"Ignoble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Place; but it was not in its nature consoling. The prevision of disgrace was now so vivid to her that it seemed to her that if it had not already overtaken them she had only to thank the loose, mysterious, rather ignoble tolerance of people like Mrs. Collingwood. There were plenty of that species, even among the good; perhaps indeed exposure and dishonour would begin only when the bad had got hold of the facts. Would the bad be most horrified and do most to spread the scandal? ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... Apollo. She is regarded, at best, as flighty creature, and at worst, as one pushing bad taste to the verge of indecency. Such weaknesses are resigned to women approaching senility, and to the more ignoble variety of women labourers. A shop girl, perhaps, may plausibly fall in love with a moving-picture actor, and a half-idiotic old widow may succumb to a youth with shoulders like the Parthenon, but no woman of poise and self-respect, even supposing her to be transiently flustered by a lovely buck, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... Grenada), the whole province of Caracas was nevertheless eagerly explored. A governor, newly arrived on that coast, could recommend himself to the Spanish court only by boasting of the mines of his province; and in order to take from cupidity what was most ignoble and repulsive, the thirst of gold was justified by the purpose to which it was pretended the riches acquired by fraud and violence might be employed. "Gold," says Christopher Columbus, in his last letter* (Lettera rarissima data nelle ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... Here is an acre sown indeed With the richest, royall'st seed That the earth did e'er suck in, Since the first man died for sin. Here the bones of birth have cried, 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state, Buried in dust, once ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... auxiliary than the foe of superstition, and a certain Nicklaus Wagner, a fat Bernese, who was the owner of most of the cheeses in the bark, were the chosen of the multitude on this occasion. The first owed his election to his vehemence and volubility, qualities that the ignoble vulgar are very apt to mistake for conviction and knowledge; the second to his silence and a demureness of air which pass with another class for the stillness of deep water; and the last to his substance, as a man of known wealth, an advantage which, in spite of all that ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... made him, if he had been so minded, at least as great a writer as he was a painter. The gentlest and most modest of men, the freshest as to his generous appreciation of young aspirants, and the frankest and largest-hearted as to his peers, incapable of a sordid or ignoble thought, gallantly sustaining the true dignity of his vocation, without one grain of self-ambition, wholesomely natural at the last as at the first, "in wit a man, simplicity a child," no artist, of whatsoever ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... was at death's door, and raised himself upon his elbow, and sent for some of his guards, and commanded them to kill Antipater without tiny further delay, and to do it presently, and to bury him in an ignoble manner at Hyrcania. ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... republican Switzerland, these men held that their rank exonerated them from any occupation that savored much of utility; and it was with a feeling almost of dishonor to their order that they saw one of their number stoop (it was thus they phrased it) to the ignoble task of preceptor. It need hardly be said that Fellenberg held on his way, undisturbed by the idle ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... of critics is made up of economists, who believe that too much of the world's earnings is spent upon clothes, and that this universal spirit of extravagance retards marriage, and blocks the progress of the race. It is in an ignoble effort to pacify these last censors that women writers undertake to tell their women readers, in the pages of women's periodicals, how to dress on sums of incredible insufficiency. Such misleading guides would be harmless, and even in their way amusing, if nobody believed them; but unhappily ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... what can lead you to suspect such treachery? And, since you arouse my suspicions, since you hold a light over those ignoble labyrinths of the human heart which I refused to contemplate, I will speak to you with the same freedom. Was I not in this man's power? Is not this house his? Are not the people by whom I am surrounded devoted to his orders? Gaston, if you ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... utterance for the grief that pressed. "Nought, Magnus, now is left wherewith to upbraid The gods and fates of marriage; 'tis not death That parts our love, nor yet the funeral pyre, Nor that dread torch which marks the end of all. I share the ignoble lot of vulgar lives: My spouse rejects me. Yes, the foe is come! Break we our bonds and Julia's sire appease! — Is this thy consort, Magnus, this thy faith In her fond loving heart? Can danger fright Her and not thee? Long since our mutual fates Hang by one chain; ...
— Pharsalia; Dramatic Episodes of the Civil Wars • Lucan
... treason, but acquitted on technical grounds. In the meantime, people from the neighboring country sacked Blennerhassett's house; then came creditors, and with great waste seized his property; the beautiful place was still further pillaged by lawless ruffians, and turned into ignoble uses; later, the mansion itself was burned through the carelessness of negroes—and now, all they can show us are the old well and the noble trees which once graced the lawn. As for the Blennerhassetts themselves, they ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... viewed from whatever side, was no less irksome than ignoble. One misfortune was with diabolic ingenuity dovetailed into another. It was bad enough to have killed a man; but the victim was his own uncle, and the father—at least the foster-father—of Gnulemah. ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... elevated sentiments of virtue and honour, have been pardoned. But of all the forms of pride, even the pride of upstart wealth not excepted, the most offensive is the pride of ancestry when found in company with sordid and ignoble vices, greediness, mendacity, knavery and impudence; and such was the pride of Seymour. Many, even of those who were well pleased to see the ministers galled by his keen and skilful rhetoric, remembered that he had sold himself more than once, and suspected that he was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a bride—well, we will not bother with this poetical subject. Everybody knows how merciless a girl can be, how she leaves her lover for practical, or otherwise ignoble reasons, and everybody knows the ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... with the choicest works. The Historian, the Poet, the Divine, the Scientist, can here pursue their studies, and breathe forth inspired thoughts which the res angusta domi have so long stifled. In society congenial to their tastes, far from "the madding crowd's ignoble strife," they may succeed in accomplishing their life's work, and their happiness would be the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... you?" he asked eagerly. And at once his own personality seemed to expand, to throw off the shadow of something ignoble it had worn in Gertrude's presence. For Delia, looking at him, was attracted by him. The shabby clothes made no impression upon her, but the blue eyes did. And the childishness which still survived in her, beneath all her intellectualisms, came ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... long since some cavalry horses, deemed "unfit for further service," were sold at Tattersal's. Of one of these a Miller happened to be the purchaser. Subservient now to the ignoble purposes of burthen, the horse one day was led,'with a sack of flour on his back, to the next market- town; there while the Miller entered a house for a few moments, and the animal quietly waited at the door, a squadron of dragoons drew up in an adjacent street, forming ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... half-mile breadth of racing water where had been pasture-fields; the yellow, foam-laced river was half way up the tall, slender arches of Cluhir Bridge, lapping ever higher, as if in envy, to hide the sole beauty of the ignoble town. Trees, and hayricks, broken boats, and humble pieces of cottage furniture, jostled each other between the piers, tossing and dancing in grotesque gaiety, like drunken holiday-makers on their way to the sea. The great river that is credited ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... their lives or at their death. So in c. 2: Eorum ego vitam mortemque juxta aestumo, quoniam de utraque siletur. When Ovid says, Bene qui latuit, bene vixit, and Horace, Nec vixit male, qui vivens moriensque fefellit, they merely signify that he has some comfort in life, who, in ignoble obscurity, escapes trouble and censure. But men thus undistinguished are, in the estimation of Sallust, little superior to the brute creation. "Optimus quisque," says Muretus, quoting Cicero, "honoris et gloriae studio maxime ducitur;" the ablest ...
— Conspiracy of Catiline and The Jurgurthine War • Sallust
... in happy homes, had died long years ago with the passing of the mother who had borne him in her heart. It might be that he needed such a vision to redeem his spirit from the harshness which sin and pride in high places, and want and crime and poverty of spirit among ignoble ones, had made him grow to ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the youth, regarding the stern countenance of his parent with an amused look. "I have no intention of acting such an ignoble part, and I'm surprised at you askin' the question, for you know I am not lazy—at least not more so than average active men—and there must be plenty of work for me to do in looking after the cargo, superintending repairs, ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... doctrine of reprobation taught in the Bible. The word, as we have seen, is several times used in the sacred writings. It means, according to classic Greek, "not standing the test," "spurious, base, properly (1.) of coin, (2.) of persons," "ignoble, mean" (Liddell and Scott). In the Bible it signifies the same thing, "disapproved," "rejected," "undiscerning," "void of judgment." Cruden says, "This word among metallists is used to signify any metal that will ...
— The Doctrines of Predestination, Reprobation, and Election • Robert Wallace
... brother writes that he would have neither silver nor gold for his spoil, but took the fair daughter of the prince of the Danaids into his tent. The ignoble wretch!" ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of course. Who could resist him? Nor need the details of that interminable journey down the crowded artery of Broadway to the Centre of Things be entered into. An ignoble errand, Honora thought; and she sat very still, with flushed cheeks, in the corner of the carriage. Chiltern's finer feelings came to her rescue. He, too, resented this senseless demand of civilization as an indignity to their Olympian loves. And he was a man to chafe at all restraints. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... is bad; to betray a woman, that is still worse; but to betray one's country!-to commit an act which shall place her at the mercy of her enemies! Ah, the ignoble deaths of the men who were guilty of this crime! And if men have souls, as we are told they have, how the souls of these men must writhe as they look into the minds of living men and behold the horror and contempt in which each traitor's name ...
— The Man on the Box • Harold MacGrath
... service, until the aspirants, or middies, were merely honoured by his little finger as their representative, we only laughed; and asked him, if he had been so destructive to the officers, how many men had fallen by the puissance of his arm. It seemed that these latter were too numerous and too ignoble to be counted; for that question was always answered with a bah! and a rapidly passing over the extended palm of his left hand with his ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... lion cub, of sordid mind, Avoided all the lion kind; Fond of applause, he sought the feasts Of vulgar and ignoble beasts; With asses all his time he spent, Their club's perpetual president. He caught their manners, looks, and airs; An ass in everything but ears! If e'er his Highness meant a joke, They grinn'd applause before he spoke; But at each word ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Rev. Samuel Ware of Coniston, and a descendant of Captain Timothy Prescott, whom General Stark called 'Honest Tim.' She was, to me, all that a woman should be, in intellect, in her scorn of all that is ignoble and false, and in her loyalty to her friends." Here the handkerchief came out of the reticule. "She went to Boston to teach school, and some time afterward I was offered a position in New York, and I never saw her again. But she married in Boston a man of learning and literary attainments, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... unjustifiable Declaration of Independence, anticipated precisely what has happened? Have they not always and everywhere contended that a republic had no elements of national cohesion? In a word, have they not feared our growing power and population as only such base and ignoble spirits can fear the sure and steady progress of a rival nation? Unhappily, their influence in the councils of the kingdom is by no means inconsiderable. The prestige of an ancient family, the obsequious deference paid in England to exalted social position, and the power of patronage, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... office in their gift a mere pawn in the game of place-seekers, the time and energy of their President wasted in bickerings with congressmen over petty appointments, and the machinery of their Government dominated by the machinery of the party for ignoble ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... chose to die rather than to be dishonored: and, if we do not say, that it is her duty to do so, that is because the moralist must condescend to the weakness and infirmities of human nature: mean and ignoble natures must not be taxed up to the level of noble ones. Again, with regard to the other sex, corporal punishment is its peculiar and sexual degradation; and if ever the distinction of Donne can be applied safely to any case, it will be to the case of him who chooses to die rather than to ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... which he had his nickname—were overshadowed, now, by the young man's inability to clothe his splendid body in that fashion which her culture demanded. His simple and primitive views of life—as natural as the instinct which governs all creatures in his God-cultivated world—were now unrefined, ignoble, inelegant. His fine nature and unembarrassed intelligence, which found in the wealth of realities amid which he lived abundant food for his intellectual life, and which enabled him to see clearly, observe ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... admiration. I was a traveler! A word never had tasted so good in my mouth before. I had an exultant sense of being bound for mysterious lands and distant climes which I never have felt in so uplifting a degree since. I was in such a glorified condition that all ignoble feelings departed out of me, and I was able to look down and pity the untraveled with a compassion that had hardly a trace of contempt in it. Still, when we stopped at villages and wood-yards, I could not help lolling carelessly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... oars, oblivious of the weird unearthly melody around them, the clever King of Ithaca gained the honour of becoming the only mortal who had listened to that subtle song without paying the penalty of a hideous and ignoble death. ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... Braden was being dispossessed of all that rightfully belonged to him. She had not intended to ask her mother to come down for the reading. Somehow she had felt that Mrs. Tresslyn's presence would indicate the consummation of a project that had something ignoble about it. She knew that her mother could experience no other sensation than that of curiosity in listening to the will. Her interest in the affairs of Templeton Thorpe ended with the signing of the ante-nuptial contract, supplemented of course by the event which ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... displays its splendid, dense, ascending branches of bloom from August to October. European gardeners object to planting goldenrods, complaining that they so quickly impoverish a rich bed that neighboring plants starve. This noble species becomes ignoble indeed, unless grown in rich soil, when it spreads in thrifty circular tufts. The stout stem, which often assumes reddish tints, rises from three to seven feet high, and the smooth, firm, broadly oval, saw-toothed ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... seen whether there existed in Italy the political sagacity which, triumphing over all local jealousies, could bend to one great aim the passions of the multitude and the fears of the Courts, or whether the cause of the whole nation would be wrecked in an ignoble strife between demagogues and reactionists, between the rabble of the street and the camarilla round ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... "nothing of all that shall be done! Such precautions manifest suspicion, and would wound the feelings of this good Elizabeth. She is innocent, believe me. I yesterday sharply observed her, and she came out from the trial pure. It would be ignoble to distrust her now. Moreover, she has my princely word that I will always listen only to herself, and believe no one but her. In the morning I will go to her and show her this letter, that she may have an opportunity ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... to its own. He wondered what she had meant by those broken half-forgotten sentences; the picture of her eyes and the earnest passion of her face became more vivid as his mechanical interests faded. Her slender beauty came compellingly between him and certain immediate temptations of ignoble passion. But he did not see her again until three full days ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... I said to the garcon in his native tongue, or what I supposed to be that language. "Cinq sous," was his answer. By the laws of sentiment, I ought to have made the ignoble sum five francs, at least. But if I had done so, the waiter would undoubtedly have thought that I had just come from Charenton. Besides, why should I violate the simple habits and traditions of the place, where generation after generation of poor students and threadbare Bohemians had taken their ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... rash, but his spirit is not ignoble. To him it may not be given "to fan and winnow from the coming step of Time the chaff of custom;" but if he persevere he may confidently hope that his thought and love shall at length rise to fairer and more enduring worlds. He weds himself to things of light, seeks aids ...
— Education and the Higher Life • J. L. Spalding
... their own are the very ones who hate mortally to admit to themselves that any intelligence in the world is superior to their own. A noble nature is indeed never so delighted as when it finds something that may be lawfully reverenced; but all the ignoble keep up their self-complacence by shutting their eyes to ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... mothers! count it something gained That they, for whom you mourn, Bequeath fair Freedom's heritage To millions yet unborn;— And better than a thousand years Of base, ignoble breath, A patriot's fragrant memory, ...
— Ballads • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ignoble than the conduct of the people of Lisbon as to the billeting of the very soldiers who had saved them from the enemy. On one occasion the Duke writes to order his wine, &c. to be removed from the house of a Signor Bandeira, and to have a house taken for him, ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... Smith, and in this ignoble way Panton would the next minute have been thrown down, had not a shout suddenly come out ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... It was no ignoble curiosity that prompted him. He would rather have got engaged to her there and then than have left ...
— Better Dead • J. M. Barrie
... stage, love of God and the wish to "please Him" by leading an exemplary life is a motive offered by religion, and this inspires to purity and to self-sacrifice; again, this is no more ignoble than the wish to please the father, the mother, the friend. Many a lad keeps pure to please his mother, because he loves her. So religious men try to live nobly to please God, because they love Him. At a higher stage yet, the good of the people, the good of the race, of humanity ...
— The Basis of Morality • Annie Besant
... Salvandy and Dupaty as competitors,—you know the little check of January,—the miserable petty intrigues of court and newspaper and vestry;—in a word, you know how men are wanting in noble and generous sentiments, and how they make the most of their own ignoble ends and interests, to which their words and ...
— Letters of Franz Liszt, Volume 1, "From Paris to Rome: - Years of Travel as a Virtuoso" • Franz Liszt; Letters assembled by La Mara and translated
... Mr. Lavender replied, "the thought of bed is abhorrent to me at a time like this. What more ignoble fate than to die ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... good showing so far as manners, coat and stripes are concerned, but the incontrovertible evidence of its inner life, as indicated by skull and makeup, tells us plainly that it is merely a Ground-squirrel, a first cousin to the ignoble Picket-pin. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... himself to the ordeal of the public estimation, paying as little deference as may be to those who have gone before him. This forbearance, self-denial, or common sense, or by whatever term it may be thought proper to distinguish the measure, has subjected the nation to the imputation of having an ignoble origin. Were it worth the enquiry, it would be found that more than a just proportion of the renowned names of the mother-country are, at this hour, to be found in her ci-devant colonies; and it is a fact well known to the few who have wasted ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... When Felim O'Connor joined Bruce, Rory O'Connor and his clan commenced depredations on his territory. Felim returned to give him battle, and defeated him with terrible slaughter. Thus men and time were lost in useless and ignoble strife. Rory was slain in this engagement—a fate he richly merited; and Felim was once more free to fight for his country. He was joined by the O'Briens of Thomond, and they marched together to attack Athenry, which was defended by Burke and Bermingham. A fierce conflict ensued. The Irish ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... in our soul, the visions rise Of that fair life we never led; They flash a splendor past our eyes, We start, and they are fled; They pass and leave us with blank gaze, Resigned to our ignoble days." ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Catiline and Sejanus, has inserted many speeches from the Roman historians, was, perhaps, induced to that practice by the example of Shakespeare, who had condescended sometimes to copy more ignoble writers. But Shakespeare had more of his own than Jonson, and, if he sometimes was willing to spare his labour, showed by what he performed at other times, that his extracts were made by choice or idleness rather than necessity. This play is one of those which Shakespeare ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... for ten years, ten of her softest most wax-like years, by a Fritzing, taught to love freedom, to see the beauty of plain things, of quietness, of the things appertaining to the spirit, taught to see how ignoble it is, how intensely, hopelessly vulgar to spend on one's own bodily comforts more than is exactly necessary, taught to see a vision of happiness possible only to those who look to their minds for their joys and not ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... houses of which there are thousands in Paris, ignoble, vulgar, narrow, yellowish in tone, with four storeys and three windows on each floor. The outer blinds of the first floor were closed. Where was she going? The young man fancied he heard the tinkle of a bell on the second floor. As if in answer to it, ...
— Ferragus • Honore de Balzac
... Seville; let her country boast Her strength, her wealth, her site of ancient days, But Cadiz, rising on the distant coast, Calls forth a sweeter, though ignoble praise. Ah, Vice! how soft are thy voluptuous ways! While boyish blood is mantling, who can 'scape The fascination of thy magic gaze? A cherub-hydra round us dost thou gape, And mould to every ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the leading lesson of progress. It implies both the will and the skill to reduce to order, and surround with idealisms and graces, the more material conditions of human existence; and wherever that will and that skill exist, life cannot be wholly ignoble. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... or are members of the Irish constabulary, represent a body of men unequalled for their respectability, loyalty, and courage, while a large proportion of the other, at least in the eighties, made up the bulk of the ignoble army of moonlighters, cattle maimers, and cowardly assassins crouching behind stone walls to shoot at an ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... its best affections, it was not to be expected that its imitator should have been visited with deeper glimpses of the divine. The indignant passions of his unrequited lover are, indeed, passions of the most ignoble clay—not one touch of elevated feeling lifts him for a moment out of the mire. The whole train of circumstances which engender his emotions, prove the lover, in this case, to have been the silliest of mortal men, and his mistress, from the very beginning of his intercourse ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... hear me. 'You forget, my lady, that I am of those you and your station deem ignoble. Yet, none the less, am I ashamed of this business—though, since my lord commands, it is not for me to question nor delay. Therefore, I pray you, let us mount and ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... rest the head, all covered with animals, grotesque beings, dogs, monkeys, big birds, friars, and little birds, all in difficult postures, some beautiful, some obscene. Hogs and frogs wound themselves up together in inextricable tangles, monkeys with ignoble gestures were mixed up with interlaced birds in never ending variety—it was a world of caricatures of voluptuousness, of monkey-like actions and satirical suggestions, in which appeared carnal passion with the most grotesque ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... fear to their religious hate of Shepherd times and that name.' Smyth, somewhat modifying this view, and considering certain remarks of Manetho respecting an alleged invasion of Egypt by shepherd-kings, 'men of an ignoble race (from the Egyptian point of view) who had the confidence to invade our country, and easily subdued it to their power without a battle,' comes to the conclusion that some Shemite prince, 'a contemporary of, but rather ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... Celestial Highness Ishtar, Princess of Heaven; the mutilated priests of Tammuz her lover; dual conceptions that resulted in Aphrodite Pandemos, the postures of Priapos, the leer of the Lampsacene, and, with them, forms of worship comparable, in the circumadjacent beauty, to latrinae in a garden, ignoble shapes that violated the candour of maidens' eyes, but with which Greece became so accustomed that on them moral aphorisms were engraved. "In the mind of Hellas, these things," Renan, with his usual unctuousness, declared, ...
— The Lords of the Ghostland - A History of the Ideal • Edgar Saltus
... justice. Misled though they were, the 'Hunters' looked upon Canada only as Englishmen looked upon Greece, or Poland, or Italy struggling for political freedom: the sentiment, though misdirected, was anything but ignoble. Acting upon this sentiment, a Polish refugee, Von Shoultz, led a small force of 'Hunters,' boys and young men from New York State, in an attack on Prescott, November 10, 1838. He succeeded in surprising the town ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan
... seemed for a while to reap more of hostility than of gratitude for his gallant and honorable conduct in this emergency. Governor Penn was an ignoble man, and after the danger was over he left the house, in which he had certainly played a rather ignominious part, with those feelings toward his host which a small soul inevitably cherishes toward a greater under such circumstances. Moreover, there were very ...
— Benjamin Franklin • John Torrey Morse, Jr.
... that the pantheistic theory, which identifies God with the universe and ourselves with God, has its fascination and {45} glamour—a fascination which is not ignoble on the face of it. The modern founder of Pantheism, Benedict Spinoza, was a man of pure and saintly character, a gentle recluse from the world, lovable and blameless. Nevertheless, we have no hesitation in avowing our belief that the glamour of Pantheism is utterly ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... newspapers, laudatory of other candidates, and depreciatory of Mr. Adams, were shown to him, on which he remarked, "The thing is not new. From the nature of our institutions, competitors for public favor and their respective partisans seek success by slander of each other. I disdain the ignoble warfare, and neither wage it myself or encourage it in my friends. But, from appearances, they will decide ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... For howsoever those ignoble and sowre-brow'd worldlings are carelesse of whatsoever future or present opinion spreads of them; yet (with the most divine 35 philosopher, if Scripture did not confirme it) I make it matter of my faith, that we truely retaine an intellectuall feeling of ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... whore, Me for a myriad oft would bore, That strumpet of th' ignoble nose, To leman, rakehell Formian chose. An ye would guard her (kinsmen folk) 5 Your friends and leaches d'ye convoke: The girl's not sound-sens'd; ask ye naught ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... he attempted to convert the Covenanted Church to Congregationalism. Though he possessed some amiable qualities, yet this ignoble work was attempted in the spirit of a Turk—with the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other. A resolution in favor of Congregationalism was introduced in the General Assembly of 1652. This was voted down. The military suppression of the Assembly at its next meeting was Cromwell's ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... excellence in art, than there would have been in cultivating her not inconsiderable share of talent for the production of works from her own ideas. She might have set up for herself, and won no ignoble name; she might have helped to fill the already crowded and cumbered world with pictures, not destitute of merit, but falling short, if by ever so little, of the best that has been done; she might thus have gratified some tastes that ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... warriors. But it had, also, like all human institutions, become corrupt, and failed to answer the ends for which it was instituted. It had become an oppressive social despotism; it had widened the distinction between the noble and ignoble classes; it had produced selfishness and arrogance among the nobles, and a mean and cringing sycophancy among the people; it had perpetuated privileges, among the aristocracy, exceedingly unjust, and ruinous to the general welfare of society. It therefore ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... was beginning to understand more clearly, though still very far from distinctly. It did not occur to her once that such things could be temptations to the brilliant young leader whom every woman admired and every man flattered, and that only his devoted love for her had kept him out of ignoble adventures since he had grown to be a man. Had she seen that, she would have loved him even better, if it were possible. It was all, as she had said, shameless and abominable. She had thought that she knew much of evil, and she had even ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... array of salt-castors and catsup-bottles and one of those colored glass windows with a portrait of Washington which give to all lunch-wagons their air of sober refinement, Carl ate solemnly, meditatively.... It did not seem to him an ignoble setting for his grief; but he was depressed when he came out to a drab first light of day that made the street seem hopeless and unrested after the night. The shops were becoming visible, gray and chilly, like a just-awakened janitor in slippers, suspenders, and tousled hair. The pavement was wet. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... his course to the cottage of the herdsman, and, entering in at the front court, the dogs, of which Eumaeus kept many fierce ones for the protection of the cattle, flew with open mouths upon him, as those ignoble animals have oftentimes an antipathy to the sight of anything like a beggar, and would have rent him in pieces with their teeth, if Ulysses had not had the prudence to let fall his staff, which had chiefly provoked their fury, and sat himself down in a careless fashion upon the ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... of a loss of power, it is true, but it was that of a still more ignoble passion, covetousness. As Roswell proceeded, his mind represented one source of wealth after another released from his clutch, until it was with a tremulous voice, and a countenance from which all traces of animation had fled, that he ventured ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... degrades his talent. He may set it to unprofitable uses, but he rarely makes merchandise of it. A Rembrandt, Thackeray, or Lowell cannot do inferior work for personal ends without suffering that devouring remorse which accompanies the conscience of the artist, and turns all ignoble popular ...
— Essays On Work And Culture • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... a few favorites of his immediate family and a small body of troops, and commenced his journey—a journey which was considered by all the people as a base and ignoble flight. He involved himself in endless troubles by this step. A revolt broke out on the way among the guards who accompanied him. One of the generals who headed the revolt sent a messenger to Genghis ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... smile,—I never but once saw the light of a smile on her face,—but she gave a low chuckle. Evidently we had touched a chord that would respond; an ignoble one it might be, but it was something to have gained ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... by frightful disasters. It began with the ignoble quarrels between Philippe le Bel and the Pope; it saw the stake lighted for the Templars, made bonfires in Languedoc of the Begards and the Fraticelli, the lepers and the Jews; wallowed in blood ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... seen a poor Irish woman living with such fortitude and faith and generosity that it was a comfort and inspiration to meet her. That brave soul ennobled its mean surroundings with a glory which not the Alps and the sky could flash in upon a heart made blind and dull by ignoble thoughts. ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam
... fills a humble lot As best he can, and murmurs not At what he has, or has not got, But uses all his power To elevate his work and life, And knows no mean ignoble strife, With which the world is too much rife, Is ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... food upon him as if he had been a Noble Dill of waxwork. Several tunes he lifted a fork and set it down without guiding it to its accustomed destination. Food was far from his thoughts or desires, and if he really perceived its presence at all, it appeared to him as something vaguely ignoble ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... with him, that is, she took her own gait. 'What that pace was there is no word mean enough to describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run.' He must belabor her incessantly. It was an ignoble toil, and he felt ashamed of himself besides, for he remembered her sex. 'The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once when I looked at her she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who had formerly loaded me ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... of ignoble and narrow natures may sit in judgment upon people of genius and refinement, and may force back the most aspiring seer into expressionless life by the utter lack of any comprehension by their dull, selfish fancy. Ye gods! How they exult in doing it! This trick ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... entire Turkish party, when the Latookas may seize the opportunity of attacking my innocents. The latter are now so thoroughly broken to my severe laws, "thou shalt not take slaves; neither cattle; nor fire a shot unless in self-defence," that they are resigned to the ignoble lot of minding the ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... appointed to an office, in order to do anything in it, but an active preparation ought to precede. [450] 'I consider, indeed, all men to be equal by nature, but I make this distinction, that the bravest is the most noble.' By quamquam, Marius breaks off the question about noble or ignoble birth (Zumpt, S 341); sed introduces a new distinction between men; namely that of merit. [451] Faciant idem, 'let them despise their own ancestors likewise.' [452] Hujusce rei; that is, commemorationis majorum meorum, 'I cannot ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... which made this only too easy: carelessness, excitability, and, above all, boundless pride, which did not always scorn pretense and ended by doing its utmost to escape possible disgrace, by trying to realize what it first had pretended to possess. He was not naturally ignoble, but he fell into the habit of preferring inward to outward shame. One need only say that he habitually made a display while his ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... not dead out of the land, it seemed, although this was a rather sordid and ignoble brand. It had descended to base levels among base men who lived with sheep and thought only of sheep-riches. Violence among such men as Swan Carlson was merely violence, with none of the picturesque embellishments of the olden days when men slung pistols ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... was something less than Mr. Pepys. It was but a pair of creaking Sunday boots on the feet of a pagan. Mr. Pepys was an appreciator of life to a degree that not many Englishmen have been since Chaucer. He was a walking appetite. And not an entirely ignoble appetite either. He reminds one in some respects of the poet in Browning's "How it strikes a Contemporary," save that he had more worldly success. One fancies him with the same inquisitive ferrule on the end of ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... all daughters and fathers, who afford the requisite conditions for it; that is, in all cases where they remain long enough together, and their characters and manners are such as naturally command respect and love from each other. Even when children are ignoble and unworthy, their fathers and mothers may yearn over them with every strictly parental affection; and even when parents are vicious and degraded, their children may regard them with every strictly filial affection; ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... "where there are robbers there must be victims. But one may despise the victims all the same. One may find their content, or rather their inaction, ignoble." ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... animal labour, and, as a consequence, much of the work that we perform by cattle was then done by men. The class of independent hirelings, which should have constituted the chief strength of the country, disappeared, labour itself becoming so ignoble that the poor citizen could not be an artisan, but must remain a pauper—a sturdy beggar, expecting from the state bread and amusements. The personal uncleanness and shiftless condition of these lower classes ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... are the four cardinal points of the compass of suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... at the beginning, and very often ever after, are ignoble creatures. Yet I should confer the patents of nobility, if it were my prerogative; for some would succeed in living up to them. Vanity would accomplish that much. Vanity is the secret of noblesse oblige; not radical virtue—since we are beginning to ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... here, in this dirty den—the Hotel Boncoeur—that the whole cursed life had commenced. Gervaise remained looking at the window of the first floor, from which hung a broken shutter, and recalled to mind her youth with Lantier, their first rows and the ignoble way in which he had abandoned her. Never mind, she was young then, and it all seemed gay to her, seen from a distance. Only twenty years. Mon Dieu! and yet she had fallen to street-walking. Then the sight of the lodging house ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... many are cared for by the hands. These thoughts will suggest something to us. Those things which are good and beautiful suggest noble use of the hands; while those which are of no service, harmful and destructive, show an ignoble use. But noble and ignoble use of the hands is only another evidence of thought. Thought that is pure in the heart guides the hands to beautiful ends. And if the heart is impure in its thoughts, of course you ...
— Music Talks with Children • Thomas Tapper
... your disposal, whether for the training of your mind, or for your growth into the character of good men, consists in this, that deterioration is standing always at the back of any neglect or waste. Deterioration is the inseparable shadow of every form of ignoble life. ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... gladness that springs from the conscious possession of liberty from the captivity which holds men slaves to evil and to their worst selves. Brethren, let us not fancy that these surface-joys are the joys adequate to a human spirit. They are ignoble, and they are infinitely foolish, because a touch of an awakened conscience, a stirring of one's deeper self, can scatter them all to pieces. So then, that ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... will come back to me proudly—at least with a sense of victory over his ignoble enemies. If I return it he will know I am right, but will still be left so deeply in my debt that he will never come to see me again." And with this thought she determined upon a course of action which led at least to a meeting and to a reconciliation ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... might not always be able to draw the line between orthodoxy and heresy. Things were fast getting beyond all control; the thirst for plunder was even keener than the thirst for blood. And it is certain that among the many ignoble motives by which Charles was induced to permit the massacre, was the hope of enriching himself and paying his debts out of the property of the murdered Huguenots. Nor were Anjou and others insensible to the charms of heretical property. Hence we find the provost of Paris remonstrating with the King ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... at her putting such classic plants to such ignoble purposes. She has asked me to distribute the prizes, and I thought I should be expected to place green chaplets upon the brows of the victors. It's too bad, when I had composed a speech on purpose. You suggest I should make up another? Not so easy, my dears. I shall come to ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... and ambition for power, but they lent a helping hand to the peasantry. The Church was democratic, and enabled the poor to rise according to their merits, while nobles combined to crush them or keep them in an ignoble sphere. In the Church, the son of a murdered peasant could rise according to his deserts; but if he followed a warrior to the battle-field, no virtues, no talents, no bravery could elevate him,—he ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... curtains to the windows, so there was no carpet on the planked floor. A few pieces of new, cheap, ignoble furniture half filled the room. In one corner was a sofa-bedstead covered with an army blanket, in the middle a crimson-legged deal table, partly covered with a dirty cloth, and on the cloth were several apples, an orange, and a hunk of brown bread—his meal. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett |
