"Grovelling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... able to get a dish of glory and a dish of beef-steak on the same day; in consequence of which, the heart, which ought properly to be soaring in the clouds, or, at all events, in a castle half way up, is more generally to be found grovelling about a hen-roost, in the vain hope, that, if it cannot get hold of the hen herself, it may at least hit upon an egg; and such, I remember, was the state of my feelings on this occasion, in consequence of my having dined the three preceding ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... sacred person of the "Right Honourable William, Lord Marquis of Harrington," and showing, almost pathetically, how frequently the literary workers of Queen Anne's "golden age" were wont to beg the influence of some powerful patron. The dedication seems absolutely grovelling when viewed from the present standards, but Mr. Rowe and his friends saw therein nothing more remarkable than respectful homage to one of the world's great men. The republic of letters was then an ...
— The Palmy Days of Nance Oldfield • Edward Robins
... wheel; now he glories; now the bells in heaven do ring; now the angels shout for joy, yea, are bid to do so, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which was lost' (Luke 15:1-10). Now also the sinner, as a token of being overcome, lies grovelling at his foot, saying, 'Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies, whereby the people fall under ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... illustrate so remarkably the powers of man's imagination; some of us admire and even humbly try to follow them in their high philosophical excursions, though we know the risk of being snubbed by the inquiry whether grovelling dissectors of monkeys and blackbeetles can hope to enter into the empyreal kingdom of speculation. But still we feel that our business is different; humbler if you will, though the diminution of dignity is, perhaps, compensated ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... of African colonization which originated in and is perpetuated by a worldly, Pharoah-like policy beneath the dignity of a magnanimous and Christian people;—a system which receives much of its vitality from ad captandum appeals to popular prejudices, and to the unholy, grovelling passions of the canaille;—a system that interposes every possible obstacle in the way of the improvement and elevation of the colored man in the land of his birth;—that instigates the enactment of laws ...
— Autographs for Freedom, Volume 2 (of 2) (1854) • Various
... owe nothing to another, is the praise which men, who do not much think what they are saying, bestow sometimes upon others, and sometimes on themselves; and their imaginary dignity is naturally heightened by a supercilious censure of the low, the barren, the grovelling, the servile imitator. It would be no wonder if a student, frightened by these terrors and disgraceful epithets, with which the poor imitators are so often loaded, should let fall his pencil in mere despair, conscious how much he has been indebted ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... ideal picture, and not reality, with which we have to do. Hence the number of these idolaters was seventy—the successors of the seventy whom Moses led up to Sinai to see the God of Israel! And now here they are grovelling before brute forms painted on the walls in a hole in the dark. Their leader bears a name which might have startled them in their apostasy, and choked their prayers in their throats, for Jaazan-iah means 'the Lord hears.' Each man has a censer ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... rushed into the room, staff in hand, at the outcry. Now he stood glowering indignantly upon the grovelling bearer. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... glorious Miss Hollister. Surely no one who had once met her could do otherwise than think of her constantly, he reflected; and the reflection made him a bit jealous. What business had others to think of her? Impertinent, grovelling mortals! No man was good enough to do that—no, not even himself. But he could change. He could at least try to be worthy of thinking about her, and he knew of no other man who could. He'd like to catch any one else doing so little as mentioning ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs
... maintained, indeed, that the withdrawal from the Indian of the Government's protecting arm, and the recognition of his position, as no longer that of a needy, grovelling annuitant, but as one of equal footing with the white before the law, would—far from bringing blessings in their train—promote, with other evils, a pernicious development, with calamitous reaction upon him, of the aggrandizing instinct of the white, who would lure and entrap him into ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... hissed over his shoulder. But the dragoman had screamed out something which arrested the blow, and which brought the chief and the lieutenant to his side with a new interest upon their swarthy faces. The others crowded in also, and formed a dense circle around the grovelling, pleading man. ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... While you seemed but a demon of vengeance, you commanded terror, and to good purpose; but such a foul fiend as thou hast of late shown thyself—such a very worthless, base trickster of the devil—such a sordid grovelling imp of perdition, can gain nothing but scorn from ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... they can't expound, Prepare a fancied bliss or woe? Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground, Their ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... took the other, and we charged that door with such hearty goodwill that at the first assault it yielded, lock and hinges being torn from the woodwork, and the door itself falling flat with a crash like the crack o' doom. Ajax, the log, and I rolled into the next room, and as we were grovelling on the floor I saw that the room was full of Chinamen, and that our late guide was in the middle of them. The light was so bad that I was unable to see more than this. It was plain that we had to deal with an organised gang of criminals. Thugs who practised their trade as a fine art. ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... policy, who would like to negotiate and compromise, who still believe in the possibility of a reconciliation with France, who still think that the pen should smoothen the rugged path before us, or unravel the knot of our difficulties—those cowardly, grovelling hearts are the real enemies of our cause, and more dangerous than Napoleon with all his armies. For they are weighing down our courage, paralyzing our arms, and stifling our enthusiasm. But for ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... men would have wished to be known, sprang toward me with well-meant, if rough, caresses,—evidently the few scratches he had amounted to nothing. I forgave him the cat cheerfully, but my poor carnations! They do not belong to the grovelling tribe of herbs that bend and refuse to break like portulaca, chickweed, and pusley the accursed. Fortunately, just then, a scene of the past year, which had come to me by report, floated across my vision. Our young hounds, Bob and Pete, in the heat of undisciplined rat-catching (for these ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... conquer that world, with angels at our head, in order that we may establish the happiness of man by a divine dominion, and crushing the political atheism that is now desolating existence, utterly extinguish the grovelling tyranny of self-government.' ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... and openly avowed his intention to make her suffer. His infatuation became a mania, and, up to the very day on which the Countess told the story, he persisted in his appeals to the Princess. In person he had gone to her to plead his suit, on his knees, grovelling at her feet. He went so far as to exclaim madly in the presence of the alarmed but relentless object of his love that he would win her or turn the ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... been a time when certain of his private occupations—interviews with personages of wealth or influence, cryptic conversations, resulting always, however defiant the beginning, in the same grovelling pleas and promises—had amused and interested the cynic most mightily: been the cream of his labors, indeed. But latterly even these scenes had palled; and it came to him with a faint shock of surprise that he was beginning to remember with relief those few occasions on which such talks had ended, ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... reproduce in his work the character of the place which gave him birth. For, of all the historians—I do not say of antiquity but of all time—none is more rationalistic than he, none more free from any belief in the 'visions and omens, the monstrous legends, the grovelling superstitions and unmanly craving for the supernatural' ([Greek] {197a}) which he is compelled to notice himself as the characteristics of some of the historians who preceded him. Fortunate in the land ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... want anything. If you think that the columns of the People's Banner are to be bought, you must have opinions respecting the press of the day which make me pity you as one grovelling in the very dust. The daily press of London is pure and immaculate. That is, the morning papers are. Want, indeed! What do you ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... and forbore to utter any of those pious commonplaces by which she might have attempted to bring him to a better frame of mind. She had tact enough to divine that he was best left to himself—left to struggle out of this grovelling state by some effort of his own, rather than to be dragged from the slough of despond ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... Rumple, diving hastily to recover the volumes, and promptly knocking his head against that of Billykins, who was also grovelling for the same purpose, while Nealie plunged into the business of their visit, hoping to divert the attention of the master of the house from the awkwardness of the boys, poor things; but Sylvia giggled ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... the punishment of heaven on you grovelling wretches. Keep this in your head and be more careful hereafter. You can never talk ...
— Botchan (Master Darling) • Mr. Kin-nosuke Natsume, trans. by Yasotaro Morri
... "paint a saint," whom he can still speak of, in tones of earnest admiration, as "wily as an eel." His implied concessions and merely parenthetic denials, his abominable insinuations and suggestions, come, evidently enough, from the instincts of a grovelling mind, literally incapable of appreciating goodness, as well as from professional irritation at ...
