"Ignobly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the creation of light over darkness. With his pious and believing heart he could easily enter into that theme, and show with matchless power and skill the closing-in of those ancient foes, and the victory of light when darkness cowered and ignobly shrank away." The expression of delight over this victory is very well brought out, not only in the music, but also in the arrangement of the Scriptural texts, which begin with exhortations of praise, and appeals to those who have been in distress ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... for Custer and his men, they fell while ignobly, and without right or authority, invading the peaceful home of Sitting Bull ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, April 1887 - Volume 1, Number 3 • Various
... Never was warrior so ignobly driven or dragged from a field of victory. Aunt Betsy could find no excuse for Alfred. Broom corn was a necessity in the household work. Every farmer made ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... sleeps under three epitaphs; while cherubs frescoed on the wall behind affect to disclose the mausoleum, by lifting a frescoed curtain, but deceive no one who cares to consider how impossible it would be for them to perform this service, and caper so ignobly as they do at the same time. In fact this tomb of Ariosto shocks with its hideousness and levity. It stood formerly in the Church of San Benedetto, where it was erected shortly after the poet's death, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... strenuous ease of such life compelled me to marvel and admire, and I who had so lately lain at the feet of eastern sages, set up this mechanician as my god. If I looked back at all to the land of dreams, the placid figure beneath the Tree of Enlightenment took on the aspect of a fool's idol, ignobly self-manacled, pitiful and irksome ...
— Apologia Diffidentis • W. Compton Leith
... Atrides nor his Greeks can bend; Long toils, long perils in their cause I bore, But now the unfruitful glories charm no more. Fight or not fight, a like reward we claim, The wretch and hero find their prize the same. Alike regretted in the dust he lies, Who yields ignobly, or who bravely dies. Of all my dangers, all my glorious pains, A life of labours, lo! what fruit remains? As the bold bird her helpless young attends, From danger guards them, and from want defends; In search of prey she wings the spacious air, And with the untasted food supplies ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... gnats, that wanton in a ray Which gave them birth, can rob the world of day. What northern hive pour'd out these foes to wit? Whence came these Goths to overrun the pit? How would you blush the shameful birth to hear Of those you so ignobly stoop to fear; For, ill to them, long have I travell'd since, Round all the circles of impertinence, Search'd in the nest where every worm did lie Before it grew a city butterfly; I'm sure I found them other kind of things Than those with backs of silk and ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... the old Rome that he found on his return in 29,— brick-built ignobly at best, and now decaying and half in ruins, —was giving place to a true imperial city. In 28, eighty-two temples were built or rebuilt in marble; among the rest, one to Apollo on the Palatine, most magnificent, ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... there are sayings and repartees of his left still upon record, which seem to show that he not ignobly accommodated himself to his present circumstances; as may appear in part from the ingenuousness of the avowal he made on coming to Leucadia, which, as well as Syracuse, was a Corinthian colony, where he told the inhabitants, that he found himself not unlike boys who have been in fault, who ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... weary and care-worn; instead of slumbering idly, in the security of our mansions, when the torrent of war rolls over the land; instead of girding then our brothers for the stormy fight, bidding them GOD-speed; instead of ignobly bending before the tyrannical power of Man, thou, O! astute NEAL! wouldst have us pluck the laurel-wreath from our kinsman's brow, and bind it on our own. Thou wouldst have us rise in all the dignity ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... prosperity of a people who once knew something of noble aspirations, but have submitted to learn from a practical age that the business of life is to make money, and the enjoyments of it what money can buy. A few are ignobly successful; the many fail, and are miserable; and the subtle anarchy of selfishness finds its issue in madness and revolution. But we need not open this painful subject. Mr. Arnold is concerned with the effect ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude
... indignity to Dodge's monument—he had assured her that she was its inspiration; except for her it would never have been realized, he would have kept on modeling those Newport fountains, continued with the Susanna Nodas, spending himself ignobly. He loved her, and that love had resulted in a statue the world of art, of taste, honored. But it was she all the while they were approving, ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Victor overthrown! The Arbiter of others' fate A Suppliant for his own! Is it some yet imperial hope That with such change can calmly cope? Or dread of death alone? To die a Prince—or live a slave— Thy choice is most ignobly brave! ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of landed property was nearly doubled. On the Queen's birthday, the first after the annexation, the 24th of May 1877, the native chiefs were invited to attend, and the Union Jack was formally hoisted to the strains of the National Anthem. This same flag was within a few years ignobly hauled down during the signing of the Convention at Pretoria, and formally buried by a party of Englishmen and loyal natives. But for the time being all seemed pleased with the new state of affairs. As Mr. Haggard says, it is ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... and the cat, 'we will stand by you, and if we are killed, it is at any rate better to die on the field of battle than to perish ignobly at home,' and they shook paws and concluded the bargain. The fox sent word to the wolf to meet him at a certain place, and the three set forth to encounter him and ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... woman, intensely ambitious, seeking to connect herself with every powerful influence—the princess loved this strange species of contrast. She found it curious and interesting to see this man, almost in rags, mean in appearance, and ignobly ugly, and but lately the most humble of subordinates look down from the height of his superior intelligence upon the nobleman by birth, distinguished for the elegance of his manners, and just before so considerable a personage in the Society. From that moment, as the more important personage ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... stuck full of gems; accomplishments must be paraded, powers must be hinted at. The victor must advance to triumph with blown trumpets and beaten drums; and in solitude there must follow the reaction of despair, the fear that one has disgraced oneself, seemed clumsy and dull, done ignobly. Every sensitive emotion is awake; and even the most serene and modest natures, in the grip of passion, can become suspicious and self-absorbed, because the passion which consumes them is so fierce that it shrivels all ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... last horizon of the world, gods and men act out the brief human tragedy, as if on a narrow island in the midst of a great sea. A few steps this way or that will plunge them into darkness; the darkness awaits them, however they succeed or fail, whether they live nobly or ignobly, in the interval; but the interval absorbs them, as if it were to be eternity, and we see them rejoicing and suffering with an abandonment to the moment which intensifies the pathos of what we know is futile. ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... upstart eaux-de-vie. We went through some of the cellars to-day, as venerable and vast as the claret cellars in Bordeaux, although not quite as interesting, perhaps, because not so "alive." For wine is a living thing, as the man said in Bordeaux, and it must be ignobly boiled and destroyed before turning into a distilled spirit. To some this pale spiritual essence may possess a finer poetry—the cellars are ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... expedition ended more ignobly: they had started out to attack a fierce black bear, and unexpectedly were overturned by a large-sized pig, which resented ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... day, and words would have been vain. He promised hard to get leave from his papa and "grand-pap," and to join me after a last farewell at the Plateau. His face gave the lie direct to his speech, and his little manoeuvre for keeping the earnest-money failed ignobly. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... the hour and its momentary pleasures, fight for his own hand alone, forget mercy and pity, seldom think, never reflect, and at length, sated and yet dissatisfied with all he has experienced, sink impotently and ignobly into the grave. Immanuel Kant lays it down as an axiom that the moral law must inevitably be fulfilled one day in every individual human being. It is the destiny of man to be one day perfect. What a searching change must sometime pass ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... up a class of "men of princely possessions"—a class such as the American Republic never before had known.[359:3] Among those whose fortunes were reckoned by many millions or many tens of millions were men of sordid nature, whose wealth, ignobly won, was selfishly hoarded, and to whose names, as to that of the late Jay Gould, there is attached in the mind of the people a distinct note of infamy. But this was not in general the character of the American millionaire. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... mummeries only aggravated his guilt. But a man who took off his hat when he passed a church episcopally consecrated must be a good man, a pious man, a man of good principles. Johnson could easily see that those persons who looked on a dance or a laced waistcoat as sinful, deemed most ignobly of the attributes of God and of the ends of revelation. But with what a storm of invective he would have overwhelmed any man who had blamed him for celebrating the redemption of mankind with ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... resistance and bravery of men. But one lamenting ignobly, he blames in a clear comparison (I. ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch |
