"Downtrodden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... failed to discover. One day you disappear; the ladies wail and tear their hair; a tiger has eaten you; in a week you will be forgotten. But you are back in Angria's fortress, no longer a slave, downtrodden and despised; but a free man, a rich man, a potentate to be. Is it not worth thinking of, my young friend, especially when you remember the other side of the picture? It is a dark side; an unpleasant side; ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... much that you said to-night. But you are on the side of wealth and aristocracy. I am on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... no one could afford to compromise with evil. She became the friend of children; the champion of the unfortunate; she sided with the weak; she was their friend and comforter. Her life became a cry in favor of the oppressed, a defense of the downtrodden, an exaltation of self-devotion, a prayer for universal sympathy, liberty and light. She pleaded for the vicious, recognizing that all are sinners and that those who do unlawful acts are no more sinners in the eyes of God than we ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... analyse the sentiments and psychological causes which bring about a war. A war waged to redeem its independence by a nation downtrodden by another nation is perfectly legitimate, even from the point of view of abstract morality. A war which has for its object the conquest of political or religious liberty cannot be condemned even by the most ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... master the details of the problem he is dealing with, granted that he sometimes propounds schemes before they are ripe; yet against that place (1) his wonderful personality, (2) his boundless vitality and energy, (3) his heartfelt sympathy for the downtrodden ones of the world, (4) his wonderful ideas and ideals, (5) his quickness of intelligence, (6) his ardent patriotism, (7) his remarkable powers of oratory, and (8) his almost uncanny gift of seeing into the ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... souls into endless despair. A tale of freedom is being told above, but their chains of death clank in solemn music as the midnight revelry sports with the very agony of their sorrows. Oh! who has made their lives a wanton jest?-can it be the will of heaven, or is it the birthright of a downtrodden race? They look for to-morrow, hope reverberates one happy thought, it may bring some tidings of joy; but again they sink, as that endless gloom rises before them. Hope fades from their feelings, from the bleeding heart for which compassion is dead. The tyrant's heart is ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... feeling for the downtrodden?" Nancy asked, with a faint reflection of what Billy referred to as her ...
— Outside Inn • Ethel M. Kelley
... but it hath left behind it Ruin and desolation. All the walks Are strewn with shattered boughs; the birds are silent; The flowers, downtrodden by the wind, lie dead; The swollen rivulet sobs with secret pain, The melancholy reeds whisper together As if some dreadful deed had been committed They dare not name, and all the air is heavy With an unspoken sorrow! Premonitions, Foreshadowings of some ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... should be emphatically national. Every dollar should come from the former slaves, every State should furnish a stone, and the monument should be erected at the capital of the nation. Nothing could be better calculated to stimulate this downtrodden and abused race to renewed efforts for ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... assassin from a husband she loved are not clear, while the Deus ex machina adds nothing to the story. It is redeemed by some splendid passages, but is interesting as revealing a further development of Euripides' thought. He here makes the slave, another downtrodden class, free of the privileges of literature, for to him none is vile or reprobate. The famous painting Captive Andromache indicates to us the loneliness ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... presents the conduct of Scipio Aemilianus in quite a different light from the one in which it has commonly been regarded. He is usually extolled as a patriot who would not stir to humour a Roman rabble, but who, when downtrodden honest farmers, his comrades in the wars, appealed to him, at once stepped into the arena as their champion. [Sidenote: Attitude of Scipio Aemilianus.] In reality he was a reactionist who, when the inevitable results of those liberal ideas which had been broached in his own circle stared him ...
— The Gracchi Marius and Sulla - Epochs Of Ancient History • A.H. Beesley
... patriotism is unconquerable. In view of these facts, I ask you, What nation has the greatest responsibility for peace? Are not we Americans the people chosen to lift the burden of militarism from off the backs of our downtrodden brother? ...
— Prize Orations of the Intercollegiate Peace Association • Intercollegiate Peace Association
... subjugated a nation by winning the loyalties of the oppressed and downtrodden. The communists first win the support of liberal-intellectuals, and then use them to subvert and pervert all established mores and ideals ...
— The Invisible Government • Dan Smoot
... too," said Joan. "I should have done the same, and so would Nancy. We thought of putting up 'Don't be Downtrodden,' but we were afraid mother wouldn't like it, so we put up 'No Popery' instead. It comes to ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... has always been strong sympathy for the poor, meek, downtrodden slave—the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and overbearing masters. Could it ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... "That the downtrodden peoples in Austria and Germany have been emancipated is a moral triumph. But why has the beneficent principle that is said to have inspired the deed been restricted in its application? Why has ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... American with no proper appreciation of royalty, was tying a tin to the blue-blooded one's tail, doubtless in furtherance of some altruistic project, when Pussy resented the liberty with a paw that wore five big fish-hooks for the occasion. The howl of downtrodden America roused America's mother. The deft and womanly blow that she aimed with her book was miraculously avoided, and Pussy took flight, up-stairs, of course. A hunted Rat runs down-stairs, a hunted Dog goes on the level, a hunted Cat runs up. She hid in the garret, baffled discovery, and ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... merciful as a hidden reef, felt that Madeline was now hers, to do whatever she might choose. She caught her, folded her round, and bedazed her out of what little spirit she had left. It was a second enchantment; but all unlike that by Gauffridi, a possession by means of terror. The poor downtrodden wretch, moving under rod and scourge, was pushed onward in a path of exquisite suffering which led her to accuse and murder the man ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... tear down, should be the object of the scientific anarch. Stop! You need not say the earth has to be levelled and ploughed before sowing the seed. That suits turnip fields, not the garden of humanity. Educate the downtrodden into liberty, is my message, not the slaughtering of monarchs. How am I going to go about it? Ah! that's my affair, my dear sir. After I read a certain book by Tolstoy, I realized that art was as potent an agent for mischief as ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... the habitants of New France as downtrodden or oppressed, dispirited or despairing, like the peasantry of the old land in the days before the great Revolution, as some historians have done, is to speak untruthfully. These people were neither serfs nor ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... to Garcia" has done the Shop, but it probably doubled the circulation of "The Philistine." I do not consider it by any means my best piece of writing; but it was opportune—the time was ripe. Truth demands a certain expression, and too much had been said on the other side about the downtrodden, honest man, looking for work and not being able to find it. The article in question states the other side. Men are needed—loyal, honest men who will do their work. "The world cries out for him—the man who can carry ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... righteousness, without counting the cost. In like manner he now had the opportunity of illustrating afresh his attitude toward the law, for he held that law was for the accomplishment of justice, and that it was most glorious when its strong arm protected and defended the weak and downtrodden. By a natural course, therefore, he became a prominent counsel for those unfortunate negroes who, at this time, in Boston, were held as fugitive slaves. While the ingenuity of some was expended in putting the law on the side of the strong and the rich, Dana, who was convinced in ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... again I saw all the oppressive deeds that are wrought under the sun; and behold the downtrodden weep, and none comforteth them; and they endure violence from their tyrants, and none consoleth them. 2. Then I appraised the dead who died long since, as happier than the quick who are yet alive; 3. but luckier ...
— The Sceptics of the Old Testament: Job - Koheleth - Agur • Emile Joseph Dillon
... processes and lay out the work and draw the charts and organize the various movements which keep the world going and make it tolerable. The organ-blower works harder with his muscles, for that matter, than the organ player, and may perhaps be exasperated into thinking himself a downtrodden martyr because he does not receive the same pay for ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... story, although two and more are proposed by Sweetflower. It is one that satisfies the moral reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will, wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which he displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity—a panic of caps ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... welcome and aid, at the public cost, to Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the Atlantic 'to escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their persecutors.' Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute, made the guests of the commonwealth."(447) In twenty years from the first landing at Plymouth, as many thousand Pilgrims were settled in ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... of his life was love, and he has some fine love poems, such as My Springs, In Absence, Evening Song, and Laus Mariae. In The Symphony, which voices the social sorrow for the overworked and downtrodden, he says the problem is not one for the ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck
... demanded the Human Judge hotly. "'Tis a glorious color! Erin go bragh! Off'cer, ye've exceeded yer jooty. D' ye think this is downtrodden an' sufferin' Oireland an' yerself the tyrant Gineral French? Let 'em paint their noses anny color they loike; but green for preference. I'm tellin' ye, this is the land of freedom an' equality, an' ivery citizen thereof is entitled ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the small yet still prophetic blade. The sneer at the godly man for his imperfections is ill-judged. A blade is a small thing. At first it grows very near the earth. It is often soiled and crushed and downtrodden. But it is a living thing. That great dead stone beside it is more imposing; only it will never be anything else than a stone. But this small blade—it doth not yet appear ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... of the country began to hear of him. He carried cases to the high court of London where he won great admiration. Always he fought for the poor and downtrodden people. He began to speak everywhere—on street corners, in the market places, and in public buildings, with such feeling and force that even those who opposed him admired him. They liked his quick wit and good humor, and his honest, direct way ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... wearing their wretched lives away in toil for a most wretched sustenance. The friends I once knew have turned from me and called me a socialist, an anarchist. They call us anarchists because we sympathize with the downtrodden masses—because we prophesy the coming of the great struggle that shall emancipate these masses. We are not anarchists, but we are proud to be called socialists. Anarchy is disorder and ruin. Socialism ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish
... I shall devote myself to Bella's education, in the hope—you understand me? Impossible to have found a girl who suited better with my aspirations. She has known the hardships of poverty, poor thing, and that will keep her for ever in sympathy with the downtrodden classes. She has a splendid intelligence, and it shall be ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... down for just a minute; lay down in the bedroom on a bed; sighed deeply, and passed on into another world—with a calm face, with a peaceful, senile smile upon her lips. Isaiah Savvich—her faithful comrade on the path of life, a trifle downtrodden, who had always played a secondary, subordinate ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... de time for action has come. From ind to ind of the land, the downtrodden serfs of Ireland are rising in their millions. Too long have dey been juped by false pretences; too long have the hirelings of England chated and decaved them. We know now what a shimmera,[2] what a fraud, ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... think, among other bad qualities, I have the habit of shirking work? Let me tell you, Miss Bartlett, that the reason I am here is because I have worked too hard. Now, confess that you are sorry for what you said—trampling on an already downtrodden man." ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... has floated gayly in the valleys of Guanica, the most beautiful port of this downtrodden land. This city was selected by General Miles as the place in which to officially plant his flag in the name of his government, the United States of America. It is the ensign of grandeur and the guarantee of order, morality ...
— Porto Rico - Its History, Products and Possibilities... • Arthur D. Hall
... need have no fear. We'll see that justice is done you," began the politician in his best tub-thumping manner. "We Socialists and Communists are determined to put an end to tyranny and oppression, whether of the downtrodden slaves of Capitalism at home or our coloured brothers abroad. The British working-man wants no colonies, no India. He is determined to change everything in England and do away with all above him—kings, lords, aristocrats, and the bourgeoisie. ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... have to cease before it! But for that same preternatural quasi-infernal Portent, one could not know what to make of this wretched world, in these days, at all. The deplorablest quack-ridden, and now hunger-ridden, downtrodden Despicability and Flebile Ludibrium, of redtape Protocols, rotatory Calabashes, Poor-Law Bastilles: who is there that could think of its being fated ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the wolves that prey on those that preyed ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... his people that Gandhi occupies for India's unlettered millions. Their spontaneous tribute is his famous title-MAHATMA, "great soul." {FN44-1} For them alone Gandhi confines his attire to the widely-cartooned loincloth, symbol of his oneness with the downtrodden masses who ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... coal regions and to substitute importations of coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus, the wicked American laborers will be chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can enjoy the blessings of liberty and of the preaching ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... He knew he was caught in toils he could not burst by force. For his career's sake, he condescended to plead with and beseech them through whom alone he could emerge into the daylight. They who have idealized him as a downtrodden martyr will find the Ralegh portrayed by his own pen in scores of letters to princes, statesmen, and nobles, little to their taste. The real Ralegh will not cease to be honoured by all whom the sight of indomitable courage and doggedness ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... right," Dick made answer. "This isn't an age of serfdom. You won't be downtrodden to that extent. You stick to your guns and have a little patience! Things are not standing still. State your grievances—if they're bad enough—and then give the owners a chance! But don't forget that there's got to be give and take ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... self-complacent, Pharisaic philanthropy upon them, placing yourselves before the world as mighty benefactors of humanity when you give back to the plundered victims the hundredth part of what belongs to them! Charity which degrades him who gives more than him who takes; charity which treads the downtrodden still deeper in the dust, which demands that the degraded, the pariah cast out by society, shall first surrender the last that remains to him, his very claim to manhood, shall first beg for mercy before your mercy deigns to ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... apostles were released from their prisons once more to preach and prophesy to men; that the Church of the early times was restored to the bereaved world; that the human mind was set free to read and follow God's Word for itself; that the masses of neglected and downtrodden humanity were made into populations of live and thinking beings; and that the nations of the earth have become repossessed of their "inalienable rights" of "life, liberty, and ...
— Luther and the Reformation: - The Life-Springs of Our Liberties • Joseph A. Seiss
... done—there always were on days like this—and Sara was sent out again and again, until her shabby clothes were damp through. The absurd old feathers on her forlorn hat were more draggled and absurd than ever, and her downtrodden shoes were so wet that they could not hold any more water. Added to this, she had been deprived of her dinner, because Miss Minchin had chosen to punish her. She was so cold and hungry and tired that her face began to have a pinched look, and now and then some kind-hearted ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... analyzed his sentiments toward his ward, never had he deemed it possible for his wisely disciplined heart to bow before anything of flesh; but now, as he sat looking at the sweet face, he saw that rebellion desperate and uncompromising had broken out in his rigidly governed, long downtrodden nature, and with the prompt vigilance habitual to him he calmly counted the cost ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... after all, it seems," she said with a faint smile. "You never suspected in me a Vierge Rouge, militant, champion of her downtrodden sex, haranguing whomsoever would pay her the fee ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... living body. Accordingly, the memoirs of these pious men are also mournful records of slow suicide, wrought by the persistent neglect of the most necessary and important laws of the bodily system; and the body, outraged and downtrodden, has turned traitor to the soul, and played the adversary with fearful power. Who can tell the countless temptations to evil which flow in from a neglected, disordered, deranged nervous system,—temptations to anger, to irritability, to selfishness, to every kind of sin of appetite ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and the world's to boot. For 'all things are yours if ye are Christ's.' Refuse to bow your necks to that yoke which is easy, and to take upon your shoulders that burden which is light, and you do not buy liberty, though you buy licentiousness, for you become the slaves and downtrodden vassals of the world and the flesh and the devil, and while you promise yourselves liberty, you become the bondsmen of corruption. Oh! then, let us obey from the heart that mould of teaching to which we are delivered, and so obeying, we shall be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... find on his table. A disliker of coarse expressions, and extremes of every kind, with a perfect horror for revolutions and attempts to revolutionise, exclaiming now and then, as a shriek escapes from whipped and bleeding Hungary, a groan from gasping Poland, and a half-stifled curse from downtrodden but scowling Italy, "Confound the revolutionary canaille, why can't it be quiet!" in a word, putting one in mind of the parvenu in the "Walpurgis Nacht." The writer is no admirer of Gothe, but the idea of that parvenu was certainly ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... this furious energy hitherto devoted to material success turned to social betterment and decent government. The turn of the worker comes. The conquerors, having learned that they cannot take greedily what belongs to a community, and find happiness, turn magnificently to the rescue of their own downtrodden. The old question—what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?—has been burned ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... situation; yet it is not on that account that I have made room for it here, but on account of a thing which seemed to me still more curious. To wit, that this dreadful matter brought from these downtrodden people no outburst of rage against these oppressors. They had been heritors and subjects of cruelty and outrage so long that nothing could have startled them but a kindness. Yes, here was a curious ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... limited to pecuniary aid for himself and his family and friends, and to expressions of sympathy for his downtrodden country by individuals, by voluntary associations, and by municipalities. All his speeches after his visit to Washington were laden with one thought, viz., the duty of all free countries to resist the spread of absolutism. Pre-eminently ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... bother about what he was saying. It was very strange, but I could not believe that my sister was in love, that she had just been walking with her hand on the arm of a stranger and gazing at him tenderly. My sister, poor, frightened, timid, downtrodden creature as she was, loved a man who was already married and had children! I was full of pity without knowing why; the doctor's presence was distasteful to me and I could not make out what was to ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... now with my hands empty and my mind fairly made up. Everything depended on a new theory, which I was about to test, a mere Chinese theory concerning eunuchs—that their mutilation makes them bestial, but also downtrodden and quite spiritless and peculiarly weak. That is why the old Empress could thrash them to death whenever they displeased her, without their daring to raise their hands or make one single struggle. Now, as I walked forward, I could see my ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... harlot the mother in Israel of whom was begotten Israel's kings. And is not the blood of David in the veins of him we love—even Jesus? It is not strange he hath ever words of kindness and a helping hand for women downtrodden by the Law, for as the eye of God seeth good in what the Law condemns, so doth the heart of the Master, and he hath ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... exhausting struggle against the sabotage of the bureaucrats, technical workers, clerks, etc. These elements, which by their earning capacity belong largely to the downtrodden class of society, align themselves with the bourgeois class by the conditions of their life and by their general psychology. They had sincerely and faithfully served the government and its institutions ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... himself, his nieces, and Joe Beecher ever knew exactly what happened, what was the aspect of the door-mat erected to human life, of the worm turned to menace. It must have savored of horror, as do all meek and downtrodden things when they gain, driven to bay, the strength to do battle. It must have savored of the god-like, when the man who had borne with patience, dignity, and sorrow for them the stings of lesser things because they were lesser things, at last ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... of America's citizens, and that, too, to their own discomfort and disadvantage. How they have borne the sneers of the Southern press, the ostracism from society in the South, the dangers of Kuklux in remote counties, to raise up a downtrodden race, not for personal aggrandizement, but for the building up and glory of His kingdom who is no respecter of persons, is surely worthy our deepest gratitude, our heartfelt thanks, and our prayers and blessing. Under the training of a good Christian ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... was contemptuously called "the Jew" by his enemies. In a sense, the designation was entirely just. A Jew at heart Heine remained to the day of his death. On his death bed, speaking of the Jews he said: "Queer people this! Downtrodden for thousands of years, weeping always, suffering always, abandoned always by its God, yet clinging to him tenaciously, loyally, as no other under the sun. Oh, if martyrdom, patience, and faith in spite of trial can confer ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... magistrates. At another time he became the spokesman for the most pronounced absolutism and despotism. He turned suddenly against the very people whose cause he had so signally championed, and who hailed him as their prophet and leader. When the poor, downtrodden people needed him most, Luther cowardly deserted them, and by frenzied utterances excited the nobility to slay the common people without mercy in the most ruthless fashion, and even promised the lords whom he had denounced as tyrants heaven for enacting the barbaric cruelties to ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau |
