"Dignifying" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... allowed to choose a seat in church, a committee, usually the magistrates, settling the places of all. In the beginning, after the building of any meeting-house, the seats were all examined and ranked according to their desirability, this process being called, "dignifying the pews." All who held the highest social or ecclesiastical positions were then placed; and the rest as seemed good, the men on one side, the women on another, and the children, often on a low bench outside the pews, where they were kept in order by the tithing man, who, at the first ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... fame, and find myself—O, what?— A most conspicuous monster! Crown my head, Pile Caesar's purple on me—and what then? My hump shall shorten the imperial robe, My leg peep out beneath the scanty hem, My broken hip shall twist the gown awry; And pomp, instead of dignifying me, Shall be by me made quite ridiculous. The faintest coward would not bear all this: Prodigious courage must be mine, to live; To die asks nothing but weak will, and I Feel like a craven. Let me skulk away Ere life o'ertask me. [Offers to ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker |
