"Humbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Fortune, which under the humbler name of luck seems but a word, is a very divinity when it guides the most important actions of a man's life. Always it has seemed to me that this divinity is not blind, as the mythologists affirm; she had brought me low only to ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... lord's progress to Edo. In the report made Okumura Shu[u]zen figured so well, that request—amounting to command—transferred him to the Tokugawa over-lord. Made hatamoto with fief of four hundred koku he was as well liked by his greater lord as when in the humbler service of a daimyo[u]. Five years of faithful work, and the necessities of Government for his yashiki site in Mita received the reward of a liberal grant of another site in the Go Bancho[u], together with the thousand ryo[u] of costs ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... hand has never swept, The song I cannot offer: My humbler service pray accept— I'll help to kill the scoffer. The water-drinkers and the cranks Who load their skins with liquor— I'll gladly bear their belly-tanks And tap them with ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... is not so rich in legend as that of much humbler localities, but there is at least one Indian story which will bear telling over again. It concerns Jacob Wetzel, the brother of the famous Lewis Wetzel, who was one day returning from a hunt well within the bounds of the present city, ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... as a rule characteristics of the intelligent and middle classes of the people of Mexico, and are also observable in intercourse with the humbler ranks of the masses. They have heretofore looked upon Americans as being hardly more than semi-civilized. Those with whom they have been most brought in contact have been reckless and adventurous frontiersmen, drovers, Texans, cow boys, often individuals who have left their homes in the Northern ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... char-women? Oh, my poor friend, you are quite mistaken; they are nothing of the kind. I assure you they stand in a higher rank; for this one night they feel themselves by birthright to be daughters of England, and answer to no humbler title. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Cairo he rested for a short time by the roadside, in a strange little cemetery of poor Moslem tombs. It lay exposed to the turmoil and dust of a rough road, a sun-baked spot in the daytime; at night it was grimly mysterious. The memorial stones—the humbler for the women, of course, the grander ones, with turbans cut in the grey stone, for the men—had sunk into the ground until they stood at strange angles. The rough white stones had become grey with age, and many of ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... tale it would have to tell! But Nature has imposed silence on most of her children, which is after all a good thing for us, for this very silence makes us anxious to discover for ourselves the wondrous lessons which she has to teach, whereby we learn that these humbler creatures, like ourselves, find the world a stern reality, to be faced bravely: and the sooner we realise this the better and more useful lives we ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... of leadership or an edict, a practical invention or a work of art, a story of the past or a prophecy, a cure or a devastating curse. Moreover, social tradition treasures the memory of these revelations, and, blending them with the contributions of humbler folk—for all of us dream our dreams—provides in myth and legend and tale, as well as in manifold other art-forms, a stimulus to the inspiration of future generations. For most purposes fine art, at any rate during its more ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... be happier and more contented to give up the losing fight, find some sphere that is congenial, and determine to adorn it. There are many kinds of belles; she may make herself a belle of the home, a belle in out-door sports, a queen of the chafing-dish. Far better these humbler triumphs than neglect and unhappiness in the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... Paul says, not the things which are of Jesus Christ, but what may be their own: not the treasure of their Lord, but the enrichment of themselves and their followers. Nor does this evil belong to those of humbler birth and fortunes only, it possesses the middle and higher ranks, bishops excepted. "O Pontiffs, tell the efficacy of gold in sacred matters!" Avarice often leads the highest men astray, and men, admirable in all other respects: these ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... trails discovered and followed in an almost mediumistic manner, after an object of some sort has been sniffed at. Such stories, though highly probable, as yet lack adequate support. But, within a similar order of ideas, and in a humbler world and one with more modest limits, the dog, for instance, is incessantly surrounded by different scents and smells to which he appears indifferent until his attention is aroused by one or other of these vagrant effluvia, when he ...
— The Unknown Guest • Maurice Maeterlinck
... school kept by one of his father's tenants, named Hobby, an honest, poor old man, who acted in the double capacity of sexton and schoolmaster. Of his skill as a gravedigger tradition is silent; but for a teacher of youth his qualifications were certainly of the humbler sort, making what is generally called an A, B, C schoolmaster. While at school under Mr. Hobby he used to divide his playmates into parties and armies. One of them was called the French and the other American. ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... standing in a grove of mokhala trees. These, unlike the humbler mimosas, have tall naked stems, with heads of thick foliage, in form resembling an umbrella or parasol. Their pinnate leaves of delicate green are the favourite food of the giraffe, hence their botanical appellation of Acacia giraffae; and hence also their common ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and too poor for such an elevation. I have not had the experience in that great theater of politics to qualify me for a place so exalted and responsible. I prefer therefore the humbler position which I ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... attempt. For myself, I confess that, after the brief experience I have had of the little satisfaction wealth and splendour can afford, I would rather live in a quiet home in England, devoting myself to doing all the good in my power to my humbler neighbours, than be compelled again to play the ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... humbler arts has known, Content with meaner Beauties, tho' its own: Enough for that, if rugged in its course The Verse but rolls with Vehemence and Force; Or nicely pointed in th' Horatian way Wounds keen, like Syrens mischievously gay. Here, All ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... called the public, the readers of newspapers and the frequenters of clubs or taverns, the rivalry of party leaders or the incidents of court life excite a much keener interest than painful efforts for the good of the humbler classes. During the closing years of George III.'s reign there were no party conflicts of special intensity. The whigs acquiesced in their self-imposed exclusion from office, and contented themselves with damaging criticism; the radicals ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... are, at least in the less elaborated breeds, in a mature condition when they are five years old. Experience shows that the animal can subsist on a great variety of diet, being in this regard surpassed only by its humbler kinsman the donkey, and by the goats. There are few fields so lean that they will not maintain serviceable horses. They do well alike in mountain pastures and amid the herbage of ...
— Domesticated Animals - Their Relation to Man and to his Advancement in Civilization • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... one of her readers and a prominent object of Napoleon's attentions. She saw rising before her the vision of divorce, the phantom which had haunted her imagination since the expedition to Egypt. Fearful of giving her husband the slightest pretext for discontent or annoyance, she was humbler, more submissive, more obedient ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... sustain these slights without being much dejected; instead of repining at the loss of that respect which had been paid to him at first, he endeavoured, with all his might, to preserve the little that still remained, and resolved to translate into a humbler sphere that gallantry which he had no longer opportunities of displaying in the world ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... A humbler but perhaps more accurate explanation is the reminder that he was son to Thomas the unstable. What happened in Lincoln's mind when he returned defeated from Washington, that ghost-like rising of the impulses of old Thomas, recurred ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... representatives of the Middle States, New England, and Germany as its principal elements. The Southern people, north of the Ohio, differed in important respects from the Southerners across the river. They had sprung largely from the humbler classes of the South, although there were important exceptions. The early pioneer life, however, was ill-suited to the great plantations, and slavery was excluded under the Ordinance. Thus this Southern zone of the ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... of brick and stone, These huge mill-monsters overgrown; Blot out the humbler piles as well, Where, moved like living shuttles, dwell The weaving genii of the bell; Tear from the wild Cocheco's track The dams that hold its torrents back; And let the loud-rejoicing fall Plunge, roaring, down its rocky wall; And let the Indian's paddle play On the unbridged Piscataqua! ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... won the devotion and friendship of Berengaria's brother Sancho, a renowned warrior and poet; and this friendship doubtless commended him to Berengaria. At any rate, the betrothed pair were soon a pair of lovers and as happy as humbler sweethearts. ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... with unwonted thrill, speak with the eloquence of nature, uttered but unexpressed. From the din of the battle, they have passed to the peace of eternity. Farewell! warrior, citizen, patriot, lover, friend,—whether in the humbler ranks or bearing the sword of official power, whether private, captain, surgeon, or chaplain, for all these in the heady fight have passed away,—Hail! and Farewell! Each hero must sleep serenely on the field where he fell in a cause "sacred to liberty ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... English settlers in Virginia, men of good social position in their own country, attached to it by many ties, nor, like the English settlers in the New England colonies, men of good education and serious temper, seeking the freedom to worship God in their own way. They came from the humbler classes, and partly because they had few home ties, partly because the voyage to Holland was so long that communication with it was difficult, they maintained little connection with the mother country ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... into the neighbourhood—to Dordrecht by river, to Delft by canal, to Gouda by canal; or one may take longer voyages, even to Cologne if one wishes. But I do not recommend it as a city to linger in. Better than Rotterdam's large hotels are, I think, the smaller, humbler and more Dutch inns of the less commercial towns. This indeed is the case all over Holland: the plain Dutch inn of the neighbouring small town is pleasanter than the large hotels of the city; and, as I have remarked ...
— A Wanderer in Holland • E. V. Lucas
... in that attitude evidence of modesty; to my thinking, it argues a more subtle and magnificent conceit than if he had fathomed the truth, as many humbler men in his ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... impression was as fascinating as that which had been conveyed by Vauvenargues' letters. Voltaire took every opportunity of visiting his unfortunate friend, then each day drawing nearer to the grave. Men of humbler stature were equally attracted. 'It was at this time,' says the light-hearted Marmontel, 'that I first saw at home the man who had a charm for me beyond all the rest of the world, the good, the virtuous, ...
— Critical Miscellanies (Vol 2 of 3) - Essay 1: Vauvenargues • John Morley
... priests love, let this address displease. I ask no favour, not one note I crave, And when this busy brain rests in the grave, (For till that time it never can have rest) I will not trouble you with one bequest. Some humbler friend, my mortal journey done, More near in blood, a nephew or a son, In that dread hour executor I'll leave, For I, alas! have many to receive; 20 To give, but little.—To great Glo'ster health! Nor let thy true and proper love of wealth Here take a ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... But it's a crazy performance of mine—going into this thing—and I may as well plunge to the extent of lunacy. Mr. Farr, the rebellious unrest in this state must be organized. We need a house-cleaning. We need the humbler voters! The men with interests are too well taken care of by the Machine to be interested. I want you to go out and hunt for sore spots and get to the voters just as you have in your ward. Find the right men in each town and city to help you. You ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... there is. It is to warn you of the scandalous, outrageous things these people in so-called high society say of people who are in humbler walks of life that I ventured to relate what I'd heard. It is to obviate the possibility ...
— A Tame Surrender, A Story of The Chicago Strike • Charles King
... stay at home and get for a few francs the ripest results of Italian and Greek scholarship. This gave Aldus no concern; if he could render international services to learning, if he could help to set up among the humbler scholars of other lands such a fine rivalry of competitive cooperation as already existed among such leaders as Erasmus and Sir Thomas More, he should be well content to live laborious days and to die poor. Both these he did; but he gathered around him such a company ...
— Printing and the Renaissance - A paper read before the Fortnightly Club of Rochester, New York • John Rothwell Slater
... imagination in picturing the rise and struggle of an unhappy passion for Leonora d'Este in the bosom of the young poet. Whatever may be said regarding this passion, however, there can be no doubt that his heart was at this time enslaved by younger and humbler beauties. He had much of the temperament of his father, who, although exemplary in his single and married life, was distinguished for his Platonic gallantry, and cherished a poetic attachment, according to the fashion of the day, for various ladies throughout his career, such ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... the trustiest and most proper strength of a free people," wrote Milton, and the colonists of Massachusetts Bay were of a like opinion, from Miles Standish down to the humbler men of prowess. By the law of 1666, all males in the colony were required to attend "military exercises and service." Companies were exercised six days yearly, prayer being offered by the captain at the beginning and at the end of every "training." A regimental training was ordered once in three ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... cricket-grounds, bowling-greens, and the enclosures of open places, set apart for archery and other pastimes, have been successively parcelled out in squares, lanes, or alleys; the increasing value of land, and extent of the city, render it impossible to find substitutes; and the humbler classes who may wish to obtain the sight of a field, or inhale a mouthful of fresh air, can scarcely be gratified, unless, at some expense of time and money, they make a journey for the purpose. Even our parks, not unaptly termed the lungs of the metropolis, ...
— Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 475 - Vol. XVII, No. 475. Saturday, February 5, 1831 • Various
... in his place of exile, the name of which is not known. His end helped, no doubt, the propagation of the gospel among his relatives and descendants, as well as among the servants and freedmen of the house, as shown by the noble sarcophagi and the humbler loculi found in such numbers in the crypt of the Catacombs of Priscilla. The small oratory at the southern end of the crypt seems to have been consecrated exclusively to the memory of its first occupant, the ex-consul. The ...
— Pagan and Christian Rome • Rodolfo Lanciani
... cardinals, bishops, kings, and popes, who—as the story runs—pretended to have received some wonderful grace during their earthly existence. Amongst the grand array of illustrious personages, there are not a few humbler individuals whose history is faithfully told (if you choose to credit it) by the painted inscriptions below. There is even a convict, who, at the moment of being hanged, implored succour of the all-powerful ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... more thy glories strike mine eyes, The humbler I shall lie; Thus while I sink, my joys ...
— Hymns and Spiritual Songs • Isaac Watts
... general. He kept something like open house; for while I was there with my father and mother, there also came, for a short time, several other friends, some of whom stopped for more than a passing visit. He played the Lord Bountiful among his humbler neighbors, not only helping them with money or money's-worth, but also advising them in sickness; for he had made some study of medicine, in part, I suspect, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., February, 1863, No. LXIV. • Various
... rifle-king (schutzen-konig), the public officials, and deputations of peasants marched past the platform where the Queen stood, like a pageant of the Middle Ages. All the princes, including King Leopold, fired, but none brought down the bird; that feat was left for some humbler hero. ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II • Sarah Tytler
... was grateful to Providence for a shilling picked up on the side-walk, which enabled him to enjoy a hearty breakfast. Sleek men of capital, looking with suspicion on the meagre furniture and miserable apparatus, withheld their patronage; but humbler citizens invested their hard-won earnings, the Magnetic Telegraph Company was incorporated, and the line was built. The following year, 1846, another line was run from Philadelphia to Baltimore by Mr. Henry O'Reilly, of Rochester, ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... proposal with enthusiasm, Cecily's mind secretly misgave her. She had begun to understand Reuben, and she foresaw, with a certainty which she in vain tried to combat, how soon his energy would fail upon so great a task. Impossible to admonish him; impossible to direct him on a humbler path, where he might attain some result. With Reuben's temperament to deal with, that would mean a fatal disturbance of their relations to each other. That the disturbance must come in any case, now that he was about to prove himself, she anticipated in many a troubled moment, but would not let ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... coats, flowered waistcoats, ruffled neck-cloths, tight white trousers, and pointed boots a size too small. They were the tradespeople of the village; in some cases the servants of the estates, although by far the greater number of the young women of humbler Nevis had received a smattering of education and were now too good to work. Their parents might get a living as best they could, huckstering or on the plantations, while the improved offspring, content to herd in one room on the scantiest fare, dreamed of gala days and a scrap ...
— The Gorgeous Isle - A Romance; Scene: Nevis, B.W.I. 1842 • Gertrude Atherton
... record Major Talbot-Lowry's indignation on hearing this charge. The dairy, with its low ceiling and paven floor, echoed, submissively, his well-justified strictures on the lies and evil speaking of his humbler neighbours, and Mrs. Twomey dried her eyes (much as she would scrub out one of her milk-pans) ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... had learned to think for himself. He felt that no occupation could degrade an honorable man, and that gentlemanly habits, integrity and intelligence were certain to shine out with greater lustre when found in the humbler ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... like the flower of a lady-slipper orchid and as delicately coloured. This is a member of that curious family of Ascidians, which forever trembles in the balance between the higher backboned animals and the lower division, where are classified the humbler insects, crabs, and snails. The young of Boltenia promises everything in its tiny backbone or notochord, but it all ends in promise, for that shadow of a great ambition withers away, and the creature is doomed to a lowly and vegetative life. If we soften the hard scientific ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... as I slowly pushed my way along, that the soldiers worked seriously, with few jests on their lips, as if they realized the peril that menaced them; while many among the women, especially those of the humbler sort, were rejoicing over the early release from garrison monotony, and careless of what the morrow might bring of ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... this 'unction of the Holy One.' So, brethren, rise to the solemnity, the awfulness, the joyfulness of your true position, and understand that you, too, are anointed, though not for the same purposes (and in humbler and derived fashion), for which the Spirit dwelt without measure upon 'the First-born ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in their presence the slightest superiority to them. He gave them money when they needed it and he had it. Countless times he was known to leave his companions at the village hotel, after a hard day's work in the court-room, and spend the evening with these old friends and companions of his humbler days. On one occasion, when urged not to go, he replied, "Why, Aunt's heart would be broken if I should leave town without calling upon her;" yet, he was obliged to walk several miles to ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure
... the daughter, the wife, the mother, the mistress of the house; no one can reasonably urge that the female mind is contracted by domestic employ. It is however a great comfort that the duties of life are within the reach of humbler abilities, and that she whose chief aim it is to fulfil them, will very rarely fail ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... to the rescue, and helped to provide bed and board for the gentry whom Captain Hecklefield could not accommodate; and the lesser fry found the humbler settlers on the "Neck" no less hospitable in opening their doors to them, though very probably good coin of the realm often settled the ...
— In Ancient Albemarle • Catherine Albertson
... the imperialist ambitions of Milan, to restore the public peace, to investigate innumerable complaints of force and fraud. Many of the cities hailed him as a deliverer; against him were only the clients of Milan, or those who, on a humbler scale, aspired to emulate her policy. Even so it was no easy matter to chastise the most insignificant of the contumacious communes; and Milan, who refused point-blank to give satisfaction for her lawless acts of conquests, or even to renounce ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... Spanish and I a little Italian made a tour of Western Europe viz, Gibralter Italy Switzerland France Germany Holland Belgium and England plodding on foot amongst the common people studying sociological conditions and comparing with our own people. I find the contrast of the humbler class of Europe also the colored races of the West Indies and South America with less opportunities possessed of more enterprise and ambition than the colored people ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 5, 1920 • Various
... heart—he would yield! Three times during that winter he fell into the mire; on Washington's birthday he began to play in the morning, and stopping only for meals, he played until long after midnight. Forever afterwards he was a humbler and a gentler man because of that experience; understanding how squalor abases one, and how swiftly and stealthily an evil passion closes its grasp about ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... visible presence of a municipality in the southern extremity prompted the inhabitants to suggest a remodeling of the government somewhat after the New England pattern, where patroons were unknown and impossible. It is not surprising that suggestions to this effect from the humbler members of the community were not cordially embraced by either the patroons or their creators at home; in fact, it was still-born. That the people should rule themselves was as good as to say that the horse should ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... showy lady's slipper, just as we forget the timid, tender tones of the bluebird when the grand song of the grosbeak floods the evening air, or the exquisite melody of the hermit thrush spiritualizes the leafy woods; just as many a man forgets the ministrations of his humbler friends in early life when he has climbed into the society of those whom earth calls great. But the aspens will neither grieve nor murmur. They will continue to make delightful color contrasts with their smooth ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... for his philosophical contemplation. I had the pleasure of accompanying him during the whole of this journey. He was respectfully entertained by the great, the learned, and the elegant, wherever he went; nor was he less delighted with the hospitality which he experienced in humbler life[783]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... stable; and as he rejoined the throng in all the pride of shape, action, and condition, even the top-sawyers. Fossick, Fyle, Bliss, and others, admitted that Hercules was not a bad-like horse; while the humbler-minded ones eyed Sponge with a mixture of awe and envy, thinking what a fine trade literature must be to ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... in the upper house, and passed almost without discussion. In the commons, also, it met with general approbation; the only opposition came from Sir Robert Inglis, who objected to it chiefly on the ground of the expense which the mode of execution there enjoined would entail on the humbler class of testators. By abolishing holograph wills, and rendering two witnesses necessary, a resort to professional advice would become indispensable. The bill, however, was ably defended by the attorney-general; and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... stimulus, with us called ambition, which goads us up the hill of life, not as we ascend other eminences; for the laudable curiosity of viewing an extended landscape, but rather for the dishonest pride of looking down on others of our fellow-creatures, seemingly diminutive in humbler stations, etc., etc. ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... quality of Penguinity, and without Ruskin's humanness. It is alike impossible to withstand the contagion of Bobbie's Penguinity, and to fancy a genius so great that he does not at times yearn for the common walks and the common talks of his humbler fellow creatures. He may not always know how to achieve them, his own greatness may be a barrier he cannot cross, or his temperament and circumstances may hinder; but be sure that he feels the loss, though he may not himself, for all his genius, ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... desire to reveal the humbler immigrant parents to their own children lay at the base of what has come to be called the Hull-House Labor Museum. This was first suggested to my mind one early spring day when I saw an old Italian woman, her distaff against her homesick face, patiently spinning a thread by the simple ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... enlarged at last to meet all necessities. But the strong liquors of the inn often circulated too freely, and quarrels and the stocks were at times the end of a day which it had been planned should hold all the merriment the Puritan temper would allow. Such misfortunes waited only on the humbler members of the community, who appear to have been sufficiently quarrelsome and excitable to furnish more occupiers of both pillory and stocks, than the religious character of the settlement would seem to admit, and who came to blows ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... their surroundings with a higher and holier significance than can arise from the events and associations of the work-day life. In art the missing link is found, and whether it be the simple ballad in the evening circle or the modest print that graces the humble cottage walls—and the humbler the habitation the deeper the manifestation, because the more touching—it is but the expression of the people's appreciation of the needs, the capacities, and the holier aspirations of the better part of humanity. Hence ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Fighting Nigger claimed the lion's share of the glory; but when they disgraced themselves, then Burlman Reynolds must take the dog's share of the blame. Now, this petting and humoring had spoiled the Fighting Nigger not a little, making him arrogant and overbearing with his humbler self, even to the extent at times of a threat to kick him bodily out-of-doors. But Burlman Reynolds, the best-natured fellow in the world, perfectly understood what all this fuming and puffing meant, and only laughed in his sleeve thereat, knowing as well as anybody that after all the Fighting ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... to be classed as precious is its rarity. To this may be added public opinion, which is led for better or worse by the fashion of the moment. For if the comparatively common amethyst should chance to be made extraordinarily conspicuous by some society leader, it would at once step from its humbler position as semi-precious, and rise to the nobler classification of a truly precious stone, by reason of the demand created for it, which would, in all probability, absorb the available stock to rarity; and this despite the more entrancing beauty of ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... after the manner of old frontier days and men, the young officer administered to his humbler comrades; cheered, and warmed, and insisted on their eating with their second tumbler, and when in course of half an hour the two stood before him, glowing, grateful, and resuming their buffalo coats and fur caps and gloves, honest Cassidy tried ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... life I have passed every moment of my time in making friends, whom I hoped to render my stay and support. In times of prosperity, all these cheerful, happy voices—and rendered so through and by my means—formed in my honor a concert of praises and kindly actions. In the least disfavor, these humbler voices accompanied in harmonious accents the murmur of my own heart. Isolation I have never yet known. Poverty (a phantom I have sometimes beheld, clad in rags, awaiting me at the end of my journey through life)—this poverty has been the specter with which ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... keep carriages for their own private use; and near fifty have country houses. The relaxations of the humbler class, are fives, quoits, skittles, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... the minds of my enemies; and, grounding their suspicions on my acknowledged attachment to Bruce, the king might have been persuaded to believe me unfaithful to his interests. The result would be my disgrace, and a broken heart to her who has raised me by her generous love from the humbler ranks of nobility to that of ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... half-considered intention of changing to humbler rooms and hiding therein from his world, he did not meditate any definite activity. The feeling at the bottom of his mind was rather that events would shape themselves. To this attitude of passivity ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... had reached the terminus. Attired as he was he dared not present himself at any reputable inn; and he felt keenly that the unassuming dignity of his demeanour would serve to attract attention, perhaps mirth and possibly suspicion, in any humbler hostelry. He was thus condemned to pass the solemn and uneventful hours of a whole night in pacing the streets of Glasgow; supperless; a figure of fun for all beholders; waiting the dawn, with hope indeed, but with unconquerable shrinkings; and above all things, ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... nearly all of the humbler class. The widow who owned the house had moved away, and there were none with whom Zillah could associate, except the rector and his wife. They were old people, and had no children. The Rev. Mr. Harvey had lived there all his life, and was now well advanced in years. At the first tidings ...
— The Cryptogram - A Novel • James De Mille
... of signatures—then with tens, then hundreds of thousands. There was a hot struggle as to whether the petitions should be received at all by the Senate and House. John Quincy Adams, willing after his Presidency to serve in the humbler capacity of congressman, was the champion of the right of petition. Calhoun had entered the Senate in 1832 and remained there with a brief intermission until his death in 1850. He stood independent of the two great parties, with his own State always solidly behind ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... fine example of a samurai kaimyo The kaimyo of kwazoku or samurai are different from those of humbler dead; and a Japanese, by a single glance at an ihai, can tell at once to what class of society the deceased belonged, ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the Celtic mind is never more strikingly displayed than in the legends and fanciful tales which people of the humbler walks of life seldom tire of telling. Go where you will in Ireland, the story-teller is there, and on slight provocation will repeat his narrative; amplifying, explaining, embellishing, till from a single fact a connected history is evolved, giving motives, particulars, action, and result, the ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... proclamation commanding Jesuits and priests to leave the kingdom within a month, and he was willing to submit the case of Goodman to the decision of both Houses.(436) Fortunately for Goodman, the City and the Commons had higher game to fly at in Strafford, and the humbler priest was allowed to remain unmolested ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... majority of the Catholic clergy are hostile to the temporal authority of the Pope, and sympathize with Mazzini so generally, that of seventeen conspirators recently arrested for conspiring in favour of the Republic against Austria, sixteen were priests belonging to the humbler orders of ...
— Select Speeches of Kossuth • Kossuth
... independent. Some of them begin upon a capital of a few dollars wherewith to furnish their stands, but not succeeding, they retire from the crowd and drop out of sight. Talent is necessary even for the sale of truck: not possessing it, they are driven to some employment of a humbler description. These women are not producers of the fruits and vegetables they have to sell. Most of these are grown by truckers in the suburbs, who supply the market-stands with a daily assortment during the season. But the business of thus trafficking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... absolutely unknown to anybody else, as he, indeed, took care to be, to avoid inconvenient investigations. Cottagers formed his only patients, and his Wessex-wide repute was among them alone. His position was humbler and his field more obscure than those of the quacks with capital and an organized system of advertising. He was, in fact, a survival. The distances he traversed on foot were enormous, and extended nearly the whole length and ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... sheltered the smaller household gods for which no other resting-place could be found. The Empire cabinet, with its rounding front of glass, its painted Watteau scenes, and its mirrored back, has come to supplant the humbler creation in the fulfilment of all its tender ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson
... York, and this appears to be the general impression as to his parentage. In a History of Cheshire, however, written, I believe, by Cowdray, and published in 1791, the author claims him as a native of that county, and makes him to be of much {335} humbler birth and descent than any of his other biographers. Hear him ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 179. Saturday, April 2, 1853. • Various
... dame, Preferr'd to quench his present flame, 30 Behold as many gallants here, With modest guise and silent fear, All to one female idol bend, While her high pride does scarce descend To mark their follies, he would swear That these her guard of eunuchs were, And that a more majestic queen, Or humbler ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... which taketh away from me compunction, I love no contemplation which leadeth to pride. For all that is high is not holy, nor is everything that is sweet good; every desire is not pure; nor is everything that is dear to us pleasing unto God. Willingly do I accept that grace whereby I am made humbler and more wary and more ready to renounce myself. He who is made learned by the gift of grace and taught wisdom by the stroke of the withdrawal thereof, will not dare to claim any good thing for himself, but will ...
— The Imitation of Christ • Thomas a Kempis
... cannot discover any trace of the circumstances alluded to by Pope. Yet Ellis was a considerable man in his day;—he had been Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in the reign of Charles II., and was Under-Secretary of State under William III.; he is said to have afterwards sunk into the humbler character {246} of a "London magistrate," and to have "died in 1788, at 93 or 95, immensely rich." I should be glad of any clue to ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 16, February 16, 1850 • Various
... as she somewhat suspected that, in casting his slough, young Eachin had not entirely surmounted the habits which he had acquired in his humbler state, and that, though he might use bold words, he would not be rash enough to brave the odds of numbers, to which a descent into the vicinity of the city would be likely to expose him. It appeared that ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... constant flow of Norman immigration into England, and England swarms with people bearing Norman or French names, whose ancestors were perfectly guiltless of the bloodshed of Hastings, and made their entrance into the country as peaceful traders, and, perhaps, in even humbler capacities. What is certain is that the great contractor sprang from a line of those small landed proprietors, once the pillars of England's strength, virtue and freedom, who, in the old country have been "improved off the face of the earth" by the great landowners, ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... coarse political allusions. Several of his songs are of a high order, and have deservedly become popular. He was less the poet of external nature than of the domestic affections; and, himself possessed of a lively sympathy with the humbler classes, he took delight in celebrating the simple joys of the peasant's hearth. A master of the pathetic, his muse sometimes assumed a sportive gaiety, when the laugh is irresistible. Among a wide circle he was held in estimation; ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume III - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... later, had been somewhat broken down in England by the middle of the sixteenth, though vestiges of it long survived, and in the form of a reluctance to be known to write for money, may be found even within the confines of the nineteenth. The humbler means and lesser public of the English booksellers have saved English literature from the bewildering multitude of pirated editions, printed from private and not always faithful manuscript copies, which were for so long the despair of the editors of many ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... spread: beside the bier The King stood mute, and his chiefs and court: The Druids dark-robed drew surlily near, And the Bards storm-hearted, and humbler sort: The "Staff of Jesus" Saint Patrick raised: Angelic anthems above them swept: There were that muttered; there were that praised: But none who looked ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... followed, and presently they were quite near to two quaint old carts, heaped high with mesquite fagots destined for the humbler hearths of Eagle Pass. Donkeys were tethered near by, and two Mexicans, quite old and docile in appearance, came forward ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... up new lines of existence, and to make a cheerful centre of life for herself and all who surrounded her. If any woman should feel with justice that she has reached the Afterwards, and has done with her active career, it should be the woman who has just settled down after her husband's death to the humbler house provided for her widowhood apart from all her old occupations and responsibilities. But in reality there was no such sentiment in her mind. "You'll in your girls again be courted." She had hanging about her the pleasant reflection of that wooing, never put into words, with which ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... fame or gold, To all that softer ecstacies inspire. A stony heart these tyrants e'er require, Brave Smith ne'er thought of Pocahontas' love, But only that his name would glitter higher In coming centuries, others' names above, Whose soon contented souls an humbler distance rove. ...
— Lays of Ancient Virginia, and Other Poems • James Avis Bartley
... down the stream with humbler heart. His favorite waterfall had denied him. The gold that had gleamed there was his sweetheart's hair; the red was of her lips; the dark pool with its lights and shades, its unfathomable mystery, was like ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... by Addison were more important than those chosen by Steele, and no doubt the earnest bent of his mind would have led him to write lofty and learned essays on morals and literature quite unsuitable to a popular periodical. But being kept down in a humbler sphere by the exigency of the case, he produced what was far more telling, and, perhaps, more practically useful. In one place he uses his humorous talent to protest, in the cause of good feeling, against the indignities put upon chaplains—a subject ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... by railway travelling, showed the lower classes that the governing bodies were not so badly disposed towards them as they had been taught to believe. On the other hand, the upper classes acquired a higher sense of duty to their humbler neighbours. All grades came to understand each other better, and with increased knowledge came better feelings and ...
— Personal Recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham Men • E. Edwards
... sight-seeing closed with a drive in Valetta through the humbler part of the city and down a long inclined street which led to the docks. At nightfall as our steamship moved eastward the lights of Malta's stronghold gradually faded from our sight, but the gleam of its lighthouse followed us for many ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... breasts. There were traders, too, from the northern cities of the Empire, dressed in long dressing-gown-looking coats, more properly described as dirty than clean, and high boots, and low-crowned hats, and beards of considerable length and thickness; while the humbler classes, the mujicks, evidently delighted in pink shirts with their tails worn outside their trousers, and fastened round their waist with a sash or belt. These wore caps, and high boots, and long ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... chirruped and gossiped the "boys," while around an immense glowing heap of logs sat the white folk—the "big fellow fools" of the party, with scorching faces and freezing backs, too conservative to learn wisdom from their humbler neighbours. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... charming descriptions of nature -I do not understand them myself, for I know nothing about nature; but still it is all in me. From me have gone forth, and still go forth, these warrior hosts, these lovely maidens, these bold knights on snorting steeds, those droll characters in humbler life. The fact is, however, that I do not know anything about them myself. I assure you ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... vast fortune, Lord Hertford might certainly do what he would: and if, at his age, he can wish for more than that fortune will obtain, I may pity his taste or temper; but I shall think that you and I are much happier who can find enjoyments in an humbler sphere, nor envy those who have no time for trifling'. I, who have never done any thing else, am not at all weary of my occupation. Even three days of continued rain have not put me out of humour or spirits. C'est beaucoup dire for ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... womanly attributes were a bride's best dowry, Laura gave herself to their attainment, that she might become to another household the blessing Nan had been to her own; and turning from the worship of the goddess Beauty, she gave her hand to that humbler and more human teacher, Duty,—learning her lessons with a willing heart, for ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... In the humbler walks of Arrowhead Village society, similar opinions were entertained of Miss Euthymia. The fresh-water fisherman represented pretty well the average estimate of the class to which he belonged. "I tell ye," said he to another gentleman of leisure, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... her dignity and the number of her family had been secured for Lady Kicklebury by her dutiful son, in the same house in which one of Lankin's friends had secured for us much humbler lodgings. Kicklebury received his mother's advent with a great deal of good humor; and a wonderful figure the good-natured little baronet was when he presented himself to his astonished friends, scarcely recognizable by his own parent ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... island, that renders us better than common. Nay, if a claim comes from over water, let it be what it may, it strikes us as a foreign and inadmissible claim. The fate from which even princes are not exempt, humbler ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... and, I did not doubt, of better repute; some in gowns and bonnets that would do them credit anywhere in New York, and some, of course, more commonly attired in calico and gingham as proper to the humbler station of laundresses, cooks, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... conspicuous rivals, besides a host of humbler competitors. One of these magician-doctors, who was nearly blind, made for himself a kennel at the end of his house, where he fasted for seven days. [ See Introduction. ] On the sixth day the spirits appeared, and, among other revelations, told him that the disease could be frightened away ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... humble origin, as you know; and that has given me opportunities of knowing what is the most crying need in the humbler ranks of life. It is that they should be allowed some part in the direction of public affairs, Doctor. That is what will develop their faculties and intelligence and ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... journey, were unyoked and led into the stable, and Telemachus, with his companion, was ushered with all courtesy into the great hall of Menelaus. The palace was one of the wealthiest and most splendid in Greece; and Telemachus, accustomed to a much humbler style of dwelling, stood amazed at the glories which met his eyes. After bathing and changing their raiment they returned to the hall, and were assigned places close to ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... Bishop Seabury's remains rest under the chancel of St. James's Church, New London. ] that holds the mouldered remains of him who a hundred years ago knelt down in that distant land to receive the warrant of his high commission in the Church of God; in this fair temple, which replaces the far humbler one in which he ministered as a parish priest; beside that monument, which attests the loving gratitude of a Diocese that will never let his memory be forgotten; two thoughts—bringing with them a thankfulness ...
— Report Of Commemorative Services With The Sermons And Addresses At The Seabury Centenary, 1883-1885. • Diocese Of Connecticut
... forgotten, in these suggestions, that not much protection is really given anywhere to this particular class as a whole. Everywhere in Europe the restrictions are of caste, not of sex. Even in Turkey, travellers tell us, women of the humbler vocations are not much secluded. It is not the object of the "European plan," in any form, to protect the virtue of young women, as such, but only of young ladies; and the protection is pretty effectually limited ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... new powers in this way; but some good fortune at last occurred to a family which stood in great need of it, by the advancement of these famous personages who benefited humbler people that had the luck of being in their favor. Before Mr. Esmond left England in the month of August, and being then at Portsmouth, where he had joined his regiment, and was busy at drill, learning the practice and mysteries of the musket and pike, he ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... principles of brotherly love, humility, equality, liberty, promulgated as part and parcel of the Christian dispensation eighteen centuries previously, had no practical efficacy so far as France was concerned. Instead of equality before God and the law, the humbler classes were feudal serfs, without any appeal from the cruel oppressions to which they were exposed. In the midst of gloom, Rousseau's vague declamations on the rights of man fell like a ray of light. A spark was communicated, which kindled a flame in the bosoms of the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 426 - Volume 17, New Series, February 28, 1852 • Various
... length removed; and in February 1687, Tyrconnel began to rule his native country with the power and appointments of Lord Lieutenant, but with the humbler title ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... fathers who desire to secure him as a son-in-law, and who will see that money is not wanting to carry him triumphantly up the official ladder. Boys without any gifts of the kind required, remain to fill the humbler positions; those who advance to a certain point are drafted into trade; while hosts of others who just fall short of the highest, become tutors in private families, schoolmasters, doctors, fortune-tellers, ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... inquiries, M. Figuier is sometimes notably oblivious of humbler truths, as might indeed be expected. Thus he repeatedly alludes to Locke as the author of the doctrine of innate ideas (!!), [14] and he informs us that Kepler never quitted Protestant England (p. 336), though we believe that the nearest Kepler ever came to living in England was the refusing ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... successions. Prudence, therefore, it was, and state policy, not the power of Christianity, which gave the final shock (of the original shock we shall speak elsewhere) to the grander functions of the Delphic Oracle. But, in the mean time, the humbler and more domestic offices of this oracle, though naturally making no noise at a distance, seem long to have survived its state relations. And, apart from the sort of galvanism notoriously applied by Hadrian, surely the fathers could not have seen Plutarch's ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... editor" thus irritably impatient to figure in public as the volunteer valet or literary lackey of Prince Leopold. Hence I gathered the edifying assurance that this aspirant to the honours of literature in livery had been reminded of my humbler attempts in literature without a livery by the congenial music of certain four-footed fellow-critics and fellow-lodgers of his own in the neighbourhood of Hampstead Heath. Especially and most naturally had their native woodnotes wild recalled to the listening biped (whom partial nature had so far ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... as if by enchantment, on the site of his father's old weather-beaten farmhouse. The exterior was of marble, so dazzlingly white that it seemed as though the whole structure might melt away in the sunshine, like those humbler ones which Mr. Gathergold, in his young play-days, before his fingers were gifted with the touch of transmutation, had been accustomed to build of snow. It had a richly ornamented portico, supported by tall ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... was also naturally a hero-worshipper; she hoped more enthusiastically than he was wont to do; she was more readily depressed; the word "liberty" for her had an aureole or a nimbus which glorified all its humbler and more prosaic meanings. Browning, although in this year 1847 he made a move towards an appointment as secretary to a mission to the Vatican, at heart cared little for men in groups or societies; he cared ...
— Robert Browning • Edward Dowden
... later—is probably the headquarters for the South in this trade. It has at least one dealer of Fifth Avenue rank, located on Charles Street, and a number of humbler dealers in and near Howard Street. Among the latter, two in particular interested me. One of these—his name is John A. Williar—I have learned to trust. Not only did I make some purchases of him while I was in Baltimore, but I have even gone so far, ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street |
