"Freeborn" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Hence, as a factious discontent Through every rank and order went, Pisistratus the tyrant form'd A party, and the fort he storm'd: Which yoke, while all bemoan'd in grief, (Not that he was a cruel chief, But they unused to be controll'd) Then Esop thus his fable told: The Frogs, a freeborn people made, From out their marsh with clamor pray'd That Jove a monarch would assign With power their manners to refine. The sovereign smiled, and on their bog Sent his petitioners a log, Which, as it dash'd upon the place, At first alarm'd ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... remain in this province it is right that ye should obey its laws! If this Roman whom ye have taken hath committed crime against your laws or ours, let him be tried by these laws. Otherwise will we not give him up to you. He is a freeborn Roman, and is not to be done away with as a slave. If ye make oath to grant him trial, we will ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... phylarchs or princes, to sit upon fifty thrones, judging the fifty tribes of Oceana! Or, is it Athens, breaking from her iron sepulchre, where she has been so long trampled by hosts of Janizaries? For certainly that is the voice of Theseus, having gathered his scattered Athenians into one city. This freeborn nation lives not upon the dole or bounty of one man, but distributing her annual magistracies and honors with her own hand, is herself King People—(At which the orator was awhile interrupted with shouts, but at length proceeded.) is it grave Lacedaemon in her armed tribe, divided by ...
— The Commonwealth of Oceana • James Harrington
... lands, until they would all be obliged to renounce their flocks, and to collect in towns like Sarepta, there to pursue mechanical and servile trades of shoemaker, tailor, and weaver, such as the freeborn Tartar had always disdained. 'Then again,' said the subtle prince, 'she increases her military levies upon our population every year; we pour out our blood as young men in her defence, or more often in support of her insolent aggressions; and as old men, we reap nothing from ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... the Phaestian land[65] adjoining to the Gnossian kingdom produced one Ligdus, of obscure name, a man of the freeborn class of common people. Nor were his means any greater than his rank, but his life and his honour were untainted. He startled the ears of his wife in her pregnancy, with these words, when her lying-in was near at hand: "Two things there are ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... wrought as to suggest the grill-work of the matchless Taj Mahal. Great gray monkeys descend from the mountain slope to feed from the hands of your guides; and they are not of the moth-eaten variety seen in captivity, but are freeborn denizens of the forest, whose coats glisten and whose curly ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... see," said Major Bridgenorth, "if any of these men be so desperate as to stop me, a freeborn Englishman, and a magistrate in ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... in sheath his sword And veiled his wrath in scornful word: 800 "Rest safe till morning; pity 'twere Such cheek should feel the midnight air! Then mayest thou to James Stuart tell, Roderick will keep the lake and fell, Nor lackey, with his freeborn clan, 805 The pageant pomp of earthly man. More would he of Clan-Alpine know, Thou canst our strength and passes show. Malise, what ho!"—his henchman came; "Give our safe-conduct to the Graeme." 810 Young Malcolm answered, calm and bold, "Fear nothing for thy favorite ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... lose your veracity, and sink into base downright lying; for 'The second vice is lying, the first is running in debt,' as Poor Richard says; and again, to the same purpose, 'Lying rides upon debt's back;' whereas a freeborn Englishman ought not to be ashamed nor afraid to see or speak to any man living. But poverty often deprives a man of all spirit and virtue. 'It is hard for an empty bag to stand upright.' What would you think of that prince, or of that government, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... by the voice of their Alderman-Colonel, 'that we should not be overpowered if we attempt to cope with social anarchy, our rifles taken from us and used against us by the mob, and we, perhaps, robbed and beaten ourselves? Or what light have we, beyond a freeborn Englishman's impulse to do as he likes, which would justify us in preventing, at the cost of bloodshed, other freeborn Englishmen from doing as they like, and robbing and beating as much as they please?' And again, 'the Rough is ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... home. That old Sassenach Forester, now, that we saw sitting in the winter sun, drinking his noon-day pint, on a bench outside a rustic beer-shop, looking the very image of rustic enjoyment—what Irishman could take life more lightly or seem better pleased with himself? a freeborn child of the sun and wind, ready to earn his living anyhow, except by the work of his hands. Yes, Miss Tempest, I feel a national affinity to your children of the Forest. I wish I were Mr. Vawdrey, and bound ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... in laying his infernal plot against the peace and prosperity of Mansoul. Now, the man with the long name was just Mr. Get- i'-the-hundred-and-lose-i'-the-shire. A hundred in the old county geography of England was a political subdivision of a shire, in which five score freemen lived with their freeborn families. A county or a shire was described and enumerated by the poll-sheriff of that day as containing so many enfranchised hundreds; and the total number of hundreds made up the political unity of the shire. To this day we still hear ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... They saw those oppressed colonies rising, as they themselves had risen, against their oppressors. To make the danger all the more acute, the exiled Canadians, notably William Lyon Mackenzie, went from place to place in the United States inciting the freeborn citizens of the Republic to aid the cause of freedom across the line. There was precedent for intervention. Just a year before the fight at St Charles, an American hero, Sam Houston, had wrested the huge state of Texas from the misrule of Mexico and founded ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... call an Assembly, and negotiations were entered into between the Governor, Council, and Burgesses on the one hand, and the Parliamentary commissioners on the other. Articles of submission were agreed upon which were honorable to both sides, Virginia receiving guarantees of the privileges of freeborn people of England, authority for the Grand Assembly to continue to function, guarantees of immunity for acts or words done or spoken in opposition to Parliament, guarantees of the bounds of Virginia, of the fifty-acre headright privilege, and of the right to "free ...
— Virginia Under Charles I And Cromwell, 1625-1660 • Wilcomb E. Washburn
... Knights and freeborn men apart, There trooped eighteen thousand bows; Forty thousand made they all, Who could such a ...
— Niels Ebbesen and Germand Gladenswayne - two ballads - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... were treated with kindness, and no difference was made between them and other and freeborn servants. The younger captives were taught trades, and those who showed that they could manage property were set free and married. Widow ladies treated the girls they bought like their own daughters, and often left them dowries by will, that they might marry ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... by a slender goad; Which remedy, I perceive, will pass ere long To visit thee, unless thy wisdom grow; Who hast uttered forth such daring insolence For the pale shadow of a vanished man. Learn modestly to know thy place and birth, And bring with thee some freeborn advocate To plead thy cause before us in thy room. I understand not in the barbarous tongue, And all thy talk ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... perish in the streets; they that were brought up in scarlet, embrace the dung." What would he have said of rejected petitions, disregarded supplications, and contemned remonstrances? Would he not have said, "From hardness of heart, good Lord, deliver us?" What would he have said of a freeborn people butchered—their towns desolated, and become an heap of ashes—their inhabitants become beggars, wanderers and vagabonds—by the cruel orders of an unrelenting tyrant, wallowing in luxury, and wantonly wasting the people's ...
— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock
... what sort of gratitude and what rewards faithful servants are to expect at your hands." Alexander, burning with rage, commanded Clitus to leave the table. Clitus obeyed, saying, as he moved away, "He is right not to bear freeborn men at his table who can only tell him the truth. He is right. It is fitting for him to pass his life among barbarians and slaves, who will be proud to pay their adoration to his Persian ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... passed into English hands. All that was needed, he concluded, was persistence along the old path. The same view was of course strenuously urged by the English merchants in the colony, who continued to demand, down to the very eve of the Revolution, an elective Assembly and other rights of freeborn Britons. ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton
... forefather, when himself was fallen from the station of glory, to seduce mankind into the same rebellion with him, by telling him he might yet be freer than he was; that is more free than his nature would allow, or, if I may so say, than God could make him. We have already all the liberty which freeborn subjects can enjoy, and all beyond it is but licence. But if it be liberty of conscience which they pretend, the moderation of our church is such, that its practice extends not to the severity of persecution; and its discipline is withal ...
— All for Love • John Dryden
... shall demand you of all the Touaricks by force." I thanked him for the compliment; I believe he meant what he said at the time. But such an insulting message could not be delivered to the brave, chivalric, and freeborn sons of the Touarghee deserts; they would trample your letter under their feet, or spear it with ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson
... Molly Freeborn is taken very bad, and the doctor says that he thought you would like to know," was the answer. "He doesn't think as how she'll get over it. Maybe, sir, you'd wish to ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... without wit: by this method you will gain a considerable point, which is, wholly to waive the answer of my arguments. Never own the bottom of your principles, for fear they should be treason. Fall severely on the miscarriages of government; for if scandal be not allowed, you are no freeborn subjects. If God has not blessed you with the talent of rhyming, make use of my poor stock, and welcome: let your verses run upon my feet; and for the utmost refuge of notorious blockheads, reduced to the last extremity of sense, turn my own lines upon me, and, in utter despair of your own satire, ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... Let us, then, Render back nor threats nor prayers; Have they chained our freeborn men? LET ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... power, And you shall find them either hot-brained youth, Or needy bankrupts, servile in their greatness, And slaves to some, to lord it o'er the rest. O baseness, to support a tyrant throne, And crush your freeborn brethren of the world! Nay, to become a part of usurpation; To espouse the tyrant's person and her crimes, And, on a tyrant, get a race of tyrants, To be your country's curse in ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden |
