"Grovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Marlborough Street cell was a disgusting object— offensive to the eye and to one's sense of the dignity of man. At sight of me he sprawled, and when the shock of it was over he continued to grovel until the sight bred a shame in me for being the cause of it. What made it ten times worse was his curious insensibility—even while he grovelled—to the ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... our adventure. A trail of blood spots leading from the knoll into the woods convinced him that we had really damaged the prowler; and picking up the axe that I had dropped, he followed the trail. Large red stains at intervals showed that the animal had stopped frequently to grovel on the snow. About half a mile from the knoll, Mr. Edwards came upon the beast, in a fir thicket, making distressful sounds, and quite helpless to defend itself. A blow on the head from the poll of the axe finished the creature; and, taking it by the tail, Mr. Edwards dragged it to the house. The ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... surging breast: "Mark the wild, insensate, mirth: "God-ward boast—the driv'ling jest, "Till he grovel to the earth. ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... at the church," said Johnetta, "helping to decorate it for Christmas week, and I was hanging up a big motto 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men' and I think it ought to apply to women, too. I grovel in apology and I pray you to forgive me. You can't refuse your forgiveness when I implore ...
— Mrs. Budlong's Chrismas Presents • Rupert Hughes
... cried), ah whither will ye run? Seek ye to meet those evils ye should shun? Will you the terrors of the dome explore, In swine to grovel, or in lions roar, Or wolf-like howl away the midnight hour In dreadful watch around the magic bower? Remember Cyclops, and his bloody deed; The leader's ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... which papas and mammas betrayed in the early Victorian era. This seems past all doubt when you realise that the common effort of all these pictures and prose is to glorify the impeccable parent, and teach his or her offspring to grovel silently before the stern ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... till beached they lie Upon the fatal strand. The Greeks beguile The hasting hours with revelry and wine Within her halls.... Eftsoon strange sorcery The Circe weaves. They who were men erewhile Now grovel at her feet, transformed ...
— The Path of Dreams - Poems • Leigh Gordon Giltner
... little jerks that never failed of their object. Scamp, on the other hand, would hold it in his mouth for a moment till he had savoured it, then place it meekly on the floor, bow his head to the ground, and grovel flat with deprecatory white-eyed up-glances, and as clearly as dog could say, would murmur,—"Oh, Man, Lord of all that go on four legs, forgive thy humble little servant in that he is unable with enjoyment to eat that thou hast of thy bounty tendered him! The fault is ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... much rather do for another than himself, can earn enough in one day, if he take truck, to keep him three, and but that he prefers fixing cucumbers to thrashing, and making moccasins to clearing land, he might do well enough. Though poor, he is none the least inclined to grovel, but, with the spirit of his land, feels quite at ease in company with any judge or general in ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... that day and the next, her easy injunction, tossed off that way as she turned her beautiful back, was like the crack of a great whip in the blue air, the high element in which Mrs. Lowder hung. He wouldn't grovel perhaps—he wasn't quite ready for that; but he would be patient, ridiculous, reasonable, unreasonable, and above all deeply diplomatic. He would be clever, with all his cleverness—which he now shook hard, as he sometimes shook his poor, dear, shabby, ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume 1 of 2 • Henry James
... must always exist as long as there are riches and poverty. Now, when so many things in America seem bad dreams, I cannot take refuge in thinking that a bad dream; the reality was so deeply burnt into my brain by the words of some of the slaves; and when I think of it I want to grovel on the ground with my mouth in the dust. But I know this can only distress you, for you cannot get away from the fact as I have got away from it; that there it is in the next street, perhaps in the next house, and that any night when you leave your ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... out of breath. Of course I have no courage or head with men—I was ready to grovel at his feet. "My dear sir," I pleaded, "I assure you I didn't mean to do anything of the kind—it was only that the clerk kept ...
— The Journal of Arthur Stirling - "The Valley of the Shadow" • Upton Sinclair
... statesmen, reputed intelligent, have said it, and it has no doubt been eagerly seized upon by the officials who control your Press), is that your form of Government, the particular pattern of tyranny under which you elect to grovel, is no concern of ours. Well, don't you believe that either. This is no question of private taste, like the cut of your shoulder-pads or the shape of your women's waists, which are matters of purely local interest. Your type of Government is as much our concern; as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 26, 1917 • Various
... elements! For oh— Let the great spies of Jove, the sun and moon, The stars, and all the expeditious orbs That in their motions are retributive, Look blindly on, and seem to take no note Of any deep and deadly stab of sin— Let vengeance gorge a gross Cerberean sop, Grovel and snore in swinish sluggardness, Yea, quite forget his dagger and his cup— It is enough, for any retribution, That guilt retain remembrance of itself. Guilt is a thing, however bolstered up, That the great scale-adjusting Nemesis, And Furies iron-eyed, will not ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... canvas had become the one fetich to which Salome's heart clung in silent adoration, defiant of the iconoclastic touch of reason and the adverse decree of womanly pride; for natures such as hers will always grovel in the dust, hugging the mutilated fragments of their idol, rather than bow at some new, fretted shrine, where other images hold sway, commanding worship. Looking up almost wolfishly at that tranquil, shining countenance, she said to ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... a real danger. Divergence of religious ideals, to which I have already alluded, accounts for the tranquillity that prevails throughout Bihar as compared with the spirit of revolution in Bengal proper. The microbe of anarchy finds an excellent culture-ground in minds which grovel before the goddess Kali. But the unrest cannot be isolated from other manifestations of cosmic energy, which flash from mind to mind and keep the world in turmoil. Every force of nature tends to ...
— Tales of Bengal • S. B. Banerjea
... which he furiously scorned—"Every day begins a New Year." Well, every day did begin a New Year! So did every minute. Why not begin a New Year then, in that minute? He had only to say in a cajoling, good-natured tone, "All right, all right! Keep your hair on, my child. I grovel!" He had only to say some such words, and the excellent, simple, unresentful Maggie would at once be appeased. It would be a demonstration of his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... fought a desperate fight, His courage ne'er forsook, He javelled at the tiger Until his bayonet broke. One part was in the savage breast, And Turner understood If he could grovel out the steel 'Twould draw the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on the outer edge of life,—we who should walk grandly? Is ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... ought to feel pains in the pit of your stomach, and you're not. Devil a bit! You know, you're missing all the sensations that the writers told you about. You're not playing the game. Come, buck up, fall down and grovel on the ground!" But he did not. He did not want ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... wretch, The veriest wretch that ever groan'd in anguish, Comes here to grovel on the earth before thee, To tell her sad, sad tale, implore thy aid, For sure the pow'r is thine, thou canst relieve My bleeding heart, and ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... thinking. "I must wheedle Dickey into the bank to-morrow. A word from 'im, an' they'll all grovel, d—n 'em!" ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... curtain which separates him from eternity, the salient characteristic of his being is unmasked and stands forth, naked. If he be at heart a coward, even though he may honestly never have suspected himself of cowardice, he will try to flee, or cringe and grovel for mercy; if his soul is stayed upon the immortal and everlasting truths, he will face what Fate may hold with the resigned fortitude which was the martyrs'; but, if he is merely a man, strong with the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... me," she said, with a little stamp. "Do so once more, Allan, and I swear I'll bring thee to grovel on the ground and kiss my foot and babble nonsense to a woman sworn to another man, such as never for all thy days thou shalt think of without ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... whose estates you came to woo, I should still despise adulation. Bah! I hate it all," she continued, stamping her foot. "I hate princes and princesses, and do not understand how they can endure to have men kneel and grovel before them. This fine Princess of Burgundy, I am told, looks—" She paused and then went on: "I sometimes hate her most of all. I am a burgher girl, I tell you, and I am proud of it. I warn you not to ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... all sides of him, even Salvator himself, who had received him dressed in the richest apparel, inspired him with deep respect, and, after the manner of little souls, who, though at first proud and puffed up, at once grovel in the dust whenever they come into contact with what they feel to be superior to themselves, Pasquale's behaviour towards Salvator, whom he would gladly have done a mischief to in Rome, was nothing ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... making; they are, to a great degree, results of inherited tendencies over which we have no control,—accidents of birthplace, in the choosing of which we had no voice. The high in the world do not shine altogether by their own light, not do the lowly grovel altogether in their own debasement,—I felt the excuse for humanity. I was overwhelmed with one feeling,—only God can weigh such circumstantial evidence; we, in our little knowledge of results, pronounce sentence, but final judgment is reserved for a higher court, ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... more or less than Bill's yielding to his attacks, Kipping turned suddenly and reached for the carpenter's mallet, which lay where Chips had been working nearby. With a round oath, he yelled, "I'll make you grovel and ask ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... rough on me—" Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignation rushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose to stand out, let him. He was capable of running the ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... enjoyed myself. I think surely that no one needs to have had my marvelous experience to sympathize with this portion of it. Are we not all ready to agree that this having a curtained chamber where we may go to grovel, out of the sight of our fellows, troubled only by a vague apprehension that God may look over the top, is the most demoralizing incident in the human condition? It is the existence within the soul of this secure refuge of lies which has always been the despair ...
— To Whom This May Come - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... for the compliment! Strange to say, I am much more like a man than anything else under the sun. I say, are you really going? Well, I forgive you for being naughty, if that's what you want. And I'm sorry I can't grovel to you, but I don't feel justified in so doing, and it would be very bad for you in any case. By the way—er—Miss Ratcliffe, I think you will be interested to learn that my visit to the Campions was of a social and not of a professional character. That ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... labor by their vices, driven out of inferior stations even into prohibited occupations, bruised by the perilous leap, with consciences distorted like the muscles of a tight-rope dancer. Were it not for the Revolution, they would still grovel in their native filth, awaiting prison or forced labor to which they were destined. Can one imagine their growing intoxication as they drink deep draughts from the bottomless cup of absolute power?—For it is absolute power which they demand ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... of the best of 'em," sneered McBane. "He'll call any man 'master' for a quarter, or 'God' for half a dollar; for a dollar he'll grovel at your feet, and for a cast-off coat you can buy an option on his immortal soul,—if he has one! I've handled niggers for ten years, and I know 'em from the ground up. They're all alike,—they're a scrub race, an ...
— The Marrow of Tradition • Charles W. Chesnutt
... admired you. I respected you. I was all afire with adoration of you. And now," she passed her hand across her eyes, "now it is all over. The idol has come sliding down its pedestal to fawn and grovel with all the other infatuates in the dust about ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... no less sycophantic than the people of monarchial countries; we are more so. We grovel before their exalted personages, and perform in addition a special prostration at the clay feet of our own idols—which they do not revere. The typical "subject," hat-in-hand to his sovereign and his nobleman, is a less shameful figure than the "citizen" executing his ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... than him for husband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours. "He will give thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seat thee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, and the princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Uruk shall grovel on the ground before thee." It was by such flatteries and promises for the future that Gilgames gained the affection of his servant Eabani, whom he ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... her, don't let him be happy with her, while I grovel here in shame! I can't bear the thought of that, I can't imagine him in her arms telling her how good she is and how bad I was. I'd rather kill them both. Isn't that best, O Lord—to kill them both—to kill her, anyway? Then I can kill myself and he will ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... goddess Athene came near to Achilles and spake winged words: "Now, at last, O godlike Achilles! shall we twain carry off great glory to the Achaian ships! He cannot now escape us, though the Far-Darter should grovel at the feet of Zeus with fruitless prayers. But do thou stay and recover thy breath; and I will go and persuade Hector to stand up against thee in fight." And he gladly obeyed her voice, and stood ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... fly fairly high, and come down now and again to rest, if one must, than grovel consistently ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... doctors of the temple! He could rule all the things in his father's house, but not the men of religion, the men of the temple, who called his father their Father. True, he might have compelled them with a word, withered them by a glance, with a finger-touch made them grovel at his feet; but such supremacy over his brothers the Lord of life despised. He must rule them as his father ruled himself; he would have them know themselves of the same family with himself; have them at home among the things of God, caring ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... for the cause of science by his example as well as by his discoveries. By living a plain but honest life, declining magnificent offers of positions from royal patrons, at the same time refusing to grovel before nobility, he set a worthy example to other philosophers whose cringing and pusillanimous attitude towards persons of wealth or position had hitherto earned them the contempt of ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... story in the hermitage, Master would maintain an unresponsive silence. "Do not allow yourself to be thrashed by the provoking whip of a beautiful face," he told the disciples. "How can sense slaves enjoy the world? Its subtle flavors escape them while they grovel in primal mud. All nice discriminations are lost to the man of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... execrable advisers. I hardly know a more painful object of consideration than a man of genius in such a situation; those of lower minds do not feel the degradation, and become like pigs, familiarised with the filthy elements in which they grovel; but it is impossible that a man of Lord Byron's genius should not often feel the want of that which he has forfeited—the fair esteem of those by whom genius most naturally desires to be admired ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... director of a bankrupt company. And so may a man be untrue to his troth,—and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love. This Frank Greystock must be little better than ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... enter boldly and demand provisions for yourself and your horse. Beware of offering any money in payment, or they will suspect you to be a fugitive and fall upon you; but if you hold yourself towards them with pride and sternness, giving them only curses and blows, they will respect and grovel before you, for such is the ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... name of all the gods, SHOULD they be raised?" demanded Sah-luma impatiently—"If their choice is to grovel in mire, why ask them to dwell in a palace?—They would not appreciate ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... manner. What do you say? Silly! I am not silly at all. If you are going to make resolutions at all, you ought to do it properly. Aim at the sky, and you may reach the top of the tree; aim at the top of the tree, and you will grovel on the ground. You are too modest in your aspirations, and they won't come to any good; but as for me—with a standard ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... It seemed foolish to grovel before a piece of fireworks. There was no firing in our neighbourhood; nothing to indicate a state of war between the British Empire and Germany; no visual evidence of any German army in France except that flare. ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... words I late had mark'd. And, "Spirit!" I said, "in whom repentant tears Mature that blessed hour, when thou with God Shalt find acceptance, for a while suspend For me that mightier care. Say who thou wast, Why thus ye grovel on your bellies prone, And if in aught ye wish my service there, Whence living I am come." He answering spake "The cause why Heav'n our back toward his cope Reverses, shalt thou know: but me know first The successor of Peter, and ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the petty tricks of trades, I never, either now, or long since, Have heard of such a peace of nonsense; That one who learning's joys hath felt, And at the Muse's altar knelt, Should leave a life of sacred leisure To taste the accumulating pleasure; And, metamorphosed to an alley duck, Grovel in loads of kindred muck. Oh! 't is beyond my comprehension! A courtier throwing up his pension,— A lawyer working without a fee,— A parson giving charity,— A truly pious methodist preacher,— Are not, egad, so out of nature. Had nature made thee half a fool, But given ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... type, selfish, ignorant, flashy. The wives of his friends were not inspiring to look upon. His own wife had developed a cold, commonplace nature which to him was anything but pleasing. What he knew of that under-world where grovel the beat-men of society (and he knew a great deal) had hardened his nature. He looked upon most women with suspicion—a single eye to the utility of beauty and dress. He followed them with a keen, suggestive glance. At the same time, he was not so dull but that a good woman ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... plague, born of this filth, the chiefs of Odo seldom passed that way and looking round within their green retreats, and pouring out their wine, and plucking from orchards of the best, marveled how these swine could grovel in the mire, and wear such sallow cheeks. But they offered no sweet homes; from that mire they never sought to drag them out; they open threw no orchard; and intermitted not the mandates that condemned ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... it. He would beg Willits's pardon—he would abase himself in any way St. George should suggest. He had done what he thought was right, and he would do it over again under like circumstances, but he would grovel at Kate's feet and kiss the ground she stepped on if ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... individual cannot fail to be of benefit to the whole community. It is only in offices contingent on election or appointment that the aspirant incurs a heavy risk of failure; but when we consider how meanly men are often compelled to creep into office and to grovel in it, it can hardly be supposed that a genuine desire of superiority holds a prominent place among the motives of these who are willingly dependent on patronage or ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... said the unrelenting crone; "hast thou ever spared man in thy hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the dust!—crouch—crouch!—wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and beautiful hues have taught the unwary to be blind to the talons that rend, and the grinders that devour;—crouch, that the foot of the old and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... then I went at Him and implored and beseeched, if it would be best for Shelley, and would make her happy, to send her the Paget man, and to be quick about it. When I had said the last word that came to me, and begged all I thought becoming—I don't think with His face, that Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too dignified to do it Himself—I ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... to bend and grovel from the first, Crouching through life forever in the dark, Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark; And no one durst Deny their horrid dream, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... grovel in this idolatrous spirit, animals forming the principal subjects of worship,—such as bulls, snakes, monkeys, and pigeons. One of the peculiar temples of the city is devoted solely to the worship ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... aures.—Well, a very short survey of life had convinced me of the absurdity and meanness and insecurity that pervade all human objects, such as wealth, office, power. I was filled with contempt for them, realized that to care for them was to lose all chance of what deserved care, and determined to grovel no more, but fix my gaze upon the great All. Here I found my first problem in what wise men call the universal order; I could not tell how it came into being, who made it, what was its beginning, or what its end. But my next step, which was the examination of details, landed me in yet worse ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... pictures which his vivid imagination would place before him. He tried not to think of them. He knew he had drunk too much. Now he was seized with a desire to do horrible, sordid things; he wanted to roll himself in gutters; his whole being yearned for beastliness; he wanted to grovel. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... a hovel, Twiddle had a palace; Twaddle said: "I'll grovel Or he'll think I bear him malice"— A sentiment as novel As a castor on ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... in a state of anger and humiliation which was new to her. For the first few hours, she was resolved never to speak to Schilsky again. When this mood passed, she made up her mind that he should atone for his behaviour to the last iota: he should grovel before her; she would scarcely deign to look at him. But the nearer the time came for their meeting, the more were her resentful feelings swallowed up by the wish to see him. She counted off the hours ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Thunderer's slave, he was too great; To be his friend and comrade,—but a man. His crime was human, and their doom severe; For poets sing, that treachery and pride Did from Jove's table hurl him headlong down To grovel in the depths of Tartarus. Alas, and his whole ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... descendant of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and by so much more dangerous than the Tiger? Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of a Dog? Or is the philanthropist or the saint to give up ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... about me like vultures if I were weak fool enough to let them," she said to Anne. "They cringe and grovel like spaniels, and flatter till 'tis like to make one sick. 'Tis always so with toadies; they have not the wit to see that their flattery is an insolence, since it supposes adulation so rare that one may be moved by it. The men with empty pockets would marry me, forsooth, and ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... downward course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same range with beings whom death, in requital of their gross and evil lives, has degraded below humanity! To hold intercourse with spirits of this order, we must stoop and grovel in some element more vile than earthly dust. These goblins, if they exist at all, are but the shadows of past mortality, outcasts, mere refuse stuff, adjudged unworthy of the eternal world, and, on the most favorable supposition, ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... knoweth Sir Tristram] Then the two ladies who looked beheld Houdaine fall down at the feet of Sir Tristram and grovel there with joy. And they beheld that he licked Sir Tristram's feet and his hands, and that he leaped upon Sir Tristram and licked his neck and face, and at that they ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... possibility of compacts between the devil and mankind; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in their writings of their having been keenly alive to the fact that men horror-stricken at the sight of the destruction of their wives and children by magic would grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of the priest who ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... Mrs. Kelver. There is one of me must worship, adore a woman madly, abjectly; grovel before her like the Troubadour before his Queen of Song, eat her slipper, drink the water she has washed in, scourge himself before her window, die for a kiss of her glove flung down with a laugh. She must be scornful, contemptuous, cruel. There is another I would cherish, a tender, yielding ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... impossible to them. I might give thousands of testimonies, showing the great power this superman had over other minds, from the highest monarchical potentate to the humblest of his subjects. The former were big with a combination of fear and envy. They would deign to grovel at his feet, slaver compliments, and deluge him with adulation (if he would have allowed them), and then proceed to stab him from behind in the most cowardly fashion. There are always swarms of human insects whose ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... his dignified demeanor, which was nevertheless free from insolence, when these words of the king were interpreted to him, and replied that he had come intending to procure peace at any cost, but that he never could nor would grovel in the dust at any man's feet nor before any crown. He would depart on the following day; one favor, however, he requested in his daughter's name and his own—and he had heard that the Egyptians respected women. The king knew, of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... the right way with her. I see he wuz a goin' just the wrong way to win a woman's love. For his love, his great honest love for her made him abject, he groveled at her feet, loved to grovel. ...
— Samantha at Saratoga • Marietta Holley
... accented on some other syllable than the last, in whose derivatives the l is doubled by many writers; but it accords more with the analogy of the language not to double the l. Such words are the following: apparel, cancel, channel, cudgel, dishevel, drivel, duel, enamel, equal, gambol, grovel, jewel, libel, marshal, marvel, ...
— Orthography - As Outlined in the State Course of Study for Illinois • Elmer W. Cavins
... courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain. Refusing posts men grovel to attain." —Lowell's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... "If you were lonely, very lonely, if you had searched through the years for companionship, and thought you might have found it, would it please you to have that companion drop to his knees, grovel before you? Would this be your ...
— Eight Keys to Eden • Mark Irvin Clifton
... her fan-tip, we see two large, sad eyes, rising and falling, and now and then when the fan sways to and fro, the hair just turning gray with trouble, and the round face growing wan and seamed with terrible reflection, are seen a moment crouching low, as if she would wish to grovel upon the floor and bury her ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... cannot accuse the foregoing with containing the least ingredient of persecution. The free spirit on which the American cause is founded, disdains to mix with such an impurity, and leaves it as rubbish fit only for narrow and suspicious minds to grovel in. Suspicion and persecution are weeds of the same dunghill, and flourish together. Had the Quakers minded their religion and their business, they might have lived through this dispute in enviable ease, and none would have ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... all the sources of her life and hopes, she was not earthy. If her spirit could not soar and sing in the sky, it also could not grovel in the mire of gross materiality. Some little time, therefore, before the company broke up, on the plea of not feeling well she lured her father away from his wine and cigars and a knot of gentlemen who were beginning to talk a little incoherently. Making their adieux amid many protestations ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... the Spirit which he knows to be always identical both in the universe and in himself. He ceases the attempt to dictate to the Spirit, because he does not see in it a mere blind force, but reveres it as the Supreme Intelligence: and on the other hand he does not grovel before it in doubt and fear, because he knows it is one with himself and is realizing itself through him, and therefore cannot have any purpose antagonistic to his own individual welfare. Realizing this he deliberately places his thoughts under the guidance of the Divine Spirit, knowing that his ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... in Bismarck's Prusso-German Empire is only an illustration of the way in which the German people have been made to grovel before the Prussian jack-boot. The Prussification of Germany in matters military and in matters bureaucratic has gone on apace since 1870. Prussia, it is not too much to say, has hitherto consisted in a nation of slaves and tyrants and nothing else. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... house is a hut or a hovel, Come to the road: Mankind and moles in the dark love to grovel, But to the road. Throw off the loads that are bending you double; Love is for life, only labor is trouble; Truce to the town, whose best gift is a bubble: Come ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... may be upon us, and condemn us for Eternity To jostle with the ordinary horde; Though we grovel at the shrine of the professional fraternity Who harp upon one solitary chord; Still...we face the situation with an imperturbability Of spirit, from the knowledge that we owe To the witchery that lingers in the Curse of Versatility The balance ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... mind that are promoted to dignity and degraded to servitude. And if you sometimes feel that,—you, in whose favor the arrangement tends,—what do you suppose your servants sometimes think upon the subject? It was no wonder that the millions of Russia were ready to grovel before their Czar, while they believed that he was "an emanation from the Deity." But in countries where it is quite understood that every man is just as much an emanation from the Deity as any other, you will not long have that sort of thing. You remember Goldsmith's noble ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... upon yourselves, your children and your households, upon everything that you do, have and are, rests the awful curse of God! Heaven has marked you with the black seal of eternal damnation because you still grovel in sin and refuse to obey the voice and teachings of our holy Prophet. Your duty is to spread with the sword the light of our holy faith throughout the world; but what have you done? what are you doing? Miserable cowards! without faith and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... to the Cherwell in a tone of indignation, "With a blush of conscious virtue your enormities I see: And I wish that a reversal of the laws of gravitation Would prevent your vicious current from contaminating me! With your hedonists who grovel on a cushion with a novel (Which is sure to sap the morals and the intellect to stunt), And the spectacle nefarious of your idle, gay Lotharios Who pursue a mild flirtation ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... slave, he was too great: To be his friend and comrade,—but a man. His crime was human, and their doom severe; For poets sing, that treachery and pride Did from Jove's table hurl him headlong down, To grovel in the depths of Tartarus. Alas, and his whole race their ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... than other. And after all, Edith, there is a sense wherein no man can ever be fully satisfied in this life. We were meant to aspire; and if we were entirely content with present things, then should we grovel. To submit cheerfully is one thing: to be fully gratified, so that no desire is left, is an other. We shall not be that, methinks, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... the Old World because they have never had any liberty, and who are Catholics for the same reason, add to the number of Catholics here, but their children's children will not be Catholics. Their children will not be very good Catholics, and even these immigrants themselves, in a few years, will not grovel quite so low in the presence of a priest. The Catholic Church is gaining ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... all this when she returned home; but in his inmost soul he knew all the time that the words would never be said. He knew that he would grovel before her and whine for her favour; that he would remain her slave and sell her his soul again and again, just as she sold him her body. He knew that that was what he would do, for he was head over ears ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... dance on the yacht, while it lay at anchor off Holmtown, and the humour of the moment was to play battledore and shuttlecock with the grotesque efforts of our great people (the same that had figured at my wedding) to grovel before my ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... should come out into the light of day, almost riding a white horse and crowned with laurel. Anything but the foremost place I could not conceive for myself, and for that very reason I quite contentedly occupied the lowest in reality. Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud—there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful to defile ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... 'Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I am a kinsman of Monsieur de St. Yves—here in his interest. Upon my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn! Come, stand up; don't grovel there. Stand up, you lump ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... cushion. There are three of them now, three waiting-maids who arrive in single file, with smiles and curtseys. One offers me the spirit-lamp and the teapot; another, preserved fruits in delightful little plates; the third, absolutely indefinable objects upon gems of little trays. And they grovel before me on the floor, placing all this plaything of ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... animate their industry and activity, to excite in them an habitual contempt of meanness, abhorrence of injustice and inhumanity, and an ambition to excel in every capacity, faculty, and virtue. If we suffer their minds to grovel and creep in infancy, they will grovel and creep ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... carry him in myself? I would wreathe him in the best crape, I would put on black for him; the Curries would hardly consider a taper and a white sheet, or sack-cloth and ashes, an excessive form of atonement, but I could not grovel to quite such ...
— Stories By English Authors: London • Various
... in a day or two,' muttered Heathcliff. 'But first—get up, Linton! Get up!' he shouted. 'Don't grovel on the ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... each thought to coral eyes That seas have blurred with coffined night, And whisper deeds wrought in silence. A quiver that the tomb-sweat bore When walls were split with Typhon's ire; And monstrous shapes that carved the light As dragon-worms brought pestilence To souls who grovel on this shore, Proclaim each gyving djinnee sire. And dryades whom the mists have struck With ague—A Sceptre of Despair! (Sklayres to the night, and suns unstunned) Dank dulse, where templed vaults ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... unvarying key from some corner. Money pours in apace—the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be high, and yet, with all this custom and profit, the landlord and his family still grovel. And grovel they will in dirt, vice, low cunning, and iniquity—as the serpent went on his belly in the dust—to ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... said thoughtfully, "and yet I think that the very poorest among us was far freer and more independent than the richest of your Egyptian peasants. He did not grovel on the ground when the king passed along. It was open to him if he was braver than his fellows to rise in rank. He could fish, or hunt, or till the ground, or fashion arms as he chose; his life was not tied down by usage or custom. He was a man, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... venture to insult the intelligence of the reader with these idiotic details but for the reasons stated, and additionally, that they carry conviction with them to thousands of minds, honest doubtless, but which are accustomed to grovel in superstition, and falsehood, which they are unable to test by ...
— Fasting Girls - Their Physiology and Pathology • William Alexander Hammond
... rich man laughed at it, and declared that it was a trick; that, if he was a poor man, Farringford would not trouble him. After this revelation my father refused to write again. He was sorely grieved and troubled, but he still had a sense of self-respect which would not permit him to grovel in the ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... hat, and said to himself: "I will go to the Methodist meeting-house: they work directly upon the conscience, deepen the sense of sin, and preach a quick cleansing as by light shining in. There I may grovel in the sight of men and women and arise redeemed. But, no. It is the Sabbath my daughter's marriage is to be announced in our own church, and it would be cowardly, not to say unseemly, to fly from one worship to another now. If I go to church this morning it ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... those scrolls to herself, sitting in her throne, and spake not a long while; then she said: Come hither, and grovel before Us, and hearken! Even so we did; and she said again: Our sister, who hath been so kind unto you, and saved you from so many pains, here telleth Us, by the message of the two doves, that ye have betrayed Us and her, and have stolen her thrall and ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... great Duke Humphrey knit his brows, As frowning at the favours of the world? Why are thine eyes fix'd to the sullen earth, Gazing on that which seems to dim thy sight? What see'st thou there? King Henry's diadem, Enchas'd with all the honours of the world? If so, gaze on, and grovel on thy face, Until thy head be circled with the same. Put forth thy hand, reach at the glorious gold. What, is't too short? I'll lengthen it with mine, And, having both together heav'd it up, We'll both together lift our heads to heaven, ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... remotest thought of injuring you or your property in any way. I am willing to make all the amends I am able for the accidental damage to your property, but I can't and won't cringe to your injustice, nor grovel at ...
— Bart Stirling's Road to Success - Or; The Young Express Agent • Allen Chapman
... paving-stones of the street—eternally present. There are artists in colored chalks, who limn the heads of Christ and Napoleon on the pavement, with the inscription: 'I am starving.' Very fairly are the portraits executed; very decent artists they are, and they grovel by the side of their handiwork in an attitude of broken-hearted despondency, and pocket the pennies of the charitable. Objects the most decrepit in nature, hideous, half-nude wretches, male and female, creep along the streets, shivering, too ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... dear,' remarked Mrs. Franklin, 'there are other handsome young men in the world, besides our pastor—many who would grovel at your feet to enjoy your favors. By the way, who is your favored one ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... where lay the shades of the avaricious, prostrate on the earth, weeping over their sins. They who in life had resolutely turned their gaze from Heaven and fixed it on the things of the earth, must now grovel in the dust, denouncing avarice, and extolling the poor and liberal until the years have worn ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... scream. "Mrs. Temperley, come to the rescue. Your brother is calling us names. He says we grovel consistently and always." ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... answered. "The close and pernicious enthralment of a woman I never met till the night before last; a woman whose face haunts me; a woman who drags me to her side with the force of a magnet, there to grovel like a brain-sick fool and plead with her for a love which I already know is poison to my soul! Helen, Helen! You do not understand—you will never understand! Here, in the very air I breathe, I fancy I can trace the perfume she ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... is glossed over with a doubtful name. Again, we dress up our enemies in nicknames, and they march to the stake as assuredly as in san Benitos.... Strange, that a reptile should wish to be thought an angel; or that he should not be content to writhe and grovel in his native earth, without aspiring to the skies! It is from the love of dress and finery. He is the Chimney-sweeper on May-day all the year round: the soot peeps through the rags and tinsel, and ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin
... I used the expression. Words aren't anything. It's my life to me, too. And I've got to think for both of us. In a week, or ten days, I'll eat humble pie and climb down and grovel to Daniel. Then, when I'm pardoned, we'll tell everybody. It won't kill you to wait another fortnight anyway. And in the meantime we'd better see less of each other, since you're getting so worried about what your friends say ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... Andras, "of the delights of its villainy, and grovel in all that is low and base. Life is not worth living unless the air one breathes is pure and free! Man is not ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... deathly afraid, aren't you, birdie?" he queried softly. "You think because I'm bigger than you and a cannibal, I'm going to kill you." Kneeling, he looked fair into the black eyes—deep, mysterious as the wild itself. "You think this, and still you don't grovel, don't make a sound. You're brave, birdie, braver than most men." He paused, and one by one his hands loosened their grip. "I'm proud of you; so proud that I'm going to say good-bye." He straightened to his full height. ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... cried. "Having defied your God so long, shall I grovel to Him at the last? Having hated you so much, shall I seek your forgiveness now? At least of one thing I am glad—it was I who brought you here, and with me and through me ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... mis-informed that the War Council wish to see me (the last thing they do wish), I will take them at their word. I will buttonhole every Minister from McKenna and Lloyd George to Asquith and Bonar Law,—and grovel at their feet if by doing so I can hold them on to this, the biggest scoop that is, or ever has been, open ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... also find that in the truest sense we would live with men. We need not go out of our way to ingratiate ourselves with anybody. Nothing can make up for the loss of independence and native dignity of soul. It is not for a man, made in the image of God, to grovel, and demean himself ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... to the Knustausstellung with Mrs. Clemens. The office of art seems to be to grovel in the dirt before Emperors and this and that and the other damned breed of priests. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... are over. I acted rightly, and because I obeyed my passion. The poets are right, and all the prudent people only grovel in their worldly wisdom. It may not be true for every one, but for me to love and be loved, infinitely, with the love that conquers everything, is the sole end of life. It is enough; come what will, if love remain nothing else is missed. In the direst poverty, we should be as ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... sublimity. It outstrips me, transcends me, and leaves me far behind. It soars whilst I grovel; it flies whilst I creep. That is what Jesus meant when He took a little child and set him in the midst of the disciples and said, 'Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven!' The simplest, He meant, is always the sublimest. ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham
... such was the truth. He could tell himself now that he never wished to see Adelaide Houghton again. But, before anything of this could be achieved, he would have to own himself a sinner before her. He would have, as it were, to grovel at her feet. Hitherto, in all his intercourse with her, he had been masterful and marital. He had managed up to this point so to live as to have kept in all respects the upper hand. He had never yet been found out even in a mistake or an indiscretion. He had never given her an opening for the mildest ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... as fine as anything that Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still the gentleman, with all the pride of gentry;—but not the less is he the humble bedesman, aware that he is living upon charity, not made to grovel by any sense of shame, but knowing that, though his normal pride may be left to him, an outward demeanour of humility ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... paths where there is little risk and much profit: others again" (and here he lost his tranquil tone, and his self-possession) "others hunt a little profit through much danger, choosing rather to be in eternal strife and to put their hopes daily to hazard than to creep and crawl and sneak and grovel: and at last perhaps they venture into a chase where there is no profit at all—or where the best upshot will be that some dozen of hollow, smiling, fawning scoundrels, who sin according to act of parliament, and therefore are within the ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... see some of them!" she would wail to herself. "If I could just see mother or father or anybody from New York! Oh, I know I shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central Park—I never—never—never shall!" And she would grovel among her pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her sobs should be heard. Her feeling for her husband had become one of terror and repulsion. She was almost more afraid of his patronising, affectionate moments than she was of ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... come a voice, an' de win's went down, An' de lions grovel on de groun', An' de po' loss one am foun' an' sabed, For de Shepherd ebery ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... that Moissey had been Mrs. Cheprakov's lover. I noticed that when people went to her for money they used to apply to Moissey first, and once I saw a peasant, a charcoal-burner, black all over, grovel at his feet. Sometimes after a whispered conversation Moissey would hand over the money himself without saying anything to his mistress, from which I concluded that the transaction was settled on his ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... occasional whiff of a cigar. Then, added to the occasional whiff, were occasional catches of derogatory remarks, which came home to me as unpleasantly as did the tobacco: "A chap with a sword like that should live up to it, and not grovel over a basin."—And a quotation from the Burial of Sir John Moore: "He lay like a warrior taking ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould |
