"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gone to Colonel Tom the morning after that evening in Jackson Park, there had been a scene. The old gun maker had blustered and roared and forbidden, pounding on his desk with his fist. When Sam remained cool and unimpressed, he had stormed out of the room slamming the door and shouting, "Upstart! Damned upstart!" and Sam had gone smiling back to his desk, mildly disappointed. "I told Sue he would say 'Ingrate,'" he thought, "I am losing my skill at guessing just what ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... totally changed. The political marriage of his daughter with Villiers being now resolved on, the business was to clip the wings of so fierce a bird as Coke had found in Lady Hatton, which led to an extraordinary contest. The mother and daughter hated the upstart Villiers, and Sir John, indeed, promised to be but a sickly bridegroom. They had contrived to make up a written contract of marriage with Lord Oxford, which they opposed against the proposal, or rather ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... Out of the golden haze the spire would be piercing, like a purple needle; then mists arose from the Avon and the other streams. Lamps flickered, but in the outer purity the villages were already slumbering. Salisbury is only a Gothic upstart beside these. For generations they have come down to her to buy or to worship, and have found in her the reasonable crisis of their lives; but generations before she was built they were clinging to the soil, and ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... had been alive," wound up Mrs. O'Keeffe, "the dirty upstart would never have dared to put such an insult on his orphaned daughter, that he wouldn't, and if Dan O'Leary should hear of it—which the saints forbid—it's not the jig that his foot would be teaching ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... preacher is Jack, standing erect in his particolored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing,, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... by the slaughter or mutilation of nearly 2000 rebels. Theodore soon after married his second wite Terunish, the proud daughter of the late governor of Tigre, who felt neither affection nor respect for the upstart who had dethroned her father, and the union was by no means a happy one. In 1862 he made a second expedition against the Gallas, which was stained with atrocious cruelties. Theodore had now given himself up to intoxication and lust. When the news of Mr Plowden's death ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... can get all the help he needs at three dollars a week," remarked Ferd, preparing to start up his machine and go ahead, since his object had been accomplished, and he had the peculiar satisfaction of knowing that he had after a fashion put that upstart Dick Morrison down a peg or two even while making himself out to ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... did feel for her, in spite of his anger. But if there was one man he hated more than another, it was his neighbour Mr Primero; and if one woman, it was Mrs Primero. Primero, whom Mr Longestaffe regarded as quite an upstart, and anything but a gentleman, owed no man anything. He paid his tradesmen punctually, and never met the squire of Caversham without seeming to make a parade of his virtue in that direction. He had spent many thousands for his party in county elections and borough elections, and was now ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... into Shakespeare's works. We know that he had tried his hand at altering plays, at rewriting them, and making them popular; we know that he had translated them upon the stage before 1592, because of Greene's notice then published by Chettle, of "the upstart crow."[143] And he probably had written some. But his first firm step on the staircase of fame was taken in the publication of his "Venus and Adonis" by his friend Richard Field in April, 1593, and his first grip of success in his dedication thereof to the young Earl ...
— Shakespeare's Family • Mrs. C. C. Stopes
... without some allusion to his own birth and station; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purse-proud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the misery ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... so remained until Syria took them, lost them, reconquered them, and might have done with them utterly had not Juda Maccabaeus flaunted his banner, and the Roman eagles pounced upon their prey. Once more the Temple was rebuilt, superber than ever, and from the throne of David, Antipas saw the upstart that was his ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... so often been asserted that the receiving of petitions, and granting their prayer, is the most enviable branch of royal prerogative? Alas! will the golden mean of reason never govern the practices of men? Must we for ever be the dupes of superstition, or the slaves of upstart authority? Are we doomed never to enjoy, in the ascendancy of our benevolent sympathies, a medium between the bigotry of the Crozier, the pride of the Sceptre, and the cruelty ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... Levi," he bitterly thought, with his Aunt Olive's instructions well in mind, "to so degrade me, my father, and our family. If he could put every upstart on a throne who had hewed his way to the throne, he would ...
— A Son of the Hills • Harriet T. Comstock
... life. It is not until No. 132 that we have the amusing account of the members of Bickerstaff's Club, the Trumpet, in Shire Lane. There were Sir Geoffrey Notch, a gentleman of an ancient family, who had wasted his estate in his youth, and called every thriving man a pitiful upstart; Major Matchlock, with his reminiscences of the Civil War; Dick Reptile, and the Bencher who was always praising the wit of former days, and telling stories of Jack Ogle, with whom he pretended to have been intimate in his youth. Very ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... their places by hereditary right, though occasionally some low caste man, through some brilliant exploit would break into this exclusive and aristocratic circle and sometimes even exercised dominating influence which the aristocrats dared not oppose, though he was still regarded as a plebian upstart, and was despised by the upper ten, and his rank died with him. Ordinarily from seven to twelve judges sat for the trial of causes, but sometimes even a greater number were permitted. The civil court in time of peace took cognizance of ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... had been ready to patronize the upstart who had ventured so boldly into the territory of the great trust, but one glance at the clear-cut resolute face of the ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... an upstart, and detested still more as a latitudinarian; he could form no party, and the queen made use of him only to support her in her choice of the Prince of Spain, as in turn she would use Gardiner to destroy the Protestants; and thus the two great ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... our condition are not allowed to carry arms. What would a lord say—yes, or any other person of whatever condition —if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... look to me as if they had been on the stage, especially the one to whom you were talking. I will do him the justice to say he is a handsome wretch, but like all those foreign adventurers he has a dissipated air. As for the other, he is simply commonplace and vulgar, with little upstart radical notions." ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant
... the law, able quickly to turn the tables upon their catch questions. But then it can't be the real article of learning, because He hasn't been in our established schools. He has no sheepskin in a dead language with our learned doctors' names learnedly inscribed. How indeed! An upstart!! ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... to bloom around. No signs of human thrift appeared to check the delicious wildness of Nature, who here reveled in all her luxuriant variety. Those hills, now bristled, like the fretful porcupine, with rows of poplars (vain upstart plants! minions of wealth and fashion!), were then adorned with the vigorous natives of the soil—the hardy oak, the generous chestnut, the graceful elm—while here and there the tulip tree reared its majestic head, the giant of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 8 • Charles H. Sylvester
... from rising up and pulling down you who are gentlemen from your places, and saying "We will be gentlemen in our turn"? Now, Sir, that respect for authority is much more easily granted to a man whose father has had it, than to an upstart[451], and so Society is more easily supported.' BOSWELL. 'Perhaps, Sir, it might be done by the respect belonging to office, as among the Romans, where the dress, the toga, inspired reverence.' JOHNSON. 'Why, we know very little ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... is well if all obey And all have humble heart, Nor dare to hold in cursed doubt Those gems of truth the church lets out; But where's the apple-cart, And where's the sacred fiction gone, And who's to have the blame When any upstart takes a hand And, scorning what the priests have planned, Plays ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... young upstart know about the Scriptures? Why, I have been a student of the Scriptures for fifty long years, many years before this young man was born. I have heard many great preachers in my time, and they all said that man was born unto sin as the sparks are to fly upward. 'He that saith he ...
— Around Old Bethany • Robert Lee Berry
... arrangement in great dudgeon, because the appointed hours were evening hours, and those he considered precious to the progress of the friendly move. But it was quite in character, he bitterly remarked to Mr Venus, that the upstart who had trampled on those eminent creatures, Miss Elizabeth, Master George, Aunt Jane, and Uncle Parker, should oppress ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... opened, but it was only exchanging one form of misrule for another. The kings existed for their own benefit and pleasure; the people existed to minister to them and find funds for their extravagance. Each succeeding monarch was ruled by some upstart favourite, until the climax was reached when Godoy, the disgraceful Minister of Charles IV., and the open lover of his Queen, sold the country to Napoleon. Then indeed awoke the great heart of the nation, and Spain ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... old Kent occupy much of the diary. Old Kent, it seems, used to enter the school house and vilify the master, not, I imagine, without cause. Thus:—"He again called me upstart, runagate, beggarly dog, clinched his fist in my face, and made a motion to strike me, and declared he would break my head. He did not strike me, but withdrew in a wonderful heat, and ended all with his general maxim, 'The greater ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... professional you must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?—tell people that he hasn't a diploma—that he doesn't know anything—that he couldn't reduce that hernia and had ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... seemingly more ungracious to return a gift so graciously given, a gift of no inconsiderable intrinsic value. Moreover, Mr. Flint had ingeniously contrived almost to make the act, in Austen's eyes, that of a picayune upstart. Who was he to fling back an annual pass in the face of the president ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... question of allegiance. Of the pamphleteers and preachers who now denounced the Association as a revolutionary measure, Samuel Seabury perceived the issue most clearly and stated it most effectively: "If I must be enslaved, let it be by a King at least, and not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen." Whether to submit to the king or to the committee—this was, indeed, the fundamental question during those crucial months from November, 1774, to July, 1776. For extremists on either side, the question presented no difficulty; ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... maximorum virorum plerosque patres ignoratos, matres impudicas fuisse. [3657]"I could recite a great catalogue of them," every kingdom, every province will yield innumerable examples: and why then should baseness of birth be objected to any man? Who thinks worse of Tully for being arpinas, an upstart? Or Agathocles, that Silician king, for being a potter's son? Iphicrates and Marius were meanly born. What wise man thinks better of any person for his nobility? as he said in [3658]Machiavel, omnes eodem ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... 'A meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow, gentlemen', continued Mr. Dempster. 'I was determined to be rid of him. What does he mean by thrusting himself into our company? A man with about as much principle as he has property, which, to my knowledge, is considerably less than none. An insolvent atheist, gentlemen. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... given room to grow, it is a fine object, and I have had some thrills of joy at finding this splendid common thing planted in well-placed groups on the grounds of wealthy men, instead of some Japanese upstart with a name a yard long and a truly crooked Oriental disposition! In age the white pine dominates any landscape, wearing even the scars of its long battle with the elements with stately dignity. A noble pair of ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... inimitably drowsy or so sternly uncompetitive. A hundred years ago it must have presented almost precisely the same appearance as it did in the summer of 1913, if we leave out of reckoning a few dozen of modern upstart villas that line its outskirts, and the very inconspicuous railway station that hides itself behind the warehouses near the river's bank. Most of the trains, too, quite ignore its existence, and pass through it on their way to more rewarding stopping-places, hardly recognising ...
— Michael • E. F. Benson
... was extinct, Cleomenes made his brother Euclidas reign with him, and was able to bring back all the old ways of Lycurgus, the hard fare and plain living, so that those who had seen the Eastern state of the upstart Macedonian soldiers wondered at the sight of the son of Hercules, descendant of a line of thirty-one kings, showing his royalty only in the noble simplicity ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... provincial Taira who were at once discontented because their claims to promotion had been ignored, and deeply resentful of indignities and ridicule to which their rustic manners and customs had exposed them at the hands of their upstart kinsmen in Kyoto. Moreover, it is not extravagant to suppose, in view of the extraordinary abilities subsequently shown by Tokimasa, that he presaged the instability of the Taira edifice long before ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... islanders that had now gathered there, but he spoke boldly, and told them all that they were a pack of rebels, and that King Valdemar would speedily prove to them that he would not brook the interference of this upstart sea rover. At that Rand drew his sword and called to his men to stand by their rights and drive these intruders from their shores. There was a brief fight, in which I know not how many men were slain or wounded, and in the end the islanders got the victory. Sigurd fought bravely until ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... as if in the presence of canonized forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... became. Roldan, also, became more bold and explicit in his instigations. He advised them to launch and take possession of the caravel, as the only mode of regaining their independence. They might then throw off the tyranny of these upstart strangers, enemies in their hearts to Spaniards, and might lead a life of ease and pleasure; sharing equally all that they might gain by barter in the island, employing the Indians as slaves to work for them, and enjoying unrestrained indulgence with respect ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... to be found who worship the Earth as a great deity, calling her by her own name and serving her with suitable rites. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus the hero addresses his appeal as follows to the beings he regards as gods of old race who will sympathise with him against the upstart Zeus:— ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies
... players, alleging that they have all been beholden to him, yet have now forsaken him; and from thence inferring that the three worthies whom he is exhorting will fare no better at their hands. After which he goes on thus: "Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his 'tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide,' supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his own conceit the only ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... over in his mind, as the Sedleys did, the possibility of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody—a little upstart governess. "Hang it, the family's low enough already without her," Osborne said to his friend Captain Dobbin. "A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... man's reason stands impotent; and imagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religious feeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of the rational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were not theirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the light and fire of religion fell ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton
... fellow creatures. But our enemy the divell (who strives still to pervert our gifts, and beate us with our owne weapons) hath so contriv'd it, that any truth doth now seeme distastefull for that very reason, for which errour is entertain'd—Novelty, for let but some upstart heresie be set abroach, and presently there are some out of a curious humour; others, as if they watched an occasion of singularity, will take it up for canonicall, and make it part of their creede and profession; whereas ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... you fancy that I shall be received as a substitute for the Prince Saracinesca your friends have known so long? Do you suppose that the vicissitudes of my life are unknown, and that no one will laugh behind my back and point at me as the new, upstart prince? Few people know me in Rome, and if I have any friends besides you, I have not been made aware of the fact. Pray consider that in doing what I ask, you would be saving me ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... Brag has much to say To the rich little lady from over the way; And yet who knows but from her heart Often the bitter sighs upstart— Uprise to lose their burn and sting In the grace of the tongue that loves to sing Praise of the treasures all its own! So I've come to love that treble ...
— Love-Songs of Childhood • Eugene Field
... revealed. The king called our ancestor to the front and made him earl of Ormiston on the spot—'Gold-Mist-on;' that is, 'Be ever in the van;' and a proud race were the earls of Ormiston, and well they answered to the name. But their fortunes waned when the modern upstart, the Norman William, laid his greedy hands on everything for himself and his mob of pirates, and at present we are only middle-class people, but our blood must be the bluest ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... hear him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place, the conceited upstart, shoving himself ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... precious puppy! I think I'm as good a gentleman as you any day, and I should like to know when you ever saw me ride to call on a neighbour with a fellow jingling at my heels, like that upstart Ned Spankie, whose father kept a cotton mill. First time I ever heard of a Hazeldean thinking a livery coat was ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the consent of the Catholic world. [28] His enmity to the Byzantine pontiffs [29] was a sense of interest, not a sally of passion: he envied their fortunate station in the sunshine of the Imperial court; and he dreaded their upstart ambition. which oppressed the metropolitans of Europe and Asia, invaded the provinces of Antioch and Alexandria, and measured their diocese by the limits of the empire. The long moderation of Atticus, the mild usurper of the throne of Chrysostom, suspended the animosities of the Eastern ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 4 • Edward Gibbon
... very old Barotse living here who were the companions of the old chief Santuru. These men, protected by their age, were very free in their comments on the "upstart" Makololo. One of them, for instance, interrupted my conversation one day with some Makololo gentlemen with the advice "not to believe them, for they were only a set of thieves;" and it was taken in quite a good-natured way. It is remarkable that none of the ancients here ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... upstart continents, werent they? I am not speaking sarcastically, my point is not a chauvinistic one, not even hemispherically prideful. And the Old World the womb of culture? But how much culture has that womb borne since the Americas ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... claim, Extends but to the natives, not to us: Dare you, who in the British seas strike sail, Nay more, whose lives and freedom are our alms, Presume to sit and judge your benefactors? Your base new upstart commonwealth should blush, To doom the subjects of an English king, The meanest of whose merchants would disdain The narrow life, and the domestic baseness, Of one of those you call your ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... appreciates least that it is due to the skill and intelligence of the medical men of to-day that he owes his comfort, his health, and his freedom from pestilence, plague and disease. Unthinking people laud and praise some upstart whose ability lies in his faculty to fool the gullible, or they will rush to seek the false aid of some nondescript science, because it is popular and well advertised, while they pass by or ignore the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume IV. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • Grant Hague
... his age or character, who would relieve her from her humiliating dependence. She was prepared to sacrifice her natural desire for youth, beauty, and virtue in a husband if she could escape from her parents on no easier terms, but she was resolved to die an old maid sooner than marry an upstart. ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... herself on being too well-bred to do. She had quite lost her awe of the servants, and had begun to address them with an unconscious haughtiness and a conscious politeness that were making the word "upstart" common in the servants' hall. Bashville, the footman, had risked his popularity there by opining that Miss Goff was ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... not at all abashed, said that he meant not Sophocles, but Euripides. Whereupon Porson drew from another pocket a copy of Euripides and challenged the upstart to find the quotation in question. Full of confusion, the fellow thrust his head out of the window of the coach and cried ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field
... life, entitled 'A Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million of Repentance.' Addressing three brother dramatists—Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge—he bade them beware of puppets 'that speak from our mouths,' and of 'antics garnished in our colours.' 'There is,' he continued, 'an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blanke verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes factotum is, in his owne conceit, the only Shake-scene in a countrie. . . . Never more acquaint ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... beaten so badly, and by that young upstart, for so he called Rod Blake, was a mortification almost too great to be borne. As Snyder left the track without finishing the last race and made his way to the dressing-room under the grand stand, he ground his teeth, ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and touch his horses, and trot off, without having ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... 'tis because y're a Fraser-MacDonald of the Lovatt clan that ye want t' live a full present! If you were an upstart new-rich, my dear, y'd be sellin' y'r soul t' th' Devil an' y'r body t' some leprous kite with ulcerous weddin' kisses for the privilege o' claimin' this inheritance that's yours! There's a male decendant o' some collateral line on th' place adjoinin' yours. Man alive, he's had th' pick o' every ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... then, smoothing her impassioned features to a disdainful smile, she continued—"We will talk of this another time. All I now ask, all your mother, Idris, requests is, that you will not see this upstart during ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... Mitchell had been carried in, "what think ye noo, lad, o' us Covenanters an' oor lack o' lang-sufferin' an' oor defyin' the laws? Aren't these laws we ought to defy, but havena properly defied yet, laws illegally made by a perjured King and an upstart Cooncil?" ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... the irresistible power of reason and eloquence, by saluting the emperor Constantius as their lawful sovereign. The contagion of loyalty and repentance was communicated from rank to rank; till the plain of Sardica resounded with the universal acclamation of "Away with these upstart usurpers! Long life and victory to the son of Constantine! Under his banners alone we will fight and conquer." The shout of thousands, their menacing gestures, the fierce clashing of their arms, astonished and subdued the ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... proprietary air about Bud during dinner that was pleasant to Margaret and most annoying to West. It was plain that West looked on the boy as an upstart whom Miss Earle was using for the present to block his approach, and he was growing most impatient over the delay. He suggested that perhaps she would like his escort to see something of her surroundings that afternoon; but she smilingly told ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... Appeal and the "Heart Wallop," by Tom Barry, author of The Upstart and Brother Fans, an interesting article in The Dramatic Mirror of December 16, 1914. For this and other valuable information I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness and to express my thanks to The Dramatic Mirror ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... gentleman, and Luther is the man of God who told her how to become clean. The only difference is this: Naaman listened to wise counsel, and finally did what he had been told to do, and was cleansed. Rome disdains to this day to listen to the ill-bred son of a peasant, the theological upstart Luther, and remains as filthy as ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... wires had thrilled Europe during every hour after ten o'clock on Thursday morning, but the thrills felt in Germany, Russia, and Turkey were supplemented by agonized squirming on the part of official Austria. That an upstart, a masquerader, a mountebank of a King, should actually have traversed Austria from west to east, without ever a soul cased in uniform knowing anything about him, was ill to endure, and the minions of Kosnovia's truculent ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... red as a beet. Here was this upstart new boy with an air of questioning his authority. By means of Angus' ability to give any boy in the neighbourhood a sound drubbing if necessary he had become the recognized leader. Evidently this new boy needed to be shown his ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... themselves enough to ruin a man of moderate fortune—so the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could do—and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand, undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with shells! We were one of the paviers of that pebbled ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... attack was only made against the noblesse, yet latterly, every rich and powerful family was included among the proscribed, and all the commercial houses of the first respectability were annihilated. These have never been replaced, and the upstart race of petty traders have not yet obtained the confidence of foreigners. The trade of France is therefore very confined; and even were opportunities now afforded of establishing a trade with foreign nations, it would be long before France could benefit by it, from the total ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... Dene de Dene—fell into poverty and a humble place in life. However, he married a lady of even more distinguished race than his own, a direct descendant of a noble Saxon family, far more ancient in blood than the upstart Normans. At this point, while Peter and Margaret listened amazed, at a hint from the queen, the bewildered court interfered through the head alcalde, praying her to cease from the history of her descent, which they ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... mind Jim had barely escaped being drowned in the ocean of his own unreadiness and confusion under trying conditions. And she was right. Jim had never felt more the upstart uneducated farm-hand than when he was introduced to that audience by Professor Withers, nor more completely disgraced than when he concluded his remarks. Even the applause was to him a kindly effort on the part of the audience to comfort him ...
— The Brown Mouse • Herbert Quick
... fitting terms. Instead of accepting them, he spoke insolently, talked of chastising me, and put his hand on the hilt of his dagger. Then, my lord, I grew angry too. Why should I, the page of Earl Harold, submit to be thus contemptuously spoken to by this young Norman, who is but the page of an upstart bishop, and whom, if your lordship will give permission, I would right willingly fight, with swords or any other weapons. Doubtless, in my anger, I did not speak respectfully of Walter's countrymen, and for this I am ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... I will not learn Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;— Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,— I ask but ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... real exceptions; they were indeed commercial cities, but they were ruling cities also, and, as ruling cities, they reared monuments which could hardly pass away. What are we to say to the modern rival of Venice, the upstart rebel, one is tempted to say, against the supremacy of the Hadriatic Queen? Trieste, at the head of her gulf, with the hills looking down to her haven, with the snowy mountains which seem to guard the approach from the other ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... return and the wars of the French, many chiefs have been deposed, and many so-called chiefs appointed. We have seen, in the same house, one such upstart drinking in the company of two such extruded island Bourbons, men, whose word a few years ago was life and death, now sunk to be peasants like their neighbours. So when the French overthrew hereditary tyrants, dubbed the commons of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... it; and then asks whether it is this which he requires to have explained to him, or which he believes himself capable of conducting. The revelation acts on Job as the sign of the Macrocosmos on the modern Faust; but when he sinks, crushed, it is not as the rebellious upstart, struck down in his pride—for he had himself, partially at least, subdued his own presumption—but as a humble penitent, struggling to overcome his weakness. He abhors himself for his murmurs, and 'repents in dust and ashes.' It will have occurred to every one that the ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... a new President. Loubet was succeeded by Fallieres. The father of the new one was a great gormandizer of Pantagruelian dimensions. He died of overloading his stomach. The son made his career like a cautious upstart. He is well enough acquainted with himself to know that he is not a Machiavelli. Therefore, he does not boast of his sagacity, but rather of his integrity. A politician is irresistible to a crowd when ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... After this night his fortune was made with the young ladies of the Hamley assemblies. He was not unpopular with the mammas; but the heavy squires still looked at him askance, and the heirs (whom he had licked at Eton) called him an upstart behind his back. ...
— A Dark Night's Work • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Fred wisely kept his peace. There might be a better way to teach the old maid a needed lesson than by sharp talk, which would only serve to make her feel more bitter toward "upstart ...
— Fred Fenton on the Crew - or, The Young Oarsmen of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... out violently. Was not this swollen-headed upstart trying to intimidate him by threats? But his strong instinct for prudence persuaded him to conceal his resentment. "Why the devil should you ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips
... Ellis, I want to know what this means. I've discovered that that young upstart of a son of yours, who ought to be in short trousers yet, has been courting my niece, Madge Oliver, all summer. He has had the impudence to tell me that he wants to marry her. I won't have it, I tell you, ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... to a morbid degree. In "Cecilia," for example, Mr. Delville never opens his lips without some allusion to his own birth and station ; or Mr. Briggs, without some allusion to the hoarding of money; or Mr. Hobson, without betraying the self-indulgence and self-importance of a purseproud upstart; or Mr. Simkins, without uttering some sneaking remark for the purpose of currying favour with his customers; or Mr. Meadows, without expressing apathy and weariness of life; or Mr. Albany, without declaiming about the vices of the rich and the ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 1 • Madame D'Arblay
... wanted, for he had a plan for revenging himself on his upstart nephew. He drove on till he got to a place where there was a muddy and miry puddle beside the road. Then by a dexterous manoeuver, for he understood driving thoroughly, he managed to overturn the wagon, and Nicholas was thrown headlong into the puddle. Dick leaped out just at the right ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... considered the highest acomplishment, that the dread of a blot on the escutcheon, or a reversal of the shield of arms, restrained many a proud baron in his tyrannical proceedings to those beneath him, and tended to keep down the insolence of the upstart favourites of royalty. Heraldry tended to soften and polish the manners, and, by the introduction of the manufacture of silken housings tapestry, and carpeting, to increase the comforts and pleasures of society, and ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous
... places then began early; the curtain at the grand French opera drew up at a quarter past five. At the present day, the workman dines at two; the tradesman, at three; the clerk in a public office, at four; the rich upstart, the money-broker, the stock-jobber, the contractor, at five; the banker, the legislator, the counsellor of state, at six; and the ministers, in general, at seven, nay not unfrequently ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Testament people; Christianity has never entered into our soul we see ourselves as the Chosen, and by no effort of spiritual aspiration can attain unto humility. In this there is nothing hypocritic. The blatant upstart who builds a church, lays out his money in that way not merely to win social consideration; in his curious little soul he believes (so far as he can believe anything) that what he has done is pleasing to God and beneficial to mankind. He may ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... scale too big for the fellow's limited resources, and yet—it might be well to study the maps. Yes, and it was like Gray's effrontery to pay deliberate court to "Bob" Parker, knowing his rival's feelings toward the girl. Another insult! The upstart certainly possessed an uncanny dexterity in pricking armor joints. But what if Gray were in earnest? "Bob" had become a wonderfully desirable creature, she was the most attractive girl in ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... ear, so that I thought I was dead. Good Cook, I love thee well, and thou shalt have a good pottle of our master's best wine every day, for thou art an old and faithful servant. Also, good Cook, I have ten shillings that I mean to give as a gift to thee. But hatest thou not to see a vile upstart like this Reynold Greenleaf taking it upon ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... Gowan (who piqued herself at once on being Society, and on maintaining intimate and easy relations with that Power), Mrs Merdle occupied a front row. True, the Hampton Court Bohemians, without exception, turned up their noses at Merdle as an upstart; but they turned them down again, by falling flat on their faces to worship his wealth. In which compensating adjustment of their noses, they were pretty much like Treasury, Bar, and Bishop, and all the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... was the error of a noble heart, unsuspicious of fair words. And fair words enough had Frederick for the occasion. To think of such a man as HE, flaunting the banner of Germany in my face—he who, not many years ago, was under the ban of the empire as an ambitious upstart! He thought to scare me with the rustling of his dead laurel-leaves, and when he found that I laughed at such Chinese warfare, lo! he ran and hid himself under my mother's petticoats; and the two old crowns ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... train, one of them, a gentleman who looked well as I thought, at first sight, thanks to his tailor, was dainty enough to take off his boots in order to put on a pair of old shoes! Another, an old man, who was probably some wealthy upstart (these are the most ill-bred), while sitting opposite to me, had the delicacy to place his two feet on the seat quite close to me. This is ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... him hopes of obtaining a decided advantage. Alexander, his father's adversary, had been murdered in A.D. 235 by Maximin, who from the condition of a Thracian peasant had risen into the higher ranks of the army. The upstart had ruled like the savage that he was, and after three years of misery the whole Roman world had risen against him. Two emperors had been proclaimed in Africa. On their fall two others had been elected by the senate; a third, a mere boy, had been added at the demand of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... and grew up a semi-idiot. After his marriage in 1766 with Caroline Matilda (1751-1775), daughter of Frederick, prince of Wales, he abandoned himself to the worst excesses. He ultimately sank into a condition of mental stupor, and became the obedient slave of the upstart Struensee (q.v.). After the fall of Struensee (the warrant for whose arrest he signed with indifference), for the last six-and-twenty years of his reign, he was only nominally king. He died on the 13th of March 1808. In 1772 the king's ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... the Meadow Saffron rises bare from the earth, and is, therefore, called "Upstart" and "Naked Lady." This plant owes its botanical name Colchicum, to Colchis, in Natalia, which abounded in poisonous vegetables, and gave rise to the fiction about the enchantress Medea. She renewed the vitality of her aged father, AEneas, by drawing blood out of his veins and refilling them ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... a moment's notice, changing its religion, or rather—for this is the true representation—of many different nations changing their many different religions at the simple command of their sovereign, and he too an upstart? In two cases, and in only two, it may be done; first, by an unsparing use of the sword, the brief, simple alternative of Mahomet, Death or the Koran; the other, when the new form of belief has converted ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers
... drives from the mind of the possessor, the bare remembrance of the means of acquisition: luxury forgets the innumerable ingenuities that minister to its cravings, and wealth, once obtained, unfits the mind for future self-exertion or sympathy for others. Many an upstart voluptuary surveys the elegancies of his well-furnished mansion in comparative ignorance of the means employed for their perfection; and, as regards his stock of knowledge conducive to happiness, he is in a more "parlous state" than the poor shepherd who had not been at court. How many of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... thought his pedigree of beggarly Barons of Magny was superior to the race of great Irish kings from which I descended; who had sneered at me a hundred times as a spadassin, a deserter, and had called me a vulgar Irish upstart. Now I had my revenge of the gentleman, ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was with a manifest touch of pride that the old verger who guided us through the cathedral dwelt on the long line of kings who had reigned at Winchester before the Norman conquest. To him, London at best was only an upstart ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... to say to his reverend brother of Kildrummie, as they went home from the Presbytery together, "who gets unto a wrangle with his farmers about a collection is either an upstart or he is a fool, and in neither case ought he to be a minister of the Church of Scotland." And the two old men would lament the decay of the ministry over their wine in Kildrummie Manse—being both of the same school, cultured, clean-living, ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... and family. Now and then, when I have the honour to be called to the tables of the great, if I happen to meet with any mortification from the stately stupidity of self-sufficient squires, or the luxurious insolence of upstart nabobs, I get above the creatures by calling to remembrance that I am patronized by the noble house of Glencairn; and at gala-times, such as new-year's day, a christening, or the kirn-night, when my punch-bowl is brought from its dusty corner and filled up ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... the sprightly March Hare was thus leaping on to success, Mr. Arthur Presby Carter sat quietly in his office and watched the antics of this youthful upstart. He was surprised, very much surprised; indeed he had, perhaps, never been more surprised in all his life. He had long thought he knew a good deal about the make-up of a paper,—what would interest and what would not; in fact, he considered himself an expert in that sphere. He had put ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett
... yesterday we took a trip to see the great Pie Championship, where men with bulging cheeks and eyes consume vast quantities of pies. A fashionable West Side crowd beheld the champion, Spike O'Dowd, endeavour to defend his throne against an upstart, Blake's Unknown. He wasn't an Unknown at all. He was young ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... last, a council being called, Creatium got the preference by the universal votes of the assembly; for such is the iniquity of the times, that though the head be covered with grey hairs, yet nothing is allowed to the reverence of antiquity, when encountered by a proud and upstart novelty. The other city is now so far neglected, that the ruins or footsteps of its magnificence are scarce remaining, any more than of Verulam, as is most elegantly set forth by our noble poet Spenser in his verses on that subject; ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... to ask Mr. Pitkin. I am sure he had good reason for the course he took. He's an impudent, low upstart in ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... "Let us draw our sword openly in defence of Russia," they said, "then we may bring Austria with us; the old alliance of the three monarchies will be restored, and then will be the time for a new crusade against France, the natural enemy of Germany, and the upstart Emperor." ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar, he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no care but to support it ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... excruciates the Ryders," said Helen. "I was standing near Mrs. Judge Ryder and the girls just now. 'Did you ever see such an upstart?' And, 'What an extravagant dress she has on—it is ridiculous,' Josephine Ryder said. When Ben Somers heard this attack on you, he told them that your lace was an heirloom. Here he is." Mr. Parker took her away, and Ben Somers went in pursuit of a seat. The quadrille was over, I was engaged ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... to you, my dear count. You would hardly have recited your touching history before it would go forth to the world, and be deemed unlikely and unnatural. You would be no longer a lost child found, but you would be looked upon as an upstart, who had sprung up like a mushroom in the night. You might excite a little curiosity, but it is not every one who likes to be made the centre of observation and the subject of ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... finding no practical scheme, here is Graevenitz crying out that he will return to the army. Marie Graevenitz, after sobbing her heart out, flies into a rage and declares she will go whining to that upstart Geyling! And you, Monsieur de Stafforth, Hofmarshall and successful courtier, propose terms to a young husband in so unpolished a fashion, that even a peasant would be obliged to retort with the old affectation of a wife's honour and purity. Now hear me; I know the court better than you do——' ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... and, as I came to it, a fellow with a ream on his back laboured out. I had expected naught but the desolation and silence which I last remembered in the place, and it staggered me to find all going on as before. No doubt here was some upstart printer, standing in my late master's shoes and working ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed |
