"Parvenu" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... exclaiming now and then, as a shriek escapes from whipped and bleeding Hungary, a groan from gasping Poland, and a half-stifled curse from down-trodden but scowling Italy, 'Confound the revolutionary canaille, why can't it be quiet!' In a word, putting one in mind of the parvenu in the 'Walpurgis Nacht.' The writer is no admirer of Gothe, but the idea of that parvenu was certainly a good one. Yes, putting one in mind of the individual ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Drummington. I remember Lady Agnes, sir, an exceedingly fine woman. But what did she do? of course she married her father's man. Why, Mr. Foker sate for Drummington till the Reform Bill, and paid dev'lish well for his seat, too. And you may depend upon this, sir, that Foker senior, who is a parvenu, and loves a great man, as all parvenus do, has ambitious views for his son as well as himself, and that your friend Harry must do as his father bids him Lord bless you! I've known a hundred cases of love in young men and women: hey, Master Arthur, do you take ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... others, are outdone by that of the famous finance minister, a parvenu broker, who chose to be entitled ...
— The Resources of Quinola • Honore de Balzac
... endure the sedentary toil of creative art and so remained a man of action, exaggerating, for the sake of immediate effect, every trick learned from his masters, turning their easel painting into painted scenes. He was a parvenu, but a parvenu whose whole bearing proved that if he did dedicate every story in 'The House of Pomegranates' to a lady of title, it was but to show that he was Jack and the social ladder his pantomime beanstalk. "Did you ever hear him ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats
... early myths had been preserved and the doctrines elaborated to which the inhabitants of Mesopotamia owed the superiority of their civilization. The Assyrians invented nothing. Assur himself seems only to have been a secondary form of some Chaldaean divinity, a parvenu carried to the highest place by the energy and good fortune of the warlike people whose patron he was, and maintained there until the final destruction of their capital city. When Nineveh fell, Assur fell with her, while those gods who were worshipped in common by the people of the north and ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... The Western parvenu is the more picturesque. The cunning railroad princes have, at least, built SOMETHING. It is a nobler work than the paper constructions of Wall Street operators. It may be jeered, that these men "builded better than they knew." Hardin feels ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... bandit[1], qui, tant parti de nuit pour aller chercher de la poudre la ville, tait tomb en route dans une embuscade de voltigeurs corses[2]. Aprs une vigoureuse dfense, il tait parvenu faire sa retraite, vivement poursuivi et tiraillant de rocher en rocher. Mais il avait peu d'avance sur les soldats, et sa blessure le mettait hors d'tat de gagner le ...
— Quatre contes de Prosper Mrime • F. C. L. Van Steenderen
... Americans, everywhere Americans; rich and poor Americans, loud and quiet Americans; Americans who had taste and education, and some who had neither; well-dressed and over-dressed, obtrusive and unobtrusive, parvenu and aristocrat. Once Merrihew saw a fine old gentleman wearing the Honor Legion ribbon in his buttonhole, and his heart grew warm and proud. Here was an order which was not to be purchased like the Order of Leopold and the French Legion ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Chicago (1871) and Boston (1872) gave unexampled opportunities for architectural improvement and greatly stimulated the public interest in the art. The feverish and abnormal industrial activity which followed the war and the rapid growth of the parvenu spirit were checked by the disastrous "panic" of 1873. With the completion of the Pacific railways and the settlement of new communities in the West, industrial prosperity, when it returned, was established on a firmer basis. An extraordinary expansion of travel to Europe ...
— A Text-Book of the History of Architecture - Seventh Edition, revised • Alfred D. F. Hamlin
... to pay more attention to the names given me, and especially to announce them more naturally. That command, uttered in a loud voice at the door of the reception-room with unnecessary brutality, annoyed me exceedingly, and prevented me—shall I confess it?—from pitying the vulgar parvenu when I learned, during the evening, what sharp thorns had found their way into his bed ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Constance as well as by himself, necessitated heavy expenses. Neither husband nor wife considered money when it was a question of giving pleasure to their child, from whom they had never been willing to separate. Imagine the happiness of the poor parvenu peasant as he listened to his charming Cesarine playing a sonata of Steibelt's on the piano, and singing a ballad; or when he found her writing the French language correctly, or reading Racine, father and son, and ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... Schoonmakers, an elderly gentleman and his wife, who dined out a great deal, and lived on the ancient respectability of their family. They talked much about "the old New Yorkers," and of the inroads and devastations of the parvenu. They were thoroughly posted on old family estates and mansions, the intermarriages of the Dutch aristocracy, and the subject of heraldry. Mr. Schoonmaker made a hobby of old Bibles, and Mrs. Schoonmaker of old lace. The two hobbies combined gave a mingled air of ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... Mr. Parvenu gave a great ball— And of all his smart guests he knew no one at all. Old Mr. Parvenu went up to bed, And the guest said 'Good-night' to ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell
... Venice with her fleets and commerce, as of Naples—if it be not a Cyprian. How sayest thou? And it was King Janus himself who gave Pelendria—that most royal and bountiful fief of a prince of Lusignan—into the hands of that parvenu of Naples, Rizzo! The King verily guessed not his quality when he named him to such estate! He ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... make a mistake," he declared earnestly. "The Square was no place to bring up Hannah, among those parvenu Jews. We have the prettiest home on the heights and the best people in town ...
— The Little Mixer • Lillian Nicholson Shearon
... to add that the Baron's house preserved all its magnificence in the eyes of Lisbeth Fischer, who was not struck, as the parvenu perfumer had been, with the penury stamped on the shabby chairs, the dirty hangings, and the ripped silk. The furniture we live with is in some sort like our own person; seeing ourselves every day, we end, like the Baron, by thinking ourselves but little altered, and still ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... fact, had become so critical, and the bank manager's demeanour so unpropitious, that in the previous year more than once the dawn had found her trying to decide between the Scylla of the thankless post of lady companion to some wealthy parvenu on the Riviera, and the Charybdis of raising money enough to allow her to harbour paying guests in ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... custodians. The same thing occurs in Egypt; we are frequently astounded at what we call "the impertinence of these foreigners," i.e. the natives. They ought to be proud to have us and our elephant-legs; glad to see such noble and beautiful types of civilization as the stout parvenu with his pendant paunch, and his family of gawky youths and maidens of the large-toothed, long-limbed genus; glad to see the English "mamma," who never grows old, but wears young hair in innocent curls, and has her wrinkles annually "massaged" out by a Paris artiste in complexion. ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... the great gentleman: he would never fish with a net, or shoot at a bird on the bough; it was unsportsmanlike. (3) A very natural jovial man, not above "changing countenance" when fine meats were set on his table:—a thing that directly contradicts the idea of a cold, ever play-acting Confucius. A parvenu must be very careful; but a scion of the House of Shang, a descendant of the Yellow Emperor, could unbend and be jolly without loss of dignity;—and, were he a Confucius, would. "A gentleman," said he, "is calm and spacious"; he was himself, according ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... fruitful, and magnificent, peace yielded by weakness and cowardice is sterile, disastrous, and dishonoring. The son of a workman, Pierre Simon still further admired the Emperor, because that imperial parvenu had always known how to make that popular heart beat nobly, and, remembering the people, from the masses of whom he first arose, had invited them fraternally to share in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... — N. newness &c adj.; novelty, recency; immaturity; youth &c 127; gloss of novelty. innovation; renovation &c (restoration) 660. modernism; mushroom, parvenu; latest fashion. V. renew &c (restore) 660; modernize. Adj. new, novel, recent, fresh, green; young &c 127; evergreen; raw, immature, unsettled, yeasty; virgin; untried, unhandseled^, untrodden, untrod, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... these was a middle-aged man of very respectable appearance, but with the stamp of parvenu upon him, a man whom nobody knew, and who evidently knew nobody. The other follower was younger ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... rien qu'un vaste et brulant desert et l'ocean immense. Il naquit fils d'un simple gentilhomme, et mourut empereur, mais sans couronne et dans les fers. Entre son berceau et sa tombe qu'y a-t-il? la carriere d'un soldat parvenu, des champs de bataille, une mer de sang, un trone, puis du sang encore, et des fers. Sa vie, c'est l'arc en ciel; les deux points extremes touchent la terre, la comble lumi-neuse mesure les cieux. Sur Napoleon au berceau une mere brillait; dans la maison paternelle il avait des ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... much of a parvenu in Newport as Kedzie had ever been. He swept her away at times by his juvenile enthusiasm and she neglected ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... had to divide his baby. That is, he let the London side of his shop to W. H. Johnson, the tailor and haberdasher, a parvenu little fellow whose English would not bear analysis. Bitter as it was, it had to be. Carpenters and joiners appeared, and the premises were completely severed. From her room in the shadows at the back the invalid heard ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... who that day had been reading the last French novel and could interpret every word and tone smiled slyly at each other or held themselves still to hear the sequel; the ill-bred turned round and stared; the parvenu sitting at the head of the table, who had been a foreign buyer of some London firm, chuckled coarsely and winked at the waiter, and Baron, the Afrikander trader, who sat next to Telford, ordered champagne on the strength of it. The bronzed, weather worn face of Telford showed imperturbable, ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker |
