"Abject" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious abject of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... What do you suppose she means?" Mr. Farraday gasped, as he looked in abject terror at Mr. Vandeford, who returned his glance ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... started as if a pike had been thrust into his side. On his face was written blank astonishment, which expression, as she proceeded, gave way to one of abject fear. It would have been difficult to say which of the two was the more agitated. He dashed a hand to his brow as if to drive away the fumes of liquor which had mounted to his brain; looked at the kneeling figure; gazed on the tapers burning upon the table; and tried to form some words ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... Trebius gnaws such musty things as are tossed to a performing monkey on the town wall. But the distance is immeasurable between Juvenal's scorching truculence and Diderot's half-ironical, half-serious sufferance. Juvenal knows that Trebius is a base and abject being; he tells him what he is; and in the process blasts him. Diderot knows that Rameau too is base and abject, but he is so little willing to rest in the fat and easy paradise of conventions, that he seems to be all the time vaguely wondering in ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... earl, who, since he oppressed women, was an abject coward, sank upon his knees and promised to restore all he had ever taken from the lady, as a ransom for his life; and for his freedom he would give her many rich farms and manors, and ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... the many charitable institutions of Mexico, there appears to me (in spite of the many prejudices existing against such institutions) none more useful than this. These otherwise unfortunate children, the offspring of abject poverty or guilt, are left at the gate of the establishment, where they are received without any questions being asked; and from that moment, they are protected and cared for, by the best and noblest ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... mission superintendent and family over night. Callie was my room-mate. Then it was that I saw what the hypodermic needle had done for her. There was no place (save down her spine) that was not marked, and no wonder, she had been a morphine slave for twenty-seven years—its abject slave. ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts
... progress became more rapid when de Courtois realized that he was in the hands of those who meant well by him. It was noticeable, too, as his senses returned and the panic glare left his eyes, that his expression changed from one of abject fear to a lowering look of suspicious uncertainty. He peered at Steingall and the hotel clerk many times, but gave Curtis and Devar only a perfunctory glance. Oddly enough, the fact that the two latter were in evening dress seemed to reassure him, and ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... take it; Susan saw possibilities of making it over into the sort of environment of which she had dreamed. In novels the descriptions of interiors, which weary most readers, interested her more than story or characters. In her days of abject poverty she used these word paintings to construct for herself a room, suites of rooms, a whole house, to replace, when her physical eyes closed and her eyes of fancy opened wide, the squalid and ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... most abject, most abhorred of men, Adrastus will vouchsafe to answer thee;— Thebans to you I justify my love: I have addrest my prayer to this fair princess; But, if I ever meant a violence, Or thought to ravish, as that traitor did, What humblest adorations could not win, Brand me, you ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Out on my fortune, to wed such an abject! 45 Now is the peoples voyce the voyce of God; Hee that to wound a woman vants so much, As hee did mee, a ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... action that clearly expressed the deepest profundity of horror, and then incontinently with one accord prostrated themselves on the marble floor at the feet of the two prisoners, uttering howls of sorrow and abject entreaty. For perhaps five minutes Phil permitted them to remain in this posture; then suddenly he shouted a single word which had the instant effect of reducing the prostrate ones to silence, when he again addressed them, this time in gentler tones; and when he at ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... and an unwavering adherence to Protestant Europe. James saw in that great and despotic government the most suitable friend for such a great King as himself. He proposed a marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta, daughter of the King of Spain, making abject promises of legislation in his Kingdom favorable to the Catholics; and when an indignant House of Commons protested against the marriage, they were insolently reprimanded for meddling with things which did not concern ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... union of opposite qualities which were required for such a work as opening out heathen Africa to Christianity and civilization. No man had a keener sympathy with even the most barbarous and unenlightened; none had a more ardent desire to benefit and improve the most abject. In his aims, no man attempted, on a grander or more thorough scale, to benefit and improve those of his race who most needed improvement and light. In the execution of what he undertook, I never met his equal for energy and sagacity, and I feel sure that future ages will place him among ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... joy by the inhabitants, who had been in a state of abject terror. A runner, who was the bearer of a message to the rajah from the headman, had left on the morning after Harry's party had started; and had returned with the news that he had found the headless bodies of all the escort, but had seen no traces of the white man nor his followers, ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... divine wickedness, arose the ancient religions of Paganism. Because the gods were wicked, man was religious; because Olympus was cruel, earth trembled; because the divine beings were the most lawless of Thugs, the human being became the most abject ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... chemical forces, mostly explosives, which acted and still act as the most violent educators ever known to man, but they were justly feared as diabolic, and whatever insolence man may have risked towards the milder teachers of his infancy, he was an abject pupil towards explosives. The Sieur de Joinville left a record of the energy with which the relatively harmless Greek fire educated and enlarged the French mind in a single night in the year 1249, when the crusaders were trying to advance on Cairo. The good king St. Louis and all his ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... in the mind of MARKHAM, is a curious object of philosophical contemplation. That two such great and luminous minds should have been so dark in one corner—that THEY should have held it to be 'wicked rebellion in the British subjects established in America, to resist the abject condition of holding all their property at the mercy of British subjects remaining at home, while their allegiance to our common Lord the King was to be preserved inviolate'—is a striking proof to me, either that 'He who fitteth in Heaven', scorns the loftiness of human pride, ...
— The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. • James Boswell
... rulers, and became, in consequence, a contagious example of stupidity and vice to the inferior clergy. The patrons of churches, in whom resided the right of election, unwilling to submit their disorderly conduct to the keen censure of zealous and upright pastors, industriously looked for the most abject, ignorant, and worthless ecclesiastics, to whom they committed the cure of souls" (p. 193). Of the Roman pontiffs, Mosheim says: "The greatest part of them are only known by the flagitious actions that have transmitted their names with infamy to our times" (p. 194). ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... see an ever wider field open round him. He was what in party language is called a 'Reformer,' from his earliest youth; and never swerved from that faith, nor could swerve. His luminous sincere intellect laid bare to him in all its abject incoherency the thing that was untrue, which thenceforth became for him a thing that was not tenable, that it was perilous and scandalous to attempt maintaining. Twenty years in the dreary, weltering lake of parliamentary confusion, with ...
— On the Choice of Books • Thomas Carlyle
... read in 's looks Matter against me, and his eye revil'd Me as his abject object. At this instant He bores me with some trick. He's gone to the King; I'll ...
— The Life of Henry VIII • William Shakespeare [Dunlap edition]
... The abject wretchedness of his mien disconcerted her; robbed her of half her anticipated triumph. How could she exult in trampling upon a bruised worm which made no attempt to crawl from beneath her heel? He sat, the image of hopeless dejection, his hands crossed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... Ex-Gov. Reeder had fled, disguised as a common laborer; and others were in hiding; and perforce the management of affairs had to be given into the hands of new men. A Committee of Public Safety was chosen, and this committee determined on a policy of abject submission and non-resistance. A committee of volunteers from Topeka offered their assistance, but were told: "We do not want you." Pusillanimous as Gov. Shannon was, he found he had a man to deal with ...
— Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler • Pardee Butler
... witness; for it prevented that free intercourse with the people, by which a true insight to their manners can alone be acquired. Their laws seem very simple; he who kills is killed—shooting being the mode of execution. He who robs must make good; and, as few of the people are in abject poverty, this is usually done. Should they fail, a summary flogging is inflicted. At Cettigna is a small prison; I believe there is no other. When any one is there confined, he trusts entirely to his friends for subsistence. They are good-humoured, obliging, and extremely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... The abject one found a glove of Grizel's, that she did not know she had lost, and put it in his pocket. There it lay, unknown to her. He knew that he must not even ask them to bury it with him in his grave. This was a little thing to ask, but too ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... virtue only because its basic principle is false and vicious. If Americans still accept the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, well and good; if not, then in Heaven's name let them cease to bow down in abject admiration of the ...
— The Eve of the Revolution - A Chronicle of the Breach with England, Volume 11 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Carl Becker
... control us all, reign over all, Dictate to all; but he shall find at least One here, disposed to question his commands. If the eternal Gods have made him brave, 365 Derives he thence a privilege to rail? Whom thus Achilles interrupted fierce. Could I be found so abject as to take The measure of my doings at thy lips, Well might they call me coward through the camp, 370 A vassal, and a fellow of no worth. Give law to others. Think not to control Me, subject to thy ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... courtesy and chanting of the weird words. The final "dosh!" held, in its low, fierce tone, all the significance of abject adoration. With that "dosh" had the child Priscilla wooed the favour and recognition of the god. It was a triumph ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... for her abject misery was expressed in the very tones of his deep voice. "If at any time in the future you need me ... for anything, no matter what, will you—will you come to me and tell me? Will you ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... days, and the earth, seemingly waiting in sullen acquiescence to the dictates of a higher power, flecks of black soared in stately circles, or whirled in erratic courses, that were either manifestations of abject surrender to the inevitable, or else a show of frenzied despair, one could not tell which. The soaring flecks of black were flocks of graceful ibises sailing hour after hour on tireless wings and indistinguishable from vultures ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... him eat, plying him with food and then with question after question about the trip, about Barbara Redding and about Molly's going to school. Mormon made abject apology for talking too much and Sandy told how close a ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... her pardon in the most abject way; and then he left her for a moment quietly, and had his laugh out. But he was ashamed of himself all the same. "I wonder what she will say when she sees the Forno-Populo," ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... it may not be impossible, is to the individual, more of a question when directed to his country than to his actions. In Ireland or Italy, it seems to me, the greatest of individual excellence in sobriety and economy may not shield the citizen from abject want, which is a terrible thing. But in America the man who is often called "poor" gets as much rest for his body and quite as beneficial food for his stomach as the man whose wealth is the wonder of the world. It is a magnificent land where there is so much food ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... direction of autocracy. He consulted neither boyard nor priest. He deposed the Metropolitan and banished him to a monastery. Prince Kholmski, who was married to one of Vassili's sisters, was thrown into prison for failing to show abject respect. When one of the boyards complained that "The grand duke decided all the questions, shut up with two others in the bedchamber," the noble was promptly arrested, condemned to death, and executed. He interrupted the objection of a high ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... a low voice, but with great distinctness. Susie was astounded. An abject apology was the last ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... to his Royal mistress was in perfect keeping with his character. Nothing exceeds his abject servility while in the sunshine, save his fixed malignity when dismissed to the shade. In 1594 the office of Attorney-General became vacant; Coke regarded the prize as his own until he found one ready to dispute it with him. Bacon, eager ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... promise and we'll have no further trouble," remarked Rob, who had hard work to keep from laughing at the man's abject terror. ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... missiles in such numbers as to smother the planet in atomic flame. Patrolman Willis could not imagine admitting that such a supposed fleet needed another fleet to help it. A military man, bluffing as Sergeant Madden bluffed, would not have dared offer any terms less onerous than abject surrender. But Sergeant Madden was a cop. It was not his purpose to make anybody surrender. His job was, ultimately, ...
— A Matter of Importance • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... resource: if I "didn't like it," meaning the state of things in Gombroon, I might "abdicate." Yes, I knew that. I might abdicate; and, once having cut the connection between myself and the poor abject islanders, I might seem to have no further interest in the degradation that affected them. After such a disruption between us, what was it to me if they had even three tails apiece? Ah, that was fine talking; but this connection with my poor ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... of the old pattern, British and French,—one hundred in all,—stretched across the Gulf of Finland in front of the fortresses of Cronstadt. Behind the fortresses lay the Russian fleet, helpless and abject; and yet, as events showed during our own Civil War half a dozen years later, a very slight degree of inventive ability would have enabled the Russians to annihilate the hostile fleet, and to gain the most prodigious naval victory ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... released from steely fetters. Her lips were apart, but he failed to observe that the teeth they revealed were creditably white; her cotton-gloved hand repressed her fluttering heart, but he did not see its tumultuous throbbing. He gulped as he said, with a fallen jaw and a look of abject misery that pierced her ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... alarming tones that the High Commissioner became most uneasy concerning the possible fate of the Diamond City. These reports accused the officers in charge of the town of failing in the performance of their duties, and showing symptoms of abject fear in regard to the besieging Boer army. It was only after an explanation from Sir Redvers Buller, and after the latter had communicated to him the letters which he himself had received from Colonel Kekewich, the commander ...
— Cecil Rhodes - Man and Empire-Maker • Princess Catherine Radziwill
... to death. A large number had their eyes plucked out; and for a long time the city resounded with the cries of the victims, suffering under all kinds of punishments from the hands of this implacable monarch. Thus the citizens were speedily brought into abject submission. The Polish king, with his army, remained a long time at Kief, luxuriating in every indulgence at the expense of the inhabitants. He then returned to his own ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... spirit worthy of these islands; that we ought to meet it with a conviction of the truth of this assertion—that the country which has achieved such greatness, has no retreat in littleness; that, if we should be content to abandon everything, we should find no safety in poverty, no security in abject submission; finally, that we ought to meet it with a firm determination to perish in the same grave with the honour ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... set up a little huxtering shop—in I forget what State—and fell in love with one of the daughters of a poor woman at whose house he lodged, but he was so destitute that the mother refused him. In this abject condition accident introduced him to the celebrated Patrick Henry, who advised him to abandon trade, and go into the neighbouring State and try to advance himself by his talents. He followed the advice, and soon began to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... disputed title, or a desire on the part of one, two, or more of the districts, to be considered stronger and of more importance than the rest, were frequent causes of war in Samoa. Hostilities were often prevented by such acts as giving up the culprit, paying a heavy fine, or by bowing down in abject submission, carrying firewood and small stones used in baking a pig, or, perhaps, a few bamboos. The firewood, stones, and leaves, were equivalent to their saying, "Here we are, your pigs, to be cooked if you please; and here are the materials ...
— Samoa, A Hundred Years Ago And Long Before • George Turner
... this poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, 80% of the population lives in abject poverty, and natural disasters frequently sweep the nation. Two-thirds of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, which consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming. Following legislative elections in May ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... on the world from the eyes of the immigrant who has lost all his illusions of the land where dollars grow on the street and where everyone has an equal chance to be president, and if you do not cringe in abject humility, you are not unlikely to be insufferably self-asserting, considering that the world has robbed you and that now it is your turn to get all that is coming to you. So you make loud demands in a rude, ordering voice. The nurse is there ...
— Applied Psychology for Nurses • Mary F. Porter
... copper-gilt. This relic, picked up by Gigonnet after the pillage of Versailles, where the populace broke nearly everything, came from the queen's boudoir; but these rare vases were flanked by two candelabra of abject shape made of wrought-iron, and the barbarous contrast recalled the circumstances under which the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... mass; your energies are paralyzed, your power is gone; the morasses of the lowlands, the fastnesses of the mountains, cannot save your wives and children from destruction. Sir, we cannot war with these disadvantages; peace, ignoble, abject peace,—peace upon any conditions that an enemy may offer, must be accepted. Are we, then, prepared to barter the liberty of our children for slaves for them?... Sir, it is a practice, and an increasing practice in parts of Virginia to rear slaves for market. ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... cry till I've done,' said Lake, tranquilly. 'Mark tried to bully, but the cool old heads were too much for him, and he threw himself at last entirely on our mercy—and very abject he became, ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... great soldiers, in modern as well as in ancient days; but anything like a proper appreciation of the military arm is of quite recent growth. "Good iron is not used for nails, nor good men for soldiers," says the proverb; and again, "One stroke of the civilian's pen reduces the military official to abject submission." On the other hand, it is admitted that "Civilians give the empire peace, and soldiers give ...
— The Civilization Of China • Herbert A. Giles
... would now pay for the well-ventilated and well-equipped self-contained houses of the London County Council and building companies which provide accommodation for the industrial classes. Sir Charles saw the abject and helpless condition of the people of London, and resolved, when he succeeded to office, to try and remedy the evils under which they laboured. His enthusiasm in the cause of the poor caught on, and in a short time "slumming" became a fashionable craze. Committees were formed—the premier ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... there four months. In a little while Desnoyers felt ready to retreat. Each to his own kind; he would never be able to understand such people. Exceedingly amiable, with an abject amiability and evident desire to please, but constantly blundering through a tactless desire to make their grandeur felt. The high-toned friends of Hartrott emphasized their love for France, but it was the pious love that a weak and mischievous child ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... part of the trial, Delano had maintained his confidence and composure; but at length the evidence of his own people, and the master and crew of the Helen, became so overwhelming that he lost all hope, and, overcome by the most abject fear, sunk down, and would have fallen, had he not been supported. Recovering himself a little, he broke forth into earnest petitions that his life might be spared. He made the most trivial and weak excuses for his conduct, utterly unlikely to avail him anything. He ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... Robin to the fast paling girl, into whose eyes the most abject misery had leaped at the sight of the two officers. "Leave it to me. I can fix them all right. There's nothing to be worried ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... they gave him, loathed it, paid and staggered on. When he reached his hotel he crept upstairs, dreading to meet any of the harsh-faced people who frowned as he passed them. He had done abject things these last three days to conciliate them—tipped the waiter, ordered food, not that he might eat it but that he might pay for it, bowed to the landlady—all to save the shrinking of his sore and quivering ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... type and history," touching a county newspaper,—"a fair type, with its cant, and bigotry, and weight of uncomprehended fact. Bargain and sale,—it taints our religion, our brains, our flags,—yours and mine, Knowles, with the rest. Did you never hear of those abject spirits who entered neither heaven nor hell, who were neither faithful to God nor rebellious, caring only ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... Reduced to abject slavery is not enough, the very thought of which should awaken every sensibility of our common nature; but those of their descendants who are freemen even in the non-slaveholding States, occupy the very same position politically, ...
— The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States • Martin R. Delany
... part of the old nobility of France came unmistakably under one or other of these extreme descriptions, there were to be found, in the country districts, some who were free alike from such boundless extravagance and such abject poverty. Of this small and exceptional class the Marquis de Beaujardin was a striking example. His naturally calm and unexcitable temperament had been still further disciplined by early habits of self-command, first as a scholar and subsequently ...
— The King's Warrant - A Story of Old and New France • Alfred H. Engelbach
... English colonists "the emperor of the Five Nations." It might seem, indeed, at first thought, that the founders of the confederacy had voluntarily placed themselves and their tribes in a position of almost abject subserviency to Atotarho and his followers. But they knew too well the qualities of their people to fear for them any political subjection. It was certain that when once the league was established, and its representatives had ...
— Hiawatha and the Iroquois Confederation • Horatio Hale
... I dread, doing no wrong? You have among you many a purchas'd slave, Which, like your asses, and your dogs, and mules, You use in abject and in slavish parts, Because you bought them:—Shall I say to you, Let them be free, marry them to your heirs? Why sweat they under burthens? let their beds Be made as soft as yours, and let their palates Be season'd ...
— The Merchant of Venice [liberally edited by Charles Kean] • William Shakespeare
... the sting of an adder, the thought of separation, certainly for years, perhaps for ever, from all that happiness: the hopelessness of his condition as a prisoner of war at a time when war seemed chronic in Europe, without prospect of cessation. And in the abject misery of his soul—misery all the more intense because of his peculiar sensitiveness of nature—he thus bewailed in secret and with ...
— The French Prisoners of Norman Cross - A Tale • Arthur Brown
... not to say that in his art the realist is not amusing himself as much as ever is the teller of a fairy-tale, though he does not deliberately start out to do so; he is amusing, too, a large part of mankind. For, admitted that the abject, and the test of Art, is always the awakening of vibration, of impersonal emotion, it is still usually forgotten that men fall, roughly speaking, into two flocks: Those whose intelligence is uninquiring in the face of Art, and does not demand to be appeased before their emotions ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his cave. It was Flavius, the honest steward, whom love and zealous affection to his master had led to seek him out at his wretched dwelling, and to offer his services; and the first sight of his master, the once noble Timon, in that abject condition, naked as he was born, living in the manner of a beast among beasts, looking like his own sad ruins and a monument of decay, so affected this good servant, that he stood speechless, wrapped up in horror, and confounded. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles Lamb and Mary Lamb
... attempted three times, was an abject failure. At the end of five months a whole Austrian army corps had been annihilated by the Serbians and the rest of the huge invading armies had been driven back across the Danube and Save. Following close upon this came the extraordinary success of the Russians in Bukowina ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... to conciliate him if I wished to have my own way. In the act of entering one of the rooms, I turned upon him angrily, and bade him be off. The next moment this half-brother of a Siamese magnate was kneeling in abject supplication in the half-open doorway, imploring me not to report him to his Excellency, and promising never to offend again. Here was a miracle of repentance I had not looked for; but the miracle was sham. Rage, cunning, insolence, servility, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... of the species has long escaped, we find the highest places occupied by priest-magicians. Now and then popular fury makes them pay cruelly for the ill-success of their conjurations, but as a rule their persons and the illimitable power ascribed to them inspire nothing but abject fear. ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot
... it. Kautsky reviled it. Albert Thomas called upon the capitalists of France to send their soldiers there and crush it. Mr. Walling, Mr. Spargo and Mr. Russell baptized themselves into a 'Socialist' crusade to destroy Socialism. Could idiocy be more abject? ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... necessary to shake off the love of worldly gain. With Freedom comes the longing for worldly advancement. In that race men are ever falling, rising, running, and falling again. The lust for wealth and the abject dread of poverty delve the furrows on many a noble brow. The gambler grows old as he watches the chances. Lawful hazard drives Youth away before its time; and this Youth draws heavy bills of exchange on Age. Men live, like the engines, at ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... myself I might with satisfaction exclaim, Sic, sic juvat: but when I behold one GREAT MAN starving with hunger and freezing with cold, in the midst of fifty thousand who are suffering the same evils for his diversion; when I see another, whose own mind is a more abject slave to his own greatness, and is more tortured and racked by it, than those of all his vassals; lastly, when I consider whole nations rooted out only to bring tears into the eyes of a GREAT MAN, not indeed because he hath extirpated so many, but because he had ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... of an unnecessary edict of expulsion, which devastated one of the fairest regions of America, and tore seven thousand guileless and peaceful people from a scene of rural felicity rarely equaled on earth, to scatter them in the misery of abject poverty, among strangers speaking a strange tongue and hating their religion. The agents who faithfully executed the cruel decree were Massachusetts men, reluctantly obedient to "his Majesty's orders," given them specifically in writing by Charles ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... problem of the vulgar croppiness of cut leaves and the unpopularity of uncut leaves seemed to have no solution but suicide. Fulkerson was still morally crawling round on his hands and knees, as he said, in abject gratitude at Beaton's feet, though he had his qualms, his questions; and he declared that Beaton was the most inspired ass since Balaam's. "We're all asses, of course," he admitted, in semi-apology to March; "but we're no such asses as Beaton." He said that if the tasteful decorativeness ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... West Pointer," as he referred to the judge advocate at an early stage in the proceedings, had laid proof after proof before the court, and left the case of the defense at the last without a leg to stand on. And then Nevins dropped the debonair and donned the abject, for the one friend or adviser left to him in the crowded camp, an officer who said he always took the side of the under dog in a fight, had told him that in its present temper that court, with old Turnbull as one of its leaders, would surely sentence him to a term of years at Alcatraz ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King
... affluence to that of penury. An illustration of this proposition was afforded in the family of Mr. Wheelwright. It appeared that after the change recorded in the last chapter, from a condition of the most abject misery, to that of comparative comfort, the Doctor's lady, elated by her prosperity, began to take airs upon herself, and her carriage was such as to excite the jealousy of her neighbors up stairs. The consequences were a speedy and open rupture, so that occasional hostilities were ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... unknown land, into the gay court of the king I served, a maiden to whose beauty my whole recreant heart yielded at once—at whose footstool I bowed down without a struggle, in the most ardent, in the most abject worship of love. What, indeed, was my passion for the young girl of the valley in comparison with the fervor, and the delirium, and the spirit-lifting ecstasy of adoration with which I poured out my whole ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Queen's sign language began to fail her. Kalliope continued to be greatly pleased with herself and proud of her performance. After a long struggle the Queen made her understand that she had behaved not well, but very badly. Kalliope grovelled in abject apology. The impression finally left on her mind was that she was to blame for anticipating her mistress' action. The Queen, so she thought, would have liked to fell the German sailor herself, would indeed have brained the man instead of merely ...
— The Island Mystery • George A. Birmingham
... And once I saw a man alone, In abject poverty, with hand Uplifted o'er a block of stone That took a shape at his command And smiled upon him, fair and good— A perfect work of womanhood, Save that the eyes might never weep, Nor weary hands be crossed in sleep, Nor hair that ...
— Afterwhiles • James Whitcomb Riley
... him for the space of seven years in this abject state of slavery, he caused his eyes to be put out, though he was then 83 years of age. This not satiating his desire of revenge, he soon after ordered his body to be flayed alive, and rubbed with salt, under which torments he expired; and thus fell one of the most tyrannical emperors ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... These ascetics were here before Christianity (see Philo Judaeus); in fact, there is not a single element in the new faith which had not been independently developed by the pagans, many of whom, like Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, were ripe for the most abject self-abasement.] But this Orientalism fell at first upon unfruitful soil; the Vatican was yet wavering, and Hellenic notions of conduct still survived. It received a further rebuff at the hands of men like Benedict, who set up sounder ideals ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... like an embryo among these men; he had admired Nathan's book, he had reverenced the author as an immortal; Nathan's abject attitude before this critic, whose name and importance were both unknown ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... Empire' was not much more than a shadow.... As for the mass of the people, their spirit was broken; for a time they gave up even the longing for the rights which they had lost, and taught their children abject obedience in order ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... was not one to encourage impartiality in his presentation of facts, and that the imperial favour was not won by plain speaking; nevertheless we have before us a man who could not obliterate himself enough to play the abject flatterer always, and he gives us the reverse, too, of his brilliant picture, ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... Or is thy abject mind so basely bent As of thy Muse to maken Merchandize? (And well I wote this is no strange intent.) The hopefull glimps of gold from chattering Pies, From Daws and Crows, and Parots oft hath wrung An ...
— Democritus Platonissans • Henry More
... flattering, too ecstatic to be true. Oh! Should she ever think of me! Were it only possible she ever should be mine!—The pleasure is too exquisite! It is insupportable!—Let me gaze and wonder at humble distance, in silence and in awe!—Do not call me abject—Yet, if I am so, do; tell me all that ought to be told. It is not before her rank that I bend and sink. Being for being I am her equal: but who is her equal in virtue?—Heavens! What a smile did she bestow on me, when I took the money ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... abundantly evident from their transferring, a few days afterwards, the honour and worship due to Him to a calf, which they believed to be the god who had brought them out of Egypt. (106) In truth, it is hardly likely that men accustomed to the superstitions of Egypt, uncultivated and sunk in most abject slavery, should have held any sound notions about the Deity, or that Moses should have taught them anything beyond a rule of right living; inculcating it not like a philosopher, as the result of freedom, but like a lawgiver compelling them to be moral ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza
... like to see a city given over, Soul and body, to a tyrannising game? If you would, there's little need to be a rover, For St. Andrews is the abject city's name.' ...
— Robert F. Murray - his poems with a memoir by Andrew Lang • Robert F. Murray
... keep his hands quite clean. The leniency with which Butler was treated on this occasion must always remain an almost solitary stain upon the memory of Abraham Lincoln. On the memory of Benjamin Butler stains hardly show. At a later stage of the war Butler showed such abject cowardice that Grant begged that if his political importance required that he should have some military command he should be placed somewhere where there was no fighting. This time Butler saved himself by blackmailing his commanding officer. At the conclusion of peace the man went back ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... met in grand debate. A colt whose eyeballs flamed with ire, Elate with strength and youthful fire, In haste stept forth before the rest, And thus the listening throng address'd. 'Goodness, how abject is our race, Condemn'd to slavery and disgrace! Shall we our servitude retain, Because our sires have borne the chain? Consider, friends! your strength and might; 'Tis conquest to assert your right. How cumbrous is the gilded coach! The pride of man is our reproach. Were we design'd ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... of young love was a sudden aversion to the well-known but freckled features of Skippy Bedelle. The examination in the looking-glass had left him in a condition of abject despair. Only a man, full-fledged and resplendent, could hope to hold the affections of the dazzling Mimi Lafontaine, and what a tousled, scrubby little urchin he was! That night he spent one dollar and twenty cents, out of a slender reserve, for toilette accessories, and began the long ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the population lives in abject poverty. Nearly 70% of all Haitians depend on the agriculture sector, which consists mainly of small-scale subsistence farming and employs about two-thirds of the economically active work force. The country has experienced little or ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... injurious; as the substance of the answer is a justification proper to be pleaded, and the style, if in anything exceptionable, it is in its extreme humility, resulting rather from an unmanly and abject spirit than from anything of an offensive liberty; but being received as disrespectful by the said Hastings, it abundantly indicates the tyrannical arrogance of the said Hastings, and the depression into which the natives are sunk ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VIII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... carried them to the man, who praised his work and offered him a purse of money. He put out his hand to take it, but the lady signed to him from behind her husband not to do so, and he replied, "O my lord, there is no hurry: by-and-by." Then he went out, more abject than an ass, for verily five things at once were sore upon him, love and beggary and hunger and nakedness and toil; nevertheless, he heartened himself with the hope of gaining the lady's favours. When he had made an end ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume I • Anonymous
... society has such moments of darkness. It happens especially when a nation is exhausted by a series of successful efforts, after having undergone tortures, and enfeebled by the streams of blood poured out. The Occidental Jews, after centuries of existence in abject fear, wandering through fire and blood, passed such a moment in the sixteenth century. The time was still far distant which gave birth to famous doctors of secular sciences beloved of the people, esteemed by Kings. ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... at your side? You surprise me! Worth fifty, a thousand dollars!—wearing diamonds, buying $1,000 dresses—for what? To wear to church—in which to worship Him who had not where to lay his head! And a thousand people in this one city alone in abject poverty— "And the greatest of these is Charity." What a cruel stone is ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... seen to be cowering beside the stretcher, looking even smaller than before; and, when all was over, he had to be lifted away from the edge of the pit, where he lay with his head hanging over the edge in an abject state of grief. He was only a dog, and a small one; but many a man, hardened by the experiences of a campaign, turned away ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... purpose, and if so, Is not submission my duty? A contest had in fact been going on in my mind for a long time, between the clear consciousness of right and the plausible make-shifts of theology and superstition. The one held me an abject slave—a prisoner for life, punished for some transgression in which I had no lot nor part; and the other counseled me to manly endeavor to secure my freedom. This contest was now ended; my chains were broken, and the victory ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... horribly afraid of him at first, somehow,—which offended me rather, for I was conceited about him; but his ways seemed so mild, and he was so abject, that after a time they received him and took his education in hand. He was quick to learn, very imitative and adaptive, and built himself a hovel rather better, it seemed to me, than their own shanties. There was one among the boys a bit of a missionary, and he taught ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... Well, never mind. Perhaps I have been mugging it up as a preliminary to coming out here. Note, however, Holmes, that I used the word advisedly. Konza does not mean to show civility, but to do homage, and that of a tolerably abject kind—in ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... resorted to by the race of stinkards. He then raised himself on his knees and hams, and raising up his ghastly face, while the blood streamed over both ears, he besought his life of his brother, in the most abject whining manner, ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... (Prayers, abject prayers for themselves. None for him. Not one word. They were cowards, afraid for themselves, afraid of death; their funk had made them forget him. It was as if they didn't believe that he was there. And, after all, it was ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... to have the original manner of rewarding persons again established was the picture-maker, Pe-tsing, who now found himself in a condition of most abject poverty, so unbearable, indeed, that he frequently went by night, carrying a lantern, in the hope that he might discover some of the small pieces of money which he had been accustomed to throw into ...
— The Wallet of Kai Lung • Ernest Bramah
... animal and very fierce as a rule, though in the case of a noted man-eater I have known it exhibit a curious mixture of ferocity and abject cowardice. It is stated to be of a more retiring disposition than the next species, but this I doubt, for I have frequently come across it in the neighbourhood of villages to which it was probably attracted by cattle. It may not have the fearlessness or impudence of the panther, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... these same people there were another set of traditions, illustrated sufficiently for our purpose by the story of Prometheus. According to this the first age of humanity was its worst and poorest and lowest age. The people lived in abject poverty and misery. They were even neglected on the part of the gods, who did not seem to care for them, but treated them with contempt. Prometheus is represented as pitying their evil estate, caring more for them than the gods did; and so he steals the celestial fire, and comes down to the ...
— Our Unitarian Gospel • Minot Savage
... upon the old gentleman for support. His behaviour in this dependent state, was the very reverse of what it should have been. In place of directing his studies to some useful acquisition, so as to support himself and family, he spent his time in the most abject trifling, and drew many heavy expences upon his father, who had no other means of supporting himself than what his congregation afforded, and a small estate of fourscore pounds a year ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753),Vol. V. • Theophilus Cibber
... a state of abject destitution. His rooms were bare of every salable object save the cheapest of necessary toilet articles, and a rather extravagant color-box and set of brushes. But this fact of his having refused to sacrifice the implements of his art, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... now that the conversation had reached a point so full of zest for him, she had nothing to say for herself, Pao-yue smilingly remarked: "What human being is there that can escape death? But the main thing is to come to a proper end! All that those abject male creatures excel in is, the civil officers, to sacrifice their lives by remonstrating with the Emperor; and, the military, to leave their bones on the battlefield. Both these deaths do confer, after life is extinct, the fame of great men upon them; but ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... perceive between the Spaniard of those times and the abject and degraded vassal of the princes of the Austrian dynasty! Religious sentiment was not less energetic, it was not less profound, in the second epoch than in the first; but it was a sentiment perverted by superstition, envenomed by fanaticism, and ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous
... and flung him against the wall. Mercedes, sinking back, lay still. When Rojas got up the Indian stood between him and escape from the ledge. Rojas backed the other way along the narrowing shelf of lava. His manner was abject, stupefied. Slowly ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... pleasing opportunity to that powerful neighbor of intermeddling in their affairs. A Macedonian army quickly appeared. Cleomenes was vanquished. The Achaeans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master. All that their most abject compliances could obtain from him was a toleration of the exercise of their laws. Philip, who was now on the throne of Macedon, soon provoked by his tyrannies, fresh combinations among the Greeks. The Achaeans, though ...
— The Federalist Papers
... some of the richest provinces in the world, surrounded by a fabulous luxury at Constantinople, he is still one of the most abject ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... learned of the desertion of Martella, the life of the latter was not worth a moment's purchase, but in reality he knew nothing of it. The Captain, well aware of the ferocious temper of the Dictator, stood in as abject awe of him as did every other citizen of Atlamalco. But as the two conversed, the wits of the ...
— Up the Forked River - Or, Adventures in South America • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... might have been better had they been allowed to keep a cow. But if they had been in comfortable circumstances, they would have had visitors and lodgers, who might have carried guns to destroy the gentleman's creation, i.e. game; and for this risk the wretches were kept in absolute and abject poverty. I would rather be—himself than this brutal Earl. The daughter showed Lady Sinclair a well in the midst of a small bog, of great depth, into which, like Thurtell and Probert, they used to thrust the bodies of their victims till they had ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... explained Dallas. 'That sort of thing has been going on the whole term. If the head of a House is an abject lunatic, there's bound to be ructions. Fags simply live for the sake of kicking up rows. It's meat and ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... the other sex were not all of the nature of sheer passion. He was capable of serious friendship, warm respect, abject adoration, and a hundred other variations of feeling; and in several cases he maintained for years, by correspondence and occasional visits, an intercourse with ladies on which no shadow of a stain has ever been cast. ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... words as "custom-house officer," "fire," and "murder." And she struggled, and begged for mercy, and dreamed aloud of vengeance. At last, as always happened when the attack was drawing to a close, she fell into a strange fright, her teeth chattering, while her limbs quivered with abject terror. Finally, after raising herself into a sitting posture, she cast a haggard look of astonishment at one and another corner of the room, and then fell back upon the pillow, heaving deep sighs. She ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... hesitate any longer. I rose to my feet, and crossed the space which lay between the two tables. As I drew nearer to her I watched the child's face. At first a flash of desperate hope seemed suddenly to illumine it; then a fear more abject even than before took its place as she glanced at her companion. She watched me come, reading without a doubt the purpose in my mind with a sort of fascinated wonder. Her eyes were still fastened upon mine when at last I paused before her. I leaned ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... days he lived on a single Mole, unearthed quite by chance; then a Gopher, stalked from behind the big legs of Shag, saved him from utter collapse. Of a verity he was living from hand to mouth; such abject poverty he had never known, not even in the ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser
... mosque of Aya Sofia towering aloft, warmed his fancy and the sheen of Byzantine brocades and the quaint paraphernalia of bygone days inspired his apocalyptic words. His language in those telegrams and letters was highfaluting and bombastic. And I read other communications of his—mostly abject appeals for help—devoid of dignity and manliness, when the gloom of dissipated illusions was made unbearable by fear of dethronement and death. And the figure cut by the Tsarlet, who addressed those humble prayers—mostly to ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... but, on making known their intentions, the pretty bride again appeared, and, assaulting poor Williams with a whole battery of tearful eyes, trembling lips, and eloquent appeals, vindicated once more the superiority of woman's wiles to man's determination. An abject apology from the colliers, and a decided intimation from the "Regulators" of the consequences sure to follow any future incivility to visitors, closed the affair, and the parties separated without ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... extermination went on as the slave leader and his followers passed like fate from house to house, and plantation to plantation, leaving a wide swathe of death in their track. Terror filled the night, terror filled the State, the most abject terror clutched the bravest hearts. The panic was pitiable, horrible. James McDowell, one of the leaders of the Old Dominion, gave voice to the awful memories and sensations of that night, in the great anti-slavery debate, which broke out in the Virginia Legislature, during the ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... this magnanimous man stood his ground immovably against whatever might happen, only taking care not to throw himself away in an abject manner, and grieving from his heart that innocence had no safe foundation on which to stand. And the more sad also for this consideration, that before these events took place many of his friends had gone over to other more powerful persons, as in cases of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... people, having no longer cause to fear him, began to deplore his death" And elsewhere, when speaking of what took place in Syracuse after the murder of Hieronymus, grandson of Hiero, he says, "It is the nature of the multitude to be an abject slave, or ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... him, unusually gracious, Gurley extended his hand to Claud; ushered him into the house; formally introduced him to his wife, an ordinary, abject-looking woman; and then to his daughter, the fair, dark-eyed, tall, shapely, and every way magnificent Avis Gurley, the girl who had so long, but unwittingly, been the object of the young ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... Eyrecourt's sense of injury urges her to indulge in violent measures—she is eager to place her deserted daughter under the protection of the law; to insist on a restitution of conjugal rights or on a judicial separation. At another time she sinks into a state of abject depression; declares that it is impossible for her, in Stella's deplorable situation, to face society; and recommends immediate retirement to some place on the Continent in which they can live cheaply. This latter suggestion Stella is not only ready, ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... these very closely through European publications, for which his slender funds went. He had a curiously opposed nature, quoting with enthusiasm the idealistic philosophers, and descending into such abject materialism as haunting the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... in shades of midnight darkness Abject sits the Pagan world; There the banner of salvation Ne'er hath been by time unfurled; Nor their idols From their ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... he detected her condition of abject fright... and from his waistcoat pocket he took a little ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... and, tumbling off their burros, fell on their knees in abject terror, as though expecting that ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... his losses were comparatively slight. His burghers were, as usual after a lost battle, demoralized and disheartened for the time being, but not, as was thought by the British Army, scared by their reverses into abject impotence. From the time of the occupation of Bloemfontein guerilla had been gradually taking the place of organized warfare, of which Bergendal was the last act, and which the burghers saw that they could not hope ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... the truth of the said remonstrances was not disputed, nor the tone in which they were written complained of, the same being submissive, and even abject, though the cause (his distresses) was by the said Hastings, in a great degree, and in terms the most offensive, attributed to the Nabob himself; but no relief was given, and the same unwarrantable establishments, ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... who revives in the nineteenth century the scandals of Jeanne Vaubernier belongs to our gallery, and the abject materialism accompanying her misconduct will be revealed in the pages ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... replied, sitting down. The fact was, I almost repented having entered the house as I saw the expression of abject fear ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Spanish • Various
... long time, Blassemare met his abject and agonized entreaties with a stoical scorn; at last, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... hard to be allowed to wear it through the tragedy, but this, with some laughter at my intense desire for it, was forbidden, and I was reduced after the first scene of the play to my own unadorned locks, which I think greatly strengthened my feeling of the abject misery ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... at Genoa, the shape of the latter being more perfect in its beauty, and the smaller size enabling you to see it all at once, and feel it more like an exquisite picture. The city he conceived the greatest dislike to.[98] "The condition of the common people here is abject and shocking. I am afraid the conventional idea of the picturesque is associated with such misery and degradation that a new picturesque will have to be established as the world goes onward. Except Fondi, there is nothing on earth that I have seen so dirty ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... abject terror 'Merican Joe buried his face in his arms and stood trembling and moaning, "Hyas skookum kultus tamahnawus—mesahchee tamahnawus!" (a very strong bad spirit—we are bewitched). The words puled haltingly from lips stiff with fright. The next moment the boy was beside ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... report addressed to Charles X., June 20,1825: "I perceive that I have forgotten the most essential side,—the moral, I will even say the religious side. What glory it would be for a king to raise this considerable class of society from the abject situation in which it is compelled to live! Sacrificed to our pleasures, it has been condemned to eternal death, and a king believes his conscience quiet! For a long time I have cherished this thought; we must begin by elevating these people, as regards their art, by reforming, little ...
— The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Charles X • Imbert De Saint-Amand
... his courage, his strength. Ugo deliberately told of the duel in his rooms, of Savage's heroism in taking up the battles of his timorous friend, of his own challenge in the morning, and of Quentin's abject, cringing refusal to fight. How deliciously he painted the portrait of the coward without exposing his true motive in doing so, can only be appreciated when it is said that Dorothy Garrison came to despise the object ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... young, advanced and publicly kissed Job. I think it was in its way the most delightful thing (putting its impropriety aside for a moment) that I ever saw. Never shall I forget the respectable Job's abject terror and disgust. Job, like myself, is a bit of a misogynist—I fancy chiefly owing to the fact of his having been one of a family of seventeen—and the feelings expressed upon his countenance when he realised that he was not only being embraced publicly, and without authorisation ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... result as she had expected. She had probably not thought that Linda would be quite so fierce as she had shown herself; but she had expected tears, and more of despair, and a clearer protestation of abject misery in the proposed marriage. Linda's mind would now be filled with the idea, and probably she might by degrees reconcile herself to it, and learn to think that Peter was not so very old a man. At any rate it would now be for Peter himself to ...
— Linda Tressel • Anthony Trollope
... horses, escorted by six firemen in red shirts, and preceded by two Dutch drummers with serious faces, and long, light beards, and a dyspeptic negro fifer, through sundry of our most crowded streets. And there shall follow him a procession of urchins, so abject in raiment that all peaceable lookers on will wonder where they came from, and how it happened that in a city so well supplied with water their unclean appearance, and the evident satisfaction they derived from scratching, was a sight for the eyes to behold. The hero must be careful ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... no Remedy can be proposed; but a Man (who hath no great Guilt hanging upon his Mind, who walks in the plain Path of Justice and Integrity, and yet either by natural Complection, or confirmed Prejudices, or Neglect of serious Reflection, suffers himself to be moved by this abject and unmanly Passion) would do well to consider, That there is nothing which deserves his Fear, but that beneficent Being who is his Friend, his Protector, his Father. Were this one Thought strongly fixed in the Mind, what Calamity would be dreadful? What Load can Infamy lay ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... off destruction. To such desperate beings the stock operator—the market-maker—is the straw to save them from drowning, and to him they turn as the one possible source of aid and hope. I only knew these men at sight's end, but they knew me and were sure in their abject plight that I could help them—by what wizardry they never stopped to think. They were terribly certain that unless the market turned, their brokers must have additional margin or their stock would be thrown overboard, sinking prices still lower and bringing down their friends' stock, and so on, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... me to do some repairs which I don't feel inclined to do, so I want to have a look at the place for myself," the announcement was so little tinged by any sense of the persons she was addressing that she might as well have held up a printed placard. Ellen thought he was a little abject to answer, "So far as I can remember, Butterworth's rather a rough specimen. Wouldn't you like us to come with you?" and almost deserved that she did not hear. Such deafness argued complete abstraction; and ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the wild panting way they were uttered in, brought Coventry to his knees in a moment. He promised her, with abject submission, that she should have her own way in this and every thing. He petted her, and soothed her, and she forgave him, but so little graciously, that he saw she would fly out in a moment again, if the least attempt were ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... overwhelmed with consternation, and shuddering in fear. Their wails are heard above the sound of the elements. Demons acknowledge the deity of Christ, and tremble before His power, while men are supplicating for mercy, and groveling in abject terror. ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... Mollett. Indeed nothing could be gained in any way, by any usage, unless it could be shown that Mollett and Talbot were not the same person. He could afford therefore to tell the scoundrel that he was a scoundrel, and to declare against him—war to the knife. The more that Mollett trembled, the more abject he became, the easier would be the task Mr. Prendergast now had in hand. "Well, sir," he continued, "are you going to tell me what business has brought ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... cigarette, which he inhaled avidly. He looked wretched, pinched with hunger, peaked with cold, but he straightened up when he saw me into a semblance of well-being. Then, in a little, he sagged forward, and his eyes went dull and abject. It was a business of the utmost delicacy to induce him to accept a small loan. I knew it would only plunge him more deeply into the mire; but I could not bear ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... it isn't a case of bonbons; it is abject, staring, unpicturesque poverty, with ready-made clothes, gasolined gloves, and probably one o'clock dinners all waiting with the traditional wolf at the door. I've just come from my lawyer, auntie, and, 'Please, ma'am, I ain't got nothink 't ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... sat on, too abject to dress and go out for dinner. In his depression his thoughts turned naturally to his father. He thought of joining him, and searched time-tables and sailings, only to find that he could not catch up with the expedition. Besides, as he ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... worse than he deserves,' says one of the Campbells. He alleges, however, that in April, before the murder, James of the Glens visited James More, then a prisoner in Edinburgh Castle, 'caressed him,' and had a private conversation with him. The abject James More averred that, in this conversation, James of the Glens proposed that James More's brother, Robin Oig, should kill Glenure for money. James More was not examined at the trial of James of the Glens, perhaps because he had ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... had not spoken. It was only a look, and an inarticulate sound. But it was a look of such abject terror that it could no longer escape the man's thoughtful eyes. Eve had betrayed herself in her very dread lest he should suspect. His reference to Will's secret had suggested suspicion to her, and the rest was the result of her innate ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... last. Mr Cricker, who had firmly refused the whole evening, in spite of abject entreaties, to dance like Nijinsky, suddenly relented when everyone had forgotten all about it, and was leaping alone in the studio, while Lord Rye, always a great lingerer, was playing Richard Strauss to himself on the baby Grand, and ...
— Tenterhooks • Ada Leverson
... the poet makes them collapse into utter farce. Disgusted by their intrusion on his privacy, the Priapus adopts a simple but exceedingly vulgar expedient to alarm these appalling hags. In an instant they fall into the most abject terror, suspend their incantations, and, tucking up their skirts, make off for the more comfortable quarters of the city as fast as their trembling limbs can carry them—Canidia, the great enchantress, dropping her false ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... the trial went on and the buzzard of an attorney flapped out his denunciations, deepened to an expression of abject fear. In trying to answer the questions hurled at him, he would stroke his parched throat mechanically with his long fingers as if to help the syllables free themselves. In listening to the witnesses he would curve his body forward, ...
— The Underdog • F. Hopkinson Smith
... this world is contained within the duties of a daughter, a sister, a wife, and a mother." She has sustained at least one of these relations to even the poorest of us; but I wonder if there is a man here to-night so miserably abject and forlorn and God-forsaken as not, some time in his life, to have been able to regard her in the delightful relation of sweetheart? I hope not. I would rather he had had a dozen, than no sweetheart at all. The most unselfish devotion we may ever know is that of our mother; a sweet ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol II, After-Dinner Speeches E-O • Various |
