"Common people" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... any day to see the Princess Margaret hold a dove on her forefinger; but I never chanced to notice any preparation for that effect. And yet do what you will you can't really elude the Carnival. As the days elapse it filters down into the manners of the common people, and before the week is over the very beggars at the church-doors seem to have gone to the expense of a domino. When you meet these specimens of dingy drollery capering about in dusky back-streets at all hours of the day and night, meet them flitting out ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... revelation to the men that came into this movement. The veil was taken off their eyes, and they could read the Scriptures as they had never read them before. They could now see that the Bible was a simple and intelligible volume, written to be understood by the common people, and they were only amazed at their former blindness. But they were made to know what persecution means. All the denominations combined against them, and they were compelled to read the Scriptures to defend themselves; and thus pressed by their ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... excursion through the West has, however, induced the Author to believe that some valuable information may yet remain to be gathered from our Anglo-Saxon dialect—more especially from that part of it still used by the common people and the yeomanry. He therefore respectfully solicits communications from those who feel an interest in this department of our literature; by which a second edition ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... if the king really wished this. For to those he speaks to he indicates that he desires the contrary. Odysseus taking up these words, and making use of a convenient freedom, persuades the leaders by his mild language; the common people he compels by threats to heed their superiors. Stopping the mutiny and agitation of the crowd, he persuades all by his shrewd words, moderately blaming them for not carrying out what they promised, and at the same ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... be entrusted to them; for it is the custom of that people to compel travellers to stop, even against their inclination, and inquire what they may have heard, or may know, respecting any matter; and in towns the common people throng around merchants and force them to state from what countries they come, and what affairs they know of there. They often engage in resolutions concerning the most important matters, induced by these reports and stories alone; of which they must ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar
... men!" cried Father Danny, at last unable to restrain himself. "Did ye but know that this grand nation is wholly dependent on such as you, its common people! Not on the rich, I say, the handful that own its mills and mines, but on you who work them for your rich masters! But ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... But they never taught honour at the Grinders' School, where the system that prevailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy. Insomuch, that many of the friends and masters of past Grinders said, if this were what came of education for the common people, let us have none. Some more rational said, let us have a better one. But the governing powers of the Grinders' Company were always ready for them, by picking out a few boys who had turned out well in spite of the system, and roundly asserting that they could have ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... kraal at the side of the hill. The heat was excessive, the sun beat down with intense force upon their heads, so that they were not inclined to move very fast. Having arrived at the kraal, they were ushered into the outer circle, where, in a hut considerably larger than those inhabited by the common people, they found the king seated on a pile of mats, he being utterly unable to squat down in the fashion of his less obese subjects. Hendricks saluted him in due form, and Crawford and Percy imitated their leader as well as ...
— Hendricks the Hunter - The Border Farm, a Tale of Zululand • W.H.G. Kingston
... has shown through what causes they were free from religious hatred and its consequences. But, on the other hand the internal state of these religions, the infidelity and hypocrisy of the upper orders, the indifference towards all religion, in even the better part of the common people, during the last days of the republic, and under the Caesars, and the corrupting principles of the philosophers, had exercised a very pernicious influence on the manners, and ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... the charred bones found among the ashes in them, are known to be tombs, and they were probably the sepulchers of the common people, whose bodies were burned. The large mounds are heaped above walled chambers, and in these were platforms, supposed to have been altars, and whole skeletons, supposed to be the skeletons of priests buried there. The priests are supposed to have been the chiefs ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... that the many had not in them the qualities necessary for advance, were incapable of the far visions which make advance desirable. I know now that I was wrong, and I have come to the faith that the hoe of the future is in the common people who ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... language, which procured him the name of the 'Grammarian,' besides a collection of homilies, some theological treatises, and a translation of the first seven books of the Old Testament. In imitation of Alfred, he devoted all his energies to the instruction of the common people, constantly writing in Anglo-Saxon, and avoiding as much as possible the use of compound or obscure words. After him appeared Cynewulf, Bishop of Winchester, Wulfstan, Archbishop of York, and others of some note. There was also ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... adjective is formed fiom "aristocracy"?—What noun will denote one who believes in aristocracy? Ans. Aristocrat—What does "aristocrat" ordinarily mean? Ans. A proud or haughty person who holds himself above the common people. ...
— New Word-Analysis - Or, School Etymology of English Derivative Words • William Swinton
... trick to know it: give out you lie a-dying, and if you hear the common people curse you, be sure you are taken for one of the prime night-caps. [Enter an Old Lady] You ...
— The Duchess of Malfi • John Webster
... that our church pays so little attention to the subject of congregational singing. See how it is! In that particular part of the public worship in which, more than in all the rest, the common people might, and ought to, join,—which, by its association with music, is meant to give a fitting vent and expression to the emotions,—in that part we all sing as Jews; or, at best, as mere men, in the abstract, without a Saviour. You ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... religious improvement of society in her day. The most celebrated of them was "Coelebs in Search of a Wife." But some of the tales which she published in "The Cheap Repository," a series of stories for the common people, had a greater sale. One, "The Shepherd of Salisbury Plain," was so popular that it is said that a million copies of it were sold. Her talents led to her acquaintance being cultivated by such men as Johnson, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... thoroughly familiar. On the other hand, the book will not be wholly without value even to some of my brother-ministers if it serve to convince them that a man may preach freely on the greatest themes of the gospel, and yet be sure that the common people will hear him gladly, if only he will state his message at once seriously and simply, and with the glow that comes of personal conviction. Indeed, one may well doubt if there is any other kind of preaching that ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... friend, let-us shake hands and stop our discussion, which we will not make a quarrel. I trust you know, or will learn, a great many things in your profession which we common scholars do not know; but mark this: when the common people of New England stop talking politics and theology, it will be because they have got an Emperor to teach them the one, and a Pope to ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... mankind. There seems to me, at present, great occasion to raise a 'United Party for Virtue,' by forming the virtuous and good of all nations into a regular body, to be governed by suitable good and wise rules, which good and wise men may probably be more unanimous in their obedience to, than common people are to common laws. I at present, think, that whoever attempts this aright, and is well qualified, cannot fail of pleasing God, ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... governed by Kings and Queens and Emperors, and knows little and thinks less of their internal affairs. All it regards is its own dignity, which is its King, Queen, and Knave. So, sooner or later, an international difference ends in the common people, who have no dignity, shouting the common abuse of the street, which also has no dignity, across the seas in order to vindicate their own dignity. The consequences may or may not be war, but the chances do not ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... she saw more clearly than many of her time, and there are no indications in her works of the small superstitions held by all. Superstition had changed its name to Providence, and every item of daily action was believed to be under the constant supervision and interference of the Almighty. The common people had ceased to believe in fairies and brownies, but their places had been filled by Satan's imps and messengers, watchful for some ...
— Anne Bradstreet and Her Time • Helen Campbell
... be for ever known, And make the age to come my own? I shall like beasts or common people die, Unless you write my elegy; Whilst others great by being born are grown, Their mother's labour, not their own. In this scale gold, in the other fame does lie; The weight of that mounts this so high. These men are Fortune's jewels, moulded bright, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... gates, came the lords and lairds, in yellow coaches, gigs, and post chaises. By another gate, far up the glen, came most of the country folk, some walking, some riding, some driving, all merry, and with the best intentions of enjoying themselves. As the common people approached the house, they were directed to their different tables by the sexton, for he ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... depths of the uproar rises a song with bursts of laughter, in which the name of Jesus recurs. These outbursts come from the common people, who all clap their hands in order to keep time with the music. In the midst of them is Arius, in ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... of the operation of this commercial force is an economic revolution of vast proportions. When ever I went in Asia, I found wider interest in this subject than in the aggressions of European nations. The reason is obvious. The common people in Asia care little for politics, but the price of food and raiment touches every man, woman and child at a sensitive point. Almost everywhere, the old days of cheap living are passing away. Steamers, railways, telegraphs, newspapers, ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... gatherings were already in our national galleries, and that the painters of the present day were laboring, happily and earnestly, to multiply them, and put such means of knowledge more and more within reach of the common people—would not that be a more honorable life for them, than gaining precarious bread by "bright effects?" They think not, perhaps. They think it easy, and therefore contemptible, to be truthful; they have ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... of God. And many that were prevailed on by them suffered the punishments of their folly; for Felix brought them back, and then punished them. Moreover, there came out of Egypt [20] about this time to Jerusalem one that said he was a prophet, and advised the multitude of the common people to go along with him to the Mount of Olives, as it was called, which lay over against the city, and at the distance of five furlongs. He said further, that he would show them from hence how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... yet the common people believe that black cats become devils at the end of seven years, and in many parts of Southern Europe they are still supposed to be serving apprenticeship as witches. In Sicily the peasants are sure that if a black cat lives with ...
— Concerning Cats - My Own and Some Others • Helen M. Winslow
... great people are always chiselled; common people are only cast.—"Finely chiselled head was still recumbent upon his silk-encased pillow. His luxuriant and Antinous-like curls were now confined in papillotes of the finest satin paper, and the tout ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... Cicero and Virgil; and it must be confessed that without the folklore such scanty literary evidence as I have just mentioned does not come to much. Dr. Masson indeed concludes on this evidence that the fear of future torments played a considerable part in the religious notions both of the common people and possibly of some of the educated. I think it may have been so, but on other grounds, which ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler
... taken up by a low cabin. Above it is the hurricane deck, provided with a railing and benches to sit upon. At each end is a flight of stairs, by which the main deck is reached and the cabins entered. The ruim, or forward cabin, occupying the greater part of the space, is appropriated to the common people, while the roef, or after-cabin, is for the better class; but as genteel people seldom patronize the trekschuit, this apartment is very small. It was drawn by horses, attached to a long rope made fast to the pole or mast, near ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... than did Harriet Beecher Stowe with "Uncle Tom's Cabin." William E. Gladstone never did more to endear himself to the people of Ireland by his advocacy of the home-rule, than has Lady Henry Somerset endeared herself to the common people of the "United Kingdom," by turning away from the wealth, nobility and aristocracy of England to devote her great heart, gifted brain and abundant means to the elevation of the masses, the reformation of the wayward, and the relief ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain
... going to happen over there," she asserted. "They do say that royalties are everywhere, going about like common people. You'd better have ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... a conversation was going on as to the merits of the song. Some said one thing and some another, but all condemned it as a regular toading to the Parson and the Squire: and as for the Beak, how any man could praise him whose only duty was to punish the common people, no one could see. The company were getting very comfortable. The Sergeant had called for another glass of that delectable grog whose very perfume seemed to inspire everyone with goodfellowship, and they all appeared to enjoy the Sergeant's liquor without ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris
... who believe in it do not always believe it is for themselves. They think it not meant for common people in the midst of common life, but for some special saintship. They do not believe in this divine life flowing into every heart and soul, high and low, wise and ignorant, be it only ...
— Orthodoxy: Its Truths And Errors • James Freeman Clarke
... called to sit in parliament; for divers authors presume to say, the first writs to be found in records, sent forth to them, bear date 49 Henry III. Yet some antiquaries are of opinion, that long before, nothing of moment wherein the lives or estates of the common people of England were concerned, ever passed without ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 365 • Various
... a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... would be too high for his means if the Hill did not feel bound in honour to justify the trust he has placed in its patronage. I told him that all my friends, when they were in want of a doctor, would send for him; those who are my friends will do so. What the Hill does, plenty of common people down there will do also,—so that question is settled!" And it ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Obs.—Common people are indifferent about the manner of opening oysters, and the time of eating them after they are opened; nothing, however, is more important in the enlightened ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the only one in my collection containing the word Nehan (Nirvana), and is here inserted chiefly for that reason. The common people seldom speak of Nehan, and have little knowledge of those profound doctrines to which the term is related. The above phrase, as might be inferred, is not a popular expression: it is rather an artistic and poetical reference to the aspect of a landscape ...
— In Ghostly Japan • Lafcadio Hearn
... where High German is supposed to prevail. Thus, for examples Dresden is regarded as the head-quarters of Hoch Deutsch, because there the language is spoken and pronounced with the most purity: Berlin, also, as regards the well-educated classes, boasts of the Hoch Deutsch; but the common people (das Volk) of the Prussian capital indulge in a dialect called Nieder Deutsch, and speak and pronounce the language as though they were natives of some remote province. Now, the instance of Berlin I take to be a striking illustration of the meaning of these expressions, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 211, November 12, 1853 • Various
... the fourth of the calends of May (which was the twenty-eighth of April), the foundations were laid by Bishop Richard Poore. "On the day appointed for the purpose the bishop came with great devotion, few earls or barons of the county, but a great multitude of the common people coming in from all parts; and when divine service had been performed, and the Holy Spirit invoked, the said bishop, putting off his shoes, went in procession with the clergy of the church to the place of foundation singing the litany; then the litany ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... from Spain, yet the English got on in the absence of the house of Israel. The destruction of the enormous power of the nobility was absolutely necessary, not only to the establishment of order, but almost to the existence of society itself. It could only be brought about by throwing the power of the common people into the scale of the crown; and so far as Ferdinand and Isabella were concerned, it seems to have been a wise and politic measure. The real despotism of the crown was established by Charles the Fifth, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... topography, cannot be trusted as exact; he is credulous rather than critical; he does not always test or control the statements of his informants; he is misled by their prejudices and passions; he views all things from the aristocratic standpoint; the life of the common people does not interest him; he has no sense of their wrongs, and little pity for their sufferings; he does not study the deeper causes of events; he is almost incapable of reflection; he has little historical sagacity; ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... the world; it means everything that is strong and beautiful—statues, pictures, poetry, music. How could one live without art? The artist is born a prince among men. What has he to do with the rules by which common people must direct their lives? Before long, you will feel this as deeply as I do, Miriam. ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... levels to which his campaign was falling. In the security of a private letter it was not necessary for him to spare words, and Churchill spoke his mind forcibly about the manner in which Jimmy Grayson was pandering to the "common people," the "ignorant mob," the "million-footed." Churchill himself, although not old, had taken long ago the measure of these foolish common people, and he despised them, his contempt giving him a very pleasant conviction of his ...
— The Candidate - A Political Romance • Joseph Alexander Altsheler
... magnificent feast, which continued six months. This was to display his power and wealth, before the nobility of his realm, and representatives from the conquered provinces of his spreading empire. At the expiration of this brilliant entertainment, he gave the common people, without distinction, a feast of seven days in the court of his palace. The rich canopy and gorgeous curtains, with their fastenings—the tall columns, the golden couches, and tesselated floors—are described as "white, green, and blue hangings, fastened ...
— Half Hours in Bible Lands, Volume 2 - Patriarchs, Kings, and Kingdoms • Rev. P. C. Headley
... altogether justly? Would he not look on me (of course without reason) as the cause of the accomplished murder? Remember, lord, that the greater philosopher a man is, the more difficult it is for him to answer the foolish questions of common people; what should I answer him were he to ask me why I calumniated Glaucus? But if thou suspect that I deceive thee, I say, pay me only when I point out the house in which Lygia lives; show me to-day only a part of thy liberality, so that if ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... of the common people, your highness; or else you need have no hope of Topaz," he had reminded her; so now the impatient girl tossed some coppers into the outstretched cap and hurried along as ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... his health made some change necessary, and Mr. Martyn was urged to leave India and make trial of a sea voyage. His Persian New Testament had been criticised as unfit for general circulation, being written in a style too learned and exalted for the comprehension of the common people. He was advised to visit Persia and there revise his work and also complete his version in Arabic, almost finished. Mr. Brown, his devoted friend, and the Calcutta agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society, thus writes: "Can I then bring myself to cut the ...
— Life of Henry Martyn, Missionary to India and Persia, 1781 to 1812 • Sarah J. Rhea
... the common people, the ugliness is more pleasant and sometimes becomes a kind of prettiness. The eyes are still too small and hardly able to open, but the faces are rounder, browner, more vivacious; and in the women remains a certain vagueness of feature, something ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... quick to seize upon it at the psychological moment of civic unrest, and throw out hints, vague but vast in their significance, of the mighty interests behind the mere fact of the strike, the great financial question involved, the crisis between capital and labor, the trusts and the common people, the workers and the wasters, in the land of ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... to make their organizations into close corporations. And they will succeed. Membership in the labor castes will become hereditary. Sons will succeed fathers, and there will be no inflow of new strength from that eternal reservoir of strength, the common people. This will mean deterioration of the labor castes, and in the end they will become weaker and weaker. At the same time, as an institution, they will become temporarily all-powerful. They will be like the guards of the palace in old Rome, and there will be palace revolutions whereby ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... curiosities of Houghton. The crowds that come to see the house stare at him, and ask what creature it is. As he does not speak one word of Norfolk, there are strange conjectures made about him. Some think that he is a foreign prince come to marry Lady Mary. The disaffected say he is a Hanoverian: but the common people, who observe my lord's vast fondness for him, take him for his good genius, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Archenholtz, was practised by Julius Caesar on the Gauls; and since his time by nobody,—till Friedrich, his studious scholar and admirer, revived it "against another enemy." "It is of excellent efficacy," adds Tempelhof; "it disheartens your adversary, and especially his common people, and has the reverse effect on your own; confuses him in endless apprehensions, and details of self-defence; so that he can form no plan of his own, and his overpowering resources become useless to him." Excellent efficacy,—only you must be equal to doing it; not unequal, which might be ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the form of a popular literature, and to assert for itself a place which in some particulars it has maintained ever since. This popular literature may be distributed into four different classes. The first contains the Ballads, or the narrative and lyrical poetry of the common people from the earliest times; the second, the Chronicles, or the half-genuine, half-fabulous histories of the great events and heroes of the national annals; the third class comprises the Romances of Chivalry, intimately connected with both the others, and, after a time, as passionately ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... and we are only common people. My father can't hand a lady in and out of a carriage as Lord Chesterfield can, nor can he make so grand a bow, nor does he put on evening dress for a late dinner, and we never go to the opera nor to the theatre, ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... supping and resting from the labours of the day. 15. He perpetrated this massacre because it seemed good to him to make himself feared by all the people of the country. 16. Another time the captain put all the Spaniards on oath, to lead at once as many lords and chiefs and common people as each had in his household service, to the square, where he had all their heads cut off, thus killing four or five hundred people. And the witnesses say that he thought in this way to pacify the country. 17. The witnesses depose ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... understood. He had heard both common people and great people speak as if they really felt it, that it was a great misfortune to many thousands, and to the country in general, that the king lay so ill, and that nothing could be done to bring about his recovery. ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... lessening the influences of his over-sensitive surrender to pain and its attendant power to weaken self-control. Like others, in the turmoil of war he had given too little thought to the Promethean torment of a great soul chained to the rock of duty—the man to whom like the Christ "the common people listened gladly." He looked back over his own physical suffering with sense of shame at his defeat, and sat up in his chair as if with a call on his worn frame to assert the power of a soul to hear and answer the summons ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... party was by far the fewer in numbers, for which two excellent reasons might be given. In the first place, they had enjoyed power for several years, and, of course, became unpopular among the common people, never at any time attached to those, who, being in the immediate possession of authority, are often obliged to employ it in controlling their humours. Besides, the country people of England had, and still have, an animated attachment ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... common people perish: they speak of the holy ark as a box and the synagogue as a ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... made its appearance in the world, it produced a profound sensation. It spread on all sides with great rapidity; it was at once felt to be a religion for the common people; and some individuals of highly cultivated minds soon acknowledged its authority. For a time its progress was impeded by the persecutions of Nero and Domitian; but, about the beginning of the second century, it started upon a new career of prosperous advancement, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Europeans have never possessed a healthy house, because at all times common people have had to work day after day to satisfy the needs of their rulers, and have never had the necessary leisure or money to build, or to have built, the home of their dreams. And they can have no houses, and will inhabit hovels as long as present ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... Greekes and Latines themselues tooke pleasure in Riming verses, and vsed it as a rare and gallant thing: Yea their Oratours proses nor the Doctors Sermons were acceptable to Princes nor yet to the common people vnlesse it went in manner of tunable rime or metricall sentences, as appeares by many of the auncient writers, about that time and since. And the great Princes, and Popes, and Sultans would one salute and greet ...
— The Arte of English Poesie • George Puttenham
... state of affairs. Their political condition was the very genius of despotism, systematically and deliberately conducted. Kings and chiefs were extremely jealous of their succession, and the more noble their blood, the more they were venerated by the common people." ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... social opportunities of contact with our politicians, administrators, and newspaper proprietors, or any chance of sharing or influencing their activities. But they shrank from that contact. They hated politics. They did not wish to realize Utopia for the common people: they wished to realize their favorite fictions and poems in their own lives; and, when they could, they lived without scruple on incomes which they did nothing to earn. The women in their girlhood made themselves look like variety theatre stars, and ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... the higher orders," says another observer, "are pretty well acquainted with her present Majesty's conduct in foreign countries; but I am told that the common people are still in the dark, and disposed to espouse her cause; more, however, out of hatred to the King than ...
— Memoirs of the Court of George IV. 1820-1830 (Vol 1) - From the Original Family Documents • Duke of Buckingham and Chandos
... she's quite different from common people. How I wish she'd hurry and come out again. She promised to kiss her hand to me from the horse's back, Papa. Won't that ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... might see 'em, walking about, like ordinary men, smiling, and talking—aye, and talking pretty considerable nonsense too, no doubt with the benign intention of rendering themselves intelligible to the common people about them. Moreover, there was a band of music in pasteboard caps; four something-ean singers in the costume of their country, and a dozen hired waiters in the costume of THEIR country—and very dirty costume too. And above all, there was Mrs. Leo Hunter in the character ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... concerned—that a man of his Lordship's exalted station had no right in these days, when the most atrocious revolutionary principles, and the most dangerous levelling doctrines are preached among the vulgar, to create a public scandal; and that, however innocent, the common people would insist that he was guilty. In fine, I implored him not ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... 1,000,000,000 inhabitants of the globe! What a call for many wizards of California to produce new species of luscious edibles! It would seem to me that the curse of civilization has lain in the direction of too little of either cooked or uncooked food, instead of too much. If the common people are to come into their own, trade in every necessity and luxury must be more highly integrated. The difference of the new era as regards foreign commerce will chiefly be that nations as a whole by their ...
— Is civilization a disease? • Stanton Coit
... persuade your husband, father, brothers and sons, that slavery is a crime against God and man, and that it is a great sin to keep human beings in such abject ignorance; to deny them the privilege of learning to read and write. The Catholics are universally condemned, for denying the Bible to the common people, but, slaveholders must not blame them, for they are doing the very same thing, and for the very same reason, neither of these systems can bear the light which bursts from the pages of that Holy Book. And lastly, endeavour to inculcate submission on the part of the slaves, ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... awful state the country is in (he observed)! One has scarcely time to think about poetry or painting, or anything else, when our stupid, imbecile Government allows public meetings of 150,000 men, where the most inflammatory language is used and the common people are called on to arm, beginning, too, with solemn prayer. Their prayer will never succeed. No, no, their solemn prayer is but a solemn mockery. They seemed to have forgotten the name of the only Mediator, without whose intercession all prayer is worse than useless. ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... never seemed to care about externals," said Evadne softly. "He chose his friends among the common people." ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... English gentleman; but the Wilkeses, Potters, and Sandwiches, whose mania for vice culminated in the Hell-fire Club, were more numerous than the Chesterfields. Among the country squires, for one Allworthy, or Sir Roger de Coverley, there were many Westerns. Among the common people religion was almost extinct, and assuredly no new morality or sentiment, such as Positivists now promise, had taken its place. Sometimes the rustic thought for himself, and scepticism took formal ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... Cipriot, a marcham of, great wealth in this city. [Sidenote: A great iudgement of God vpon the noble men of Cyprus.] Before it came in subiection to the Turks, while it was vnder the Venetians, there were many barons and noble men of the Cipriots, who partly by vsurping more superiority ouer the common people then they ought, and partly through their great reuenues which yeerly came in by their cotton wooll and wines, grew so insolent and proud, and withall so impiously wicked, as that they would at their pleasure command both the wiues and children ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 9 - Asia, Part 2 • Richard Hakluyt
... the Sun God. Never before had the hand of the god paused above the living sacrifice and deliberately risen again without tasting blood. It was miracle upon miracle; half-bewildered, Pharaoh Shabako and the herd of common people alike waited for what would come next, their High Priest's savage words somewhat reassuring them ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... fingers. The Italians have used forks for some time, but our preachers speak against them, saying God has given us our fingers with which to eat, and that it is impious to thwart his purposes by the use of forks. The preachers will probably retard the general use of forks among the common people. ...
— Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall • Charles Major
... the cry. "The rabble she has got, and is going to have, round her! All planks and sand, and tubs of mortar, now; you have to half break your neck in getting up there; and when it is settled it will be—such a frowze of common people! Why the foreman of our factory has engaged a house, and Mrs. Haslam, who actually used to do up laces for mamma, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... secret and controlling sense of form. His vocabulary is very rich—stocked chiefly with old-fashioned words, racy, colloquial, smacking of the soil, and put together with the light elliptical constructions of the common people. Nicknames he is particularly fond of: the cat is Raminagrobis, or Grippeminaud, or Rodilard, or Maitre Mitis; the mice are 'la gent trotte-menu'; the stomach is Messer Gaster; Jupiter is Jupin; La Fontaine himself is Gros-Jean. The charming tales, one ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... Among the common people all over Scotland, a new house, or one which a new tenant was about to enter, was always sprinkled with salt by way of inducing "good luck." Another custom of a curious nature once prevailed in England ...
— Harper's Young People, April 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the retainers of the daimyos and of the shogun. They were the descendants of the soldiers of the time of Yoritomo, who appointed shiugo to reside with a company of troops in each province, for the purpose of keeping the peace. They had already grown to claim a great superiority over the common people, and Ieyasu encouraged them in this feeling of superciliousness. The people were divided into four classes, arranged in the following order: samurai, farmers, artisans, and merchants. And in his Legacy Ieyasu thus expresses himself(235): ...
— Japan • David Murray
... conditions of life in towns, while the land is more and more set apart for the parks and pleasure grounds of the rich? The policy pursued has made England the richest of countries, a land of the highest refinement and luxury for the upper classes, and of the most misery for the great mass of common people. On this point we have but to read the testimony of English writers themselves. It is not necessary to suppose that the political economists were inhuman. They no doubt believed that if England attained this commanding position, the accumulated wealth ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ye, to a man," asserted Conlon unhesitatingly, growing warmer. "The common people ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... a mountain difficult of access 17 they trusted; but the heights of the hill I besieged and took; in the midst of the strong mountain their fighting men I slew; their corpses like rubbish on the hills 18 I piled up; their common people in the tangled hollows of the mountains I consumed; their spoil, their property I carried off; the heads of their soldiers 19 I cut off; a pile (of them) in the highest part of the city I built; their boys and maidens I dishonored; to the environs ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... consider that we have sufficient public opinion! I, for my part, consider that the whole lot of us are on the high road to be dragged down into the mire where otherwise only the common people would ...
— Rosmerholm • Henrik Ibsen
... lofty position history gives us another striking picture of the man. It shows that he was simple in his tastes, and that he liked best those plain ways of living which are most familiar to the common people. ...
— Stories of Later American History • Wilbur F. Gordy
... common people in this neighbourhood were impressed with the notion that Dartmoor was a place less desirable to mortals, and more under the influence of evil spirits, than any other spot in England. I shall only say, that I found it, take ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... these qualities are real expressions of the heart and of the general character), it is a still more characteristic feature of the higher religious life of the people, which certainly does not tend to "impersonality." The ascription of esoteric Buddhism to the common people by advocates of the "impersonal" theory is quite a mistake, and the argument for the "impersonality" of the race on this ground is without foundation, for the masses of the people are grossly polytheistic, wholly unable to understand Buddhistic metaphysics, or to ...
— Evolution Of The Japanese, Social And Psychic • Sidney L. Gulick
... have been histories of kings and emperors. The daily life of the common people—their joys and sorrows, their hopes, achievements, and ideals—has been buried in oblivion. The historical narratives of the Bible are, indeed, to a great extent an exception to this rule. They tell us much about the everyday life of peasants and slaves. The ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... Temple Church by R. W. Billings, p. 5 London. 1838. This is, at all events, a curious coincidence, especially considered in connection with the extensive dissemination of the Paulician opinions among the common people of Europe. At any rate, in so inexplicable a matter, we are inclined to catch at any explanation, however ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... out, walking by twos, with the Mayor at their head, to consult the Wise Woman. The Aldermen were all very fleshy, and carried gold-headed canes which they swung very high at every step. They held their heads well back, and their chins stiff, and whenever they met common people they sniffed ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... peninsula of Otaheite, had been killed in a battle, which was fought between the two kingdoms about five months before, and that Otoo was the reigning prince. Tubourai Tamaide, and several more of our principal friends about Matavai, fell in this battle, as also a great number of common people; but, at present, a peace subsisted between ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... views of the common people that a banker in Dublin of the name of Beresford having made himself very unpopular, a "large assemblage of ignorant country people having previously collected a quantity of Beresford's notes, publicly burnt them, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... capital surpassed any thing which had ever before been witnessed. The common people, the nobles, the ecclesiastics, and the foreign embassadors, vied with each other in their demonstrations of joy. A few months after, in July, an extraordinary messenger arrived from the pope, to convey to the august ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... ballad of "Gude Wallace" has been ascribed to this age; and if scarcely bearing the impress of such antiquity, it may have had its prototype in another of similar strain. Many songs, according to the elder Scottish historians, were composed and sung among the common people both in celebration of Wallace and ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume VI - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... as midnight silence go: He will not have your acclamations now. Hence, you unthinking crowd!— [The Common People go off on both parties. Empire, thou poor and despicable thing, When such as these make ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... appeared to him to be "equally new and alarming." He regarded it as the first attempt which had ever been witnessed on an extensive scale to establish the principles of Atheism, as the first attempt to popularize these principles by means of a literature addressed and adapted to the common people, and as the first systematic attempt to undermine the foundations, and to innovate on the very substance of Morals.[24] But if we compare the first with the new Encyclopedie,—the former concocted by Voltaire, D'Alembert ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... profaned by the worship of idols. As the lower ranks of society are governed by imitation, the conversion of those who possessed any eminence of birth, of power, or of riches, was soon followed by dependent multitudes. The salvation of the common people was purchased at an easy rate, if it be true, that, in one year, twelve thousand men were baptised at Rome, besides a proportionable number of women and children; and that a white garment, with twenty pieces ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... disappointed. He will show you the real Spain—the sun-soaked soil, the lean, sharp outlines of hills, the arid meadows, and the swift, dark-green rivers. He has painted cavaliers and dames of fashion, but his heart is in the common people. He knows the bourgeois and he knows the gipsy. He has set forth the pride of the vagabond and the garish fascinations of the gitana. Since Goya, you say, and then wonder whether it might not be wiser to add: ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... "they say you have brought fresh fire from the sun with you, and that you know how to make it burst out like lightning at will. My people have seen it. They tell me the wonder. I wish to see it too. We are all gods here; we need have no secrets. Only, I didn't want to let those common people outside see I asked you to show me. Make fire leap forth. I desire to ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... had been founded in what we may call our American religion, baptized and reared in the faith that a man requires no master to take care of him, and that common people can work out their salvation well enough together if left free to try. But the founders had not dared to touch the great intractable exception; and slavery had wrought until at last the only alternative for the nation was to fight or die. What ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... judge aright. When I travelled I took a particular delight in hearing the songs and fables that are come from father to son, and are most in vogue among the common people of the countries through which I passed; for it is impossible that anything should be universally tasted and approved by a multitude, though they are only the rabble of a nation, which hath not in it ...
— Essays and Tales • Joseph Addison
... costume appeared to be the Windsor uniform, but it was smothered with epaulettes, cordons, and lace; and each dignitary has a uniform peculiar to his office, so that the display of gold lace was prodigious. The chiefs are so raised above the common people in height, size, and general nobility of aspect, that many have supposed them to be of a different race; and the alii who represented the dwindled order that night were certainly superb enough in appearance ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... they are euill vsed and imprisoned. The Chinians are very suspitious, and doe not trust strangers. It is thought that the king doth not know that any strangers come into his countrey. And further it is credibly reported that the common people see their king very seldome or not at all, nor may not looke vp to that place where he sitteth. And when he rideth abroad he is caried vpon a great chaire or serrion gilded very faire, wherein there is made a little house, ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... as within man's memory had not been seen. Of two bullocks yoked in their plough, with which a peasant was hastening home, one was struck on the head by a piece of it, and killed outright. Many of the common people were wounded in the streets; a brewer had his arm broken. Roofs are destroyed by the weight of this hail; all the windows that looked windward while it fell were broken. In the streets, hailstones were found of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... insititia. SLOE-TREE.—Is of little use except when it occurs in fences. The fruit is a fine acid, and is much used by the common people, mixed with other fruits less astringent and acid, to flavour made wines. It is believed that much Port wine is improved by the ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... when he was about two pike-lengths from the gate, the balcony above it, which was full of people, fell; some were killed, others crippled or maimed, and others bruised. Among them were friars and lay-brothers, negroes and whites. With these events, the common people began to indulge in ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... stranger is a prince, we take it, in his own country, and princes fare not quite like common people, even here." ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... estimation of Cuthbert or Cnut. A rough meal was taken, and they then ascended to the rude accommodation which had been provided. It was one large room, barely furnished. Upon one side straw was thickly littered down—for in those days beds among the common people were unknown. In a sort of alcove at the end was a couch with a rough mattress and coverlet. This Cuthbert took possession of, while his followers stretched themselves upon ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty
... wonderful man certainly, they all agreed, and one whom it was not safe to oppose. The common people liked him better every day. He was so tactful, so kind, and always so careful not to arouse the prejudice of the heathen. He was extremely wise in dealing with their superstitions. No matter how absurd or childish They might be, he never ridiculed ...
— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith
... right!—you have never had the courage to. Well, I won't put you in a hole, Mr. Hovstad. Let us say it is I that am the freethinker, then. I am going to prove to you, scientifically, that the "People's Messenger" leads you by the nose in a shameful manner when it tells you that you—that the common people, the crowd, the masses, are the real essence of the People. That is only a newspaper lie, I tell you! The common people are nothing more than the raw material of which a People is made. (Groans, laughter and uproar.) Well, isn't that ...
— An Enemy of the People • Henrik Ibsen
... you think, sir, they ought to have such an influence?' JOHNSON. 'Yes, sir. Influence must ever be in proportion to property; and it is right it should.' BOSWELL. 'But is there not reason to fear that the common people may be oppressed?' JOHNSON. 'No, sir. Our great fear is from want of power in government. Such a storm of vulgar force has broke in.' BOSWELL. 'It has only roared.' JOHNSON. 'Sir, it has roared, till the Judges in Westminster ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... Locke and Shaftesbury were maturing, formed a few laws, which, however open to objection, were united to the character and manner of the inhabitants. While freedom struggled in the hearts of the common people to assert its rights and declare that all men were equal and ought to be free, scheming nobles sought to enchain them in one form ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... a nest put up in a small tree, and took my position in it at sunset. The common people in India do not waste much money on lamp oil, preferring to sleep during the hours appointed by Nature for the purpose, so it was not long before all doors were securely barred and quietness reigned. Then the mosquitoes awoke and came to inquire for me, the little bats (how I blessed them!) wheeled ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... statue of Bolon-Zacab to the temple and the other idol to the heap of stones at the east side of the village, where it was to remain during the year, doubtless intended as a constant reminder to the common people of ...
— Notes on Certain Maya and Mexican Manuscripts • Cyrus Thomas
... officers, he had always been devoted to the interests of the common people, although a son of one of Russia's noble families. But he was known to be a shy, quiet man with little to say for himself, who had risen to his present rank by ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... am not mistaken as to the cause of her unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospel which made it possible. All the Reds of Europe, all the sworn devotees of the mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common vegetable. Their oaths are strong with it. It is the food, also, of the common people of Italy. All the social atmosphere of that delicious land is laden with it. Its odor is a practical democracy. In the churches all are alike: there is one faith, one smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuel into Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a unity which garlic ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... that although the immediate causes of the peasant rising were the new burdens which had been laid upon the common people during the last few years, once the spirit of discontent was aroused it extended also in many cases to the traditional feudal dues to which, until then, the peasant had submitted with little murmuring, and an attempt was made by the country-side to reconquer the ancient complete freedom of which ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... with this it should also be remembered that all popular places, all sites, actually used by the people, tend to retain the best routine of antiquity very much more than any localities or machines used by any privileged class. Things are not altered so quickly or completely by common people as they are by fashionable people. Ruskin could have found more memories of the Middle Ages in the Underground Railway than in the grand hotels outside the stations. The great palaces of pleasure which the rich build in London all have brazen and vulgar names. Their names ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... meantime, that he might be the better prepared, Yoshida set himself to teach, and he to learn, the Chinese literature. It is an episode most honourable to Yoshida, and yet more honourable still to the soldier, and to the capacity and virtue of the common people of Japan. ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 3 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson |
