesby; which plebeian name, it struck her, would not sound well to the menials of Beckley Court. While she was deliberating what to do to conceal it, she heard, through her open window, the voices of some young men laughing. She beheld her brother pass these young men, and bow to them. She beheld them stare ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the day of the great fight began to approach. Even the imminent outbreak of war and the renewed threats of Napoleon were secondary things in the eyes of the sportsmen—and the sportsmen in those days made a large half of the population. In the club of the patrician and the plebeian gin-shop, in the coffee-house of the merchant or the barrack of the soldier, in London or the provinces, the same question was interesting the whole nation. Every west- country coach brought up word of the fine condition of Crab Wilson, who had returned to his own native air for his training, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the rocks are the spirits of the greatest men who have lived in past ages, developed by some divinity until they have become worthy of their new abode. Napoleon Bonaparte's soul inhabits a stone, so does Hannibal's, so does Caesar's, but poor plebeian John Smith and William Jenkins, ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... the generous example was at length imitated by the republics of Tuscany. [1421] In the Italian cities a municipal government had never been totally abolished; and their first privileges were granted by the favor and policy of the emperors, who were desirous of erecting a plebeian barrier against the independence of the nobles. But their rapid progress, the daily extension of their power and pretensions, were founded on the numbers and spirit of these rising communities. [143] Each ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... noblesse, he cast himself into the arms of the people, certain of making the balance incline to the side on which he should cast the weight of his daring and his genius. Marseilles contended with Aix for the great plebeian; his two elections, the discourses he then delivered, the addresses he drew up, the energy he employed, commanded the attention of all France. His sonorous phrases became the proverbs of the Revolution; ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... ideas!" he returns, which is delicious and makes you love him. He, too, has his moments of misgiving, apparently in regard to his nobility, and his acceptance of Newman on the basis of something like "manhood suffrage" is very charming. It is of course difficult for a remote plebeian to verify the pictures of legitimist society in "The American," but there is the probable suggestion in them of conditions and principles, and want of principles, of which we get glimpses in our travels abroad; at any rate, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... heedless young man; "I am one of a profession which the world has never been able to do without, and will far less endure to want for half a century to come; and my good old uncle may tack his good estate and his plebeian name to your apron-string if he pleases, Mary, and you may wed this new favourite of his if you please, and you may both of you live quiet, peaceable, well-regulated lives, if it pleases Heaven. My part is takenI'll fawn on no man for an inheritance ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... good-breeding. An inferior makes a sham attempt to fall on his knees before his superior, and the latter affects a slight motion to raise him. A common salutation has its mode prescribed by the court of ceremonies; and any neglect or default in a plebeian towards his superior is punishable by corporal chastisement, and in men in office by degradation or suspension. In making thus the exterior and public manners of the people a concern of the legislature, society in many respects was considerably ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... play in the final issue, it would do at least one night's business. The stalls were ablaze with jewelry and crackling with starched shirt-fronts; and expensive scents pervaded the air, putting up a stiff battle with the plebeian peppermint that emanated from the pit. The boxes were filled, and up in the gallery grim-faced patrons of the drama, who had paid their shillings at the door and intended to get a shilling's-worth of entertainment in return, sat ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... a closer glance unexpected imagination. I once saw him coming through a little pine grove near The Wayside with my father; it was after our return from England. He was so short, sturdy, phlegmatic of exterior, and plebeian, that I was astonished at my father's pleasure in his company, until I noticed a certain gentleness in his manner of stepping, and heard the modulations of his voice, and caught the fragrance of his humility. One or two letters of his already printed are delightfully straightforward,—even ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... among them were found, in regard to this subject, superstitious terror, blank indifference, positive unbelief. The current fancy was that the souls of the chiefs were led, by a god whose name denotes the "eyeball of the sun," to a life in the heavens, while plebeian souls went down to Akea, a lugubrious underground abode. Some thought spirits were destroyed in this realm of darkness; others, that they were eaten by a stronger race of spirits there; others still, that they survived there, subsisting ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... been better expressed before. A few of the more noteworthy among Walter's successors are represented in the following selections, which are taken from Obermann's Deutscher Minnesang. The most original is Neidhart von Reuental, who eschewed the conventional hohe Minne and sang lustily of the plebeian maid ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... at a speed of not less than four miles an hour—for it was anything but an Arabian courser which Lynde had hired of honest Deacon Twombly. She was not a handsome animal either—yellow in tint and of the texture of an ancestral hair-trunk, with a plebeian head, and mysterious developments of muscle on the hind legs. She was not a horse for fancy riding; but she had her good points—she had a great many points of one kind and another—among which was her perfect adaptability to rough country roads ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... 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 that wounded vanity has had many such crimes to answer for, whereas jealousy—and such a ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... There are two remedies, and only two, available; failing one of these, something must, soon or later, give way with a crash. Either the anachronistic tradition must make suicidal concessions, or the better-class people must drown all plebeian Australian males in infancy, and fill the ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... departure from the Cambridge polity by the Reforming Synod. First, occasional officiations of ministers outside their own churches were authorized; secondly, there was a movement to revive the authority and office of ruling elder and other officers; thirdly, "plebeian ordination," or lay ordination, ordination by the hands of the brethren of the church in the absence of superior officers, was no longer allowed;[d] and fourthly, there was a variation from the "personal and public confession" in favor of a private ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.
... went to the academy he pleaded for Jack to go, and Grandmother Darcy decided that he should. She had never taken kindly to her son's rather plebeian occupation. After several years of indifferent success, Mr. Darcy had accepted a position at the mill, in which, if there was not so much profit, ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... indecorous, ribald, gross; unseemly, unbeseeming[obs3], unpresentable[obs3]; contra bonos mores[Lat]; ungraceful &c. (ugly) 846. dowdy; slovenly &c. (dirty) 653; ungenteel, shabby genteel; low, common, hoi polloi[Grk] &c. (plebeian) 876; uncourtly[obs3]; uncivil &c. (discourteous) 895; ill bred, ill mannered; underbred; ungentlemanly, ungentlemanlike; unladylike, unfeminine; wild, wild as an unbacked colt. untutored, unschooled ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... Then at last the meal was over, and she heaved a sigh of relief that all had passed off without catastrophe and with credit to the family. No one had broken the fragile glass, no one had betrayed a plebeian ignorance of the convenances, nor showed ill-bred surprise. They had examined the menu with an understanding air, as though every other name was not as Greek to their ears, and had refrained from any signs of approval more noticeable than pressures of feet ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the Orient and India, are within the range of his sympathies, this most outspoken of all philosophers, this prophet and poet-philosopher, cannot find words enough to express his disgust at the illogical, plebeian, shallow, utilitarian Englishman. It must certainly be disagreeable to be treated like this, especially when one has a fairly good opinion of one's self; but why do you take it so very, very seriously? Did Nietzsche, ...
— Thoughts out of Season (Part One) • Friedrich Nietzsche
... curiosity to see the person whom the director of these Munich circeans considered in adequate succession to the peerless Stamboulane. The announcement had at least kindled the public: being plebeian, the promised aristocrat was already discussed. The family was existent, whether this variety vocalist was legitimately a daughter being another question. Vieradlers was a barony that had a right to fly its four eagles—as ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... was of the people, and that the auditors which surrounded him were also of the people. Thus the communication between him and them had been prompt, electric, and, so to speak, on a level. The haughty air of the Flemish hosier, by humiliating the courtiers, had touched in all these plebeian souls that latent sentiment of dignity still vague and indistinct in ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... tinker's curse for glory myself; the satisfaction of getting quietly along, while in pursuit of bread, comfort and knowledge, has sufficed to engross my individual attention; but I've often "had my joke" by observing the various grand dashes made by cords of folks, from snob to nob, patrician to plebeian, in their gyrations to form a circle, in which they might be the centre pin! This desire, or feeling, is a part and parcel of human nature; you will observe it every where—among the dusky and man-eating ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... 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
... high-spirited children to be so misunderstood. Pop lacked refined tastes. It was a harsh thing to say of one's parent, but when you came right down to it Pop was a hopeless plebeian. ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... standing army of eight hundred boys, the flowers of all nations, so they wrote me, temporarily in barracks on an East River island—I say, this thirtieth boy was in person not ungraceful; his deceased mother a lady's maid, or something of that sort; and in manner, why, in a plebeian way, a perfect Chesterfield; very intelligent, too—quick as a flash. But, such suavity! 'Please sir! please sir!' always bowing and saying, 'Please sir.' In the strangest way, too, combining a filial affection with a menial respect. ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... not attend this service—they had promised themselves the very plebeian diversion of a ride in the subway; for so far they had not seen this feature of the city. People who lived in Society saw Madison and Fifth Avenues, where their homes were, with the churches and hotels scattered ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... at last to become a duchess, and to have the duke whom I have loved a long while, and be received and admired by everybody. To be rich on my own account and through my husband; to be able to say that I am not a plebeian by birth, like all the celebrities—that is the life, that is the happiness I desire. If I can become his wife without being a cantatrice, I shall be equally well pleased, but I believe that is the only way I shall ...
— Marie Bashkirtseff (From Childhood to Girlhood) • Marie Bashkirtseff
... the tender passion. M. de Villeroi felt the full force of her charms, and became the whining, sighing lover—her very shadow. Up to this period I had had no cause of complaint against M. de Villeroi; and certainly I should not have interfered with his plebeian flame had he not thought proper, when questioned by my enemies as to his continual presence at the castle, and great assiduities there, to protest that his visits thither were not in honour of my charms, but for those ...
— "Written by Herself" • Baron Etienne Leon Lamothe-Langon
... cried, "That is all the humble plebeian can say. That I may be more completely under this fairy spell, pray cast about yourself the robe of rank and take up the sceptre. Perhaps I may ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... queer little demi-mondaine mother—her thoughts set on her child's purity, and the conventional marriage for her—in the future. Her plebeian, insolent little round face so kindly ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... of arable lands Re-election of town officers Representation unknown to Greeks and Romans origin of federal, in United States Rex Rhode Island Roman law Rome, plebeian revolution at early stages of secret of its power advantages of its dominion causes of its political failure, powerful influence of, in Middle Ages meaning of its great wars Roses, wars of the Ross, D. Russia, Mongolian conquest ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske
... 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
... up two 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 on ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... thinking of Pierre Delarue, who had just taken honors at the Polytechnic school, and who seemed to have a brilliant career before him. This woman, humbly born, was proud of her origin, and sought a plebeian for her son-in-law, to put into his hand a golden tool powerful ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... our hearts, because we think it more advisable to keep the people in outward decency by means of these images. Or if we are less reflective, and ourselves fettered by the bands of authority, then we sink, ourselves, to the true plebeian level, by believing that which, so understood, would be foolish fable; and by finding, in those purely spiritual indications, nothing but the promise of a continuance, to all eternity, of the same miserable existence which ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... these mines, would you immediately conclude that, because you had found it there, it must be indigenous to the spot? Look at that girl, and tell me if there is one trace in feature, in form, in manner, or in speech, of plebeian blood, and then will you tell me that she is in any way connected with people such as these? They are not merely plebeian, they are low, debased, criminal. They are criminals of the deepest dye, not only capable of any villainy, but already ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... for you and me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter but at once resolved, at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the Union of the States ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... Royal 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
... 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 |