— An Introduction to the Study of Browning • Arthur Symons
... been, heretofore, often unjustly accused of ambition. Low, grovelling souls, who are utterly incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of pure patriotism,—beings who, forever keeping their own selfish ends in view, decide all public measures by their presumed influence ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... glow of a candle or torch but the blessed white light of day. It was the longed-for opening, though still far away. He thought that he had out-distanced Radicofani and stumbled on, exultation giving him new strength when a sudden eclipse of this star of hope made him crouch motionless, grovelling close to the earth. A man's head and shoulders were silhouetted blackly against the brightness. The man peered cautiously into the tunnel, and listened; but neither hearing nor ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... devil, perhaps," he said, with stony helplessness, "but when I received your letter I was grovelling on my knees praying that I might get back to her—and atone—as far as a ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... precepts of the purest morality and benevolence, sanctioned by a life of humility, innocence, and simplicity of manners, neglect of riches, absence of worldly ambition and honors, with an eloquence and persuasiveness which have not been surpassed. These could not be inventions of the grovelling authors who relate them. They are far beyond the powers of their feeble minds. They show that there was a character, the subject of their history, whose splendid conceptions were above all suspicion of being interpolations from their hands. Can we be at a loss in separating such ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... far above us. If you WILL fling yourself under the wheels, Juggernaut will go over you, depend upon it; and if you and I, my dear friend, had Kotow performed before us every day,—found people whenever we appeared grovelling in slavish adoration, we should drop into the airs of superiority quite naturally, and accept the greatness with which the world ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... "What are ye grovelling down there for, ye drunken beast?" shouted the angry waiter, as he came down with a thud. "Why don't you walk on your two feet ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... forthwith had gone out of the remnants of their minds over the deadly nature of that accident. It must have been a pretty sight, the fierce industry of these beggars toiling on a motionless ship that floated quietly in the silence of a world asleep, fighting against time for the freeing of that boat, grovelling on all-fours, standing up in despair, tugging, pushing, snarling at each other venomously, ready to kill, ready to weep, and only kept from flying at each other's throats by the fear of death that stood silent behind them like an ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... say that; but, I pray you, have mercy on me.' The poor, distorted figure threw itself down, grovelling at ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... whole grovelling tribe of Leppins, outnumbering the Van Horns, possibly, are ready with oral testimony and a shower of depositions, and what all besides. Ouf! not an inch do I yield. J'y suis; j'y reste. Not an inch should anybody else yield. Well, thank me, Roger, for having given you this ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... felt some sensible torment. Many have climbed to the top of it, who heard the groans more easily than they could below. But one among the rest, being on the top thereof, spake to the tree; but presently came down much aghast, and lay grovelling on the earth, three hours speechless. In the end reviving, he said: "Brampton, Brampton, thou art much bound to pray!"' The Earl of Lincoln caused one of the arms of the ash to be lopped off and a hole bored through the body, and then was the sound, or hollow voice, heard more audibly than ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... a vehement revolt against the present. Meanwhile, however, the answers generally given to sceptics are apparently contradictory. To limit our hopes to this world, it is sometimes said, is to encourage mere grovelling materialism; in the same breath it is added that to ask for an interest in the fate of our fellow-creatures here, instead of ourselves hereafter, is to make excessive demands upon human selfishness. The doctrine it seems is at once too elevated ...
— Prose Masterpieces from Modern Essayists • James Anthony Froude, Edward A. Freeman, William Ewart Gladstone, John Henry Newman and Leslie Steph
... flattery, is one of the most accomplished children I ever saw in my life, with quite the air of fashion, to keep such company. Are you not afraid that Master Merton should insensibly contract bad habits, and a grovelling way of thinking? For my own part, as I think a good education is a thing of the utmost consequence in life, I have spared no pains to give my dear Matilda every possible advantage." "Indeed," replied Mrs Merton, "one may see ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... warbles through the vernal wood: The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine! Feels at each thread, and lives along the line: In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true From poisonous herbs extracts the healing dew? How instinct varies in the grovelling swine, Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with thine! 'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier, Forever separate, yet forever near! Remembrance and reflection how allied; What thin partitions sense from thought divide: And middle natures, how they long to join, Yet never ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... him, grovelling upon the deck, and sick he was indeed; with much difficulty we got him on shore; within a very few days, to the best of my remembrance five days, I perfected his cure; we became very familiar; I observed in him that he had some secret thoughts that ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... adherence to a cause. When King George reached England he dismissed Mar from office, suspecting him of sympathy with the Jacobite movement. Mar had expected something of the kind, and had written an obsequious and a grovelling letter to George, in which he spoke of the king's "happy accession," professed unbounded devotion to the house of Hanover, and promised that "You shall ever find in me as faithful a subject as ever any king had." The new king, however, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... self-sacrifice for another. Benevolent abstinence is its own reward and asks no more. Abstinence in hope of gain, denying himself while another is using his wealth, cannot be regarded as an act of benevolence, but of a selfish grovelling greed; more gratified to see his wealth increase than to himself enjoy its use. That is the spirit of the miser and receives the contempt of all right ...
— Usury - A Scriptural, Ethical and Economic View • Calvin Elliott
... hard-hearted tyrant who had rejected her prayer, on the sleek dames who would point the finger at her child, on the smug town that had looked askance at her all these years—that had set her beyond the pale of its dull grovelling pleasures, and shut her up in that lonely House on the Wall! Now—now she had it in her hand to take tenfold for one. Her face so shone at the thought that the man watching her felt a touch ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... broke the friendship. The power of Russia, Prussia, and Austria were hopelessly wrecked more than once, and on each occasion they intrigued him into war again, and then threw themselves at his feet, grovelling supplicants for mercy, ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... he exclaimed loftily. "But there, what can you expect from a low, grovelling beetle? Away, sir, pass on! Your very presence is distasteful to me. The idea of placing ME upon the same level—in the same family, as a low-born, mean, insignificant, utterly valueless——" Here the Diamond fairly choked ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant
... of Beaubocage dried his tears with an effort. Beaubocage—Cotenoir. Ah, me! what empty sounds those two once magic names seemed to him now that his son's life had been sacrificed to so paltry an ambition, so sordid a passion, so vile and grovelling a desire! He took the boy on his knee, and kissed him tenderly. His thoughts bridged over a chasm of five-and-twenty years as his lips pressed that fair young brow; and it was his own son—the son whom he had disowned—whose soft hair was mingling itself now with the grey ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... are lowered by the influence which is exercised over them by physical science. But any interpretation of nature by physical science is far in advance of such idealism. The philosophy of Berkeley, while giving unbounded license to the imagination, is still grovelling on the level ...
— Theaetetus • Plato
... deserts many duties of life? Will you act in a manner consistently with courage, and its attendants, greatness of soul, resolution, patience, and contempt for all worldly things? Can you hear yourself called a great man when you lie grovelling, dejected, and deploring your condition with a lamentable voice; no one would call you even a man while in such a condition. You must therefore either abandon all pretensions to courage, or else pain must be put ...
— Cicero's Tusculan Disputations - Also, Treatises On The Nature Of The Gods, And On The Commonwealth • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... audience wholly unprepared to accept it. For instance, in Monsieur Alphonse, a husband, on discovering that his wife has had an intrigue before their marriage, and that a little girl whom she wishes to adopt is really her daughter, instantly raises her from the ground where she lies grovelling at his feet, and says: "Creature de Dieu, toi qui as failli et te repens, releve toi, je te pardonne." This evangelical attitude on the part of Admiral de Montaiglin was in itself very surprising, and perhaps not wholly admirable, to the Parisian public of 1873; but Dumas ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... people seeks; proclaims aloud It was no time for counsel; in their spears Lay all their prudence now: the tyrant yet Was not so firmly seated on his throne, But that one shock of their united force Would dash him from the summit of his pride Headlong and grovelling in the dust. ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... Science?" demanded Heliobas. "The foot of the mountain, at which men now stand, grovelling and uncertain how to climb? or the glittering summit ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... suppliant look, others are stoical, but all will have to roll at last upon the sand of the arena, condemned by the inexorable caprice of a people greedy for blood. "The modest virgin," says Juvenal, "turning down her thumb, orders that the breast of yonder man, grovelling in the dust, shall be torn open." And all—the heavily armed Samnite, the Gaul, the Thracian, the secutor; the dimachoerus, with his two swords; the swordsman who wears a helmet surmounted with a fish—the one ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier
... fruit of industry, attention, labour, and pains. At least I am resolved to try my doctrine by the test of experience.' There is a class of people, however, to whom this will sound heretical, forbidding them, as it were, the right to babble with grovelling familiarity of Rab, Rob, Robbie, Scotia's Bard, and the Ploughman Poet; and insisting on his name being spoken with conscious pride of ...
— Robert Burns - Famous Scots Series • Gabriel Setoun
... armlet the Wanderer fell on the earth, grovelling among the ashes of the pyre, for he knew the gold ring which he had brought from Ephyre long ago, for a gift to his wife Penelope. This was the bracelet of the bride of his youth, and here, a mockery and a terror, were those kind arms in which he had lain. Then his strength was ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... fight me! If you like to have it in black and white, I've been all the brains of the business here—single-handed! It was I got the secret of the wolf bait from the mother of your lame friend here," he pointed with his unoccupied hand to my grovelling boy, "when first I followed Paulette out from New York and laid up in Skunk's Misery to wait till I had a clear way to get to La Chance. That old ass Thompson gave me that, when I scooped him up on the road. After I'd used him, two of my men drowned him in Lac Tremblant—and you'd never have ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... stock which, coeval with the republic itself, had produced the conqueror of Tyre, given a queen to Hungary, and more than one Doge to Venice. The brilliancy of this descent was tarnished in the present chief representative of the family by the most base and grovelling avarice; for at that moment, in the recent war, at which all other Venetians were devoting their whole fortunes to the service of the state, Morosini sought in the distresses of his country an opening ...
— The Stones of Venice, Volume III (of 3) • John Ruskin
... a ravening dog, at the damsel, who, fallen on her knees and held fast by the two mastiffs, cried him mercy, and smiting her with all his might amiddleward the breast, pierced her through and through. No sooner had she received this stroke than she fell grovelling on the ground, still weeping and crying out; whereupon the knight, clapping his hand to his hunting-knife, ripped open her loins and tearing forth her heart and all that was thereabout, cast them to the two mastiffs, who devoured them ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... that the ancestors of the Highlanders, i.e., the Picts and Scots, originally came from Ireland and are of Formosian and Milesian descent, it will be readily understood that their proud old clans—and rightly proud, for who but a grovelling money grubber would not sooner be descended from a warrior, elected chief, on account of his all-round prowess, than from some measly hireling whose instincts were all mercenary?—possess ghosts that are ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... made a powerful impression on the one-year volunteer. From the moment when Heppner had lain grovelling on the ground before him a thorough change came over Trautvetter. The whole scene had been unspeakably revolting to him; he was seized with a grim horror on his own account too. Half unconsciously the sight of the big imposing-looking ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... the height of self-abnegating greatness. God sometimes deprives men of the strength necessary for action, but He never robs them of the faculty of progress, of spiritual elevation. Head and heart throb with the same pulsation; the brain thinks not aright without the healthful heart. Meanness and grovelling are always voluntary, and their essence is to resist superiority, to struggle against it, to try to degrade it: thus, all the bitter reactions of the Past against the changes truly needed for the development of the Future, spring from a primeval ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... years; and yet here is one whose office it seems to be to watch it! My spirit felt the necessity of some exertion; and, with an energy for which a few minutes before I had hardly dared to hope, I poured out my soul in prayer. I besought mercy upon the blood-stained creature who was grovelling beside me; I asked that repentance and peace might be vouchsafed him; I begged, for our Redeemer's sake, that his last moments might know that untasted rapture of sin forgiven, and a cleansed soul, which faith alone can bring to fallen man; I conjured him to help and aid me ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... India are an ancient people. When thirty centuries ago our ancestors were grovelling in the lowest depths of primitive savagery, our fellow-Aryans of India were enjoying a civilization of their own, which was, in its way, unique and distinguished. Their philosophy shows testimony ...
— India's Problem Krishna or Christ • John P. Jones
... this same night the wealthy burgess Pranzo, who, having prepared a banquet, was standing in his doorway awaiting the arrival of his guests, did see, by the light of the said Cethru's lanthorn, a beggar woman and her children grovelling in the gutter for garbage, whereby his appetite was lost completely; and, forasmuch as he, Pranzo, has lodged a complaint against the Constitution for permitting women and children to go starved, the Watch do hereby indict, accuse, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... attending this species of intimate direction, when wisely and skilfully managed, cannot be doubted. Grovelling and imperfect natures have often thus been lifted up and carried in the arms of superior wisdom and purity. The confession administered by a Fenelon or a Francis de Sales was doubtless a beautiful and most invigorating ordinance; but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... contemporaries, or successors of Shakespeare and Webster has given proof of this double faculty—this coequal mastery of terror and pity, undiscolored and undistorted, but vivified and glorified, by the splendor of immediate and infallible imagination. The most grovelling realism could scarcely be so impudent in stupidity as to pretend an aim at more perfect presentation of truth; the most fervent fancy, the most sensitive taste, could hardly dream of a desire for more ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... the service of mankind to be A guardian god below; still to employ The mind's brave ardor in heroic aims, Such as may raise us o'er the grovelling herd, And make us shine ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... have now a mind to look, Perhaps their graver fancies may be took With what is here, though but in homely rhymes: But he who pleases all must rise betimes. Some, I persuade me, will be finding fault, Concluding, here I trip, and there I halt: No doubt some could those grovelling notions raise By fine-spun terms, that challenge might the bays. But should all men be forc'd to lay aside Their brains that cannot regulate the tide By this or that man's fancy, we should have The wise unto the fool become a slave. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the Doctor, recalling himself from a downward look at the grovelling Browett, "she made me promise to be in at four o'clock. Really I couldn't evade her—it was either four o'clock to-day or the first possible day. What could I do? Aunt Bell, I won't pretend that this being looked up to and sought ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... aristocracy has learnt to pay these potentates the respect which is their due. Well-born men and women trot along Park Lane in obedience to the hooting calls of motor horns. No one considers himself degraded by grovelling ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... Wang was grovelling in the dirt at Lin's feet, but Lin answered him only with a loud laugh which finally burst into a roar. "Duck feathers! ha! ha! ha! and all over your body? Why, that's too good a story to believe! You'll be wanting to live in the water next. ...
— A Chinese Wonder Book • Norman Hinsdale Pitman
... penetration, poetic grandeur, and fervid sublimity of imagination, Carlyle is the superior beyond measure. But Emerson is as much his superior in that high and transparent sanity, which is not further removed from midsummer madness than it is from a terrene and grovelling mediocrity. This sanity, among other things, kept Emerson in line with the ruling tendencies of his age, and his teaching brings all the aid that abstract teaching can, towards the solution of the moral problems of modern societies. Carlyle chose to fling himself ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. 1, Essay 5, Emerson • John Morley
... against the contrast of this hideous place with the light and colour she had left. She was a rebel. The contrast was too great. How could she live in a room like this? How could anybody live? It was not life at all, but a mere grovelling. And Sally had tasted something that thrilled her. She had come into contact with a life resembling the life led by those who travelled in the motor broughams she so much admired. She was ravenous for such a life. Her natural arrogance was roused and inflamed ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... stared at him as though he were grovelling stupidity, and then lay back on her cushions with a "You will drive ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... and instantly a soldier swooped upon the grovelling figure, twitched him to his feet and drew him apart, stuttering furious ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wickedest, which ever disgraced an immortal being? What will you say, when heaven and hell are before you, and the books are opened, and therein you find the sum total of your youthful desires and dreams, your passionate wishes for things of this world, your low-minded, grovelling tastes, your secret contempt and aversion for serious subjects and persons, your efforts to attract the looks of sinners and to please those who displease God; your hankerings after worldly gaieties and luxuries, your admiration of ...
— Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. VII (of 8) • John Henry Newman
... by finding out a Method to supply this natural Defect in his Subject. Accordingly he leaves the Adversary of Mankind, in the last View which he gives us of him, under the lowest State of Mortification and Disappointment. We see him chewing Ashes, grovelling in the Dust, and loaden with supernumerary Pains and Torments. On the contrary, our two first Parents are comforted by Dreams and Visions, cheared with Promises of Salvation, and, in a manner, raised to a greater Happiness than that which they had forfeited: In short, Satan is represented ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... not half grown, opened formidable jaws and long claws. Gerard, in a fury of excitement and agitation, flung himself on it, and delivered a tremendous blow on its nose with his axe, and the creature staggered; another, and it lay grovelling, with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... civilisation, and enjoying all the rights of manhood under British laws. From their earliest infancy they have known no language but the English, and no religion but Christianity; while the former are still barbarians, grovelling in fetishism, cursed with slavery, ignorant, debased, and wantonly cruel. The West India negro has so much contempt for his African cousin, that he invariably speaks of him by the ignominious title of "bushman." In fact, the former ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... mankind has marched around the globe again and again. The leaders—the head—were the favored few, priests and kings, warriors and nobles; the vast tail, the untaught, the unawakened, the ignorant, servile masses, the grovelling slaves, but a remove from the ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield
... become; but mark my words—if you are ever tempted by passion, and vanity, and fine ladies, to form liaisons, as the Jezebels call them, snares, and nets and labyrinths of blind ditches, to keep you down through life, stumbling and grovelling, hating yourself and hating the chain to which you cling—in that hour pray—pray as if the devil had you by the throat—to Almighty God, to help you out of that cursed slough! There is nothing else ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... "Are you a man, to lie grovelling on the floor like that? Rise up, or you will lose my esteem for ever, if that be of any ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... in Italian and every other language of which he was master, but obtained no reply. The man remained stupidly, idiotically dumb, only grovelling lower and ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... presently from the pianist's drooping head to the face of the protegee, and the contrast between what was expressed by this young person's gaze and attitude and what he was himself feeling again drew his attention to her. No grovelling and no soaring was here, but an elation almost stern, a brooding concentration almost maternal, a dedicated power. Madame Okraska, he reflected, must be an extraordinary person if she really deserved that gaze. He didn't believe that she quite did. His ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... little peace and independence! Every obligation we receive from our fellow-creatures is a new shackle, takes from our native freedom, and debases the mind, makes us mere earthworms—I am not fond of grovelling! ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... children for starvation wages; coal-mines and private property in land, dividing the population of Heaven into two classes, one revelling in riches and luxury, destructive of soul and body, the other grovelling in poverty, also destructive of all that is best in life? If not, how can they consistently support the system which inevitably produces that state of things ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... mounted in his chariot and returning from some wondrous victory. Besides, humility in my opinion is more a weakness than a virtue, . . and even granting it were a virtue, it is not possible to Kings,—not as long as people continue to fawn on royalty like grovelling curs, and lick the sceptred hand that often ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... answered, "and thou ridest as the furies that pursue the souls of the wicked—as the devils of the mountains after a liar. He would not have lasted much farther, this bundle of sweating dust. Get up, fellow!" he said, touching Phraortes's head with his toe. "Thou liest grovelling there like ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... she, too, was pale, and her hazel eyes may have looked a little larger than usual. But she had herself well in hand. Half sitting, half leaning on the Captain's table, she preserved her courage sufficiently to seek to calm the octoroon waiting-woman who was grovelling at her feet in a ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... as he who tends cattle and horses is called, despises the shepherd as a grovelling, inferior creature, and considers 'tailing sheep' as an employment too tardigrade for a man ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... pessimism that haunts their literature, and the dram-drinking habits of the peasantry. The Muscovite temperament and the Muscovite climate naturally lead to idealist strivings against the hardships of life or a dull grovelling amongst them. Melancholy or vodka is the ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... "Well, it isn't grovelling yet in the mire with popular fiction, but it is standing still, and whatever is standing still is going backward, or at least other things are passing it. To hold its own, the vaudeville must grab something more than its own. It must venture into regions yet unexplored. ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... mobs of India or China"? Or this about his Concord neighbors, as he looks down upon them from a near-by hill: "On whatever side I look off, I am reminded of the mean and narrow-minded men whom I have lately met there. What can be uglier than a country occupied by grovelling, coarse, and low-minded men?—no scenery can redeem it. Hornets, hyenas, and baboons are not so great a curse to a country as men of a similar character." Tried by his ideal standards, his neighbors and his countrymen generally ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... accused of ambition in presenting this measure. Ambition! inordinate ambition! Low, grovelling souls who are utterly incapable of elevating themselves to the higher and nobler duties of pure patriotism—beings who, forever keeping their own selfish aims in view, decide all public measures by their presumed influence on their own aggrandizement—judge me by the venal rule which they prescribe ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord
... world has looked on with mingled pity and scorn at the blindness of the man who stood there and paraded his faithfulness; while all the world has bent with a pity that was near to love, a pity that was full of sympathy because man recognized his condition and experience, for the poor creature grovelling upon the pavement, unwilling and unable even to look upon the altar, but who, standing afar off, said, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Whatever else you say, don't say, "I have been the very best I could." That means that you have not merely lived in the rooms of your ...
— Addresses • Phillips Brooks
... yet another? yet? O desperate state Of grovelling honour! seest thou this, O sun, And do we see thee after? Methinks, day Should lose his light, when men do lose their shames, And for the empty circumstance of life, ...
— Sejanus: His Fall • Ben Jonson
... wretchedness. Can a true woman love a man who lacks principle—who will sacrifice honour for a few paltry dollars—who will debase himself for gain—whose gross sensuality suffocates all high, spiritual love? No! no! It is impossible! And she who unites herself with such a man, must either shrink, grovelling, down to his mean ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... in grovelling before me for no sort of reason, and soon bores me, so I send him away to the kitchen, where ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... nature, sometimes vouchsafed even to the cow, like to imagine themselves advanced people, 'destroyers,' and to push themselves into the 'new movement,' and this quite sincerely. Meanwhile the really new people are very often unobserved by them, or even despised as reactionaries of grovelling tendencies. But I don't think there is any considerable danger here, and you really need not be uneasy for they never go very far. Of course, they might have a thrashing sometimes for letting their fancy run away with them and to teach them their place, but no more; ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... which may mean much, or little, or nothing, and which guides in no degree. That the true 'result of the natural style of gardening is seen rather in the absence of all defects and incongruities, than in the creation of any special wonders or miracles,' is a proposition better suited to the grovelling apprehension of the herd, than to the fervid dreams of the man of genius. The merit suggested is, at best, negative, and appertains to that hobbling criticism which, in letters, would elevate Addison ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... such a miserable, thoughtless wretch!" he thought. "How could I neglect everything which might have helped to save my poor father for the sake of grovelling here, and all the time my mother ill, perhaps dying, while I slept, not seeming to ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... that, if that be such a crime to you, O strew me forth upon the watery waste, And drown me in the deep. If death be due, 'Twere sweet of death by human hands to taste.' He cried, and, grovelling, our knees embraced, And, clasping, clung to us. We bid him stand And tell his birth and trouble; and in haste Himself the sire Anchises pledged his hand, And he at length took heart, ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... of irreconcilables, who welcomed the destruction of their fatherland in order that the man who had made it the glory and the envy of the world should be driven from it. Many of these creatures were members of the same Senate who, a few years previously, sent Napoleon a fervent address couched in grovelling language, imploring him to cement the hold his personality had on the national life. The following is what they say, and what they ask him to do:—"You have brought us out of the chaos of the past, you have made us bless the benefits of the present. Great man, complete your work, and make ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman
... prudence boast its grovelling art To chill the generous sympathies of heart, Teach to subdue each thought sublimely wild, And crush, like Herod, ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various
... one of those curiosities of history the key of which is found in the grovelling nature of most human ambition. The son of Napoleon was far away. For those who were actuated by vulgar hopes, to wait was to run the risk of losing those first favors which are always easiest to obtain from a government that has need to win forgiveness for its accession. ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... veracity, with which he salutes them. Their Christian character, like seeds sown in some favoured tropical land, had sprung up swiftly; yet not with the dangerous kind of swiftness which presages decay of the growth. It was only a few days since they had been grovelling before idols, but now he can speak of 'your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope' . . . and declare that the Gospel 'sounded out' from them—the word which he employs is that which is technically used ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... wounds him no more— hollow-hearted friendship proffers not its hand to sting—love exercises not its fatal sorcery—foes are afar—and his heart, if not the waves, is comparatively at peace. And oh! the wonders of the deep! Ocean! tame is the soul that loves not thee! grovelling the mind that scorns the joys thou impartest! To lean our head on the vessel's side, and in idleness of spirit ponder on bygone scene, that has brought us anything but happiness,—to gaze on the curling waves, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... half way, and leave the bottom legs sticking out for you to knock your head against, or hang your hat upon; no bed, no bedding. There was an old sack, by way of rug, before the fireplace, and four or five children were grovelling about, among the sand on the floor. The execution was only put in, to get 'em out of the house, for there was nothing to take to pay the expenses; and here I stopped for three days, though that was a mere ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... Mr. Offitt asked "if any brother had anything to offer for the good of the order." This called Mr. Bott to his feet, and he made a speech, on which he had been brooding all day, against the pride of so-called science, the arrogance of unrighteous wealth, and the grovelling superstition of Christianity. The light of the kerosene lamp shone full on the decorated side of his visage, and touched it to a ferocious purpose. But the brotherhood soon wearied of his oratory, in which the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... the attempt at suicide and the revolver-shot had completely unnerved her. All her energies were dispersed, like the sticks of a bundle whose string has been cut; and she had a painful impression that the man, who was grovelling at her feet, was in reality slowly getting ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... with one glorious thrust of his indignant spear, why did not guilty Israel avenge that splendid murder? Why did not every man of the tribe of Simeon become a Goel to the dauntless assassin? Because Vice cannot stand for one moment before Virtue's uplifted arm. Base and grovelling as they were, these money-mongering Jews felt, in all that remnant of their souls which was not yet eaten away by infidelity and avarice, that the Son of ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... would be combined; and the authority of avowal would be united to the security of concealment. The serpents in Virgil, after they had destroyed Laocoon, found an asylum from the vengeance of the enraged people behind the shield of the statue of Minerva. And, in the same manner, everything that is grovelling and venomous, everything that can hiss, and everything that can sting, would take sanctuary in the recesses of ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... church bells.... The carillon was ringing.... Church bells were chiming through the night. To Bobinette, the abject creature grovelling in the mire of the roadway, the bells sounded ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... groan, a roar, a swift surging of men, thick, black, like swarming bees. Some bent above the two prone figures. Others caught at the rope, grovelling, snarling. ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... fell grovelling to his one good knee. It was Thor, god of thunder and lightning and ...
— Regeneration • Charles Dye
... was grovelling upon the ground. He was hairless, like the one they had seen escape the attack of the giant bat, and his cheek was slashed with a healing cut that might have been made by a ripping talon. He abased himself before ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... wandered, dumb Till evening, when he paused, thoroughly spent On a blind hill-top: down the gorge he went, Yielding himself up as to an embrace. The moon came out; like features of a face, A querulous fraternity of pines, Sad blackthorn clumps, leafless and grovelling vines Also came out, made gradually up The picture; 'twas ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... lay aside the ensigns of her dignity, at the veering of the popular air. Virtue, throwing open heaven to those who deserve not to die, directs her progress through paths of difficulty, and spurns with a rapid wing grovelling cowards and the slippery earth. There is likewise a sure reward for faithful silence. I will prohibit that man, who shall divulge the sacred rites of mysterious Ceres, from being under the same roof with me, or from setting sail with me in the same fragile ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... Despite his prayers and grovelling pleas, therefore, they hurled him bodily out upon the deck, delivering him to the mercy of the fearful things from which they ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quarry; but all in vain, as his whining testified, so that poor Dick was called off, and had to run nearly a quarter of a mile before he could find a place to creep through, which he did at last by scraping a little of the earth from beneath the pales, and then grovelling through, getting stuck about the middle of his back, though, and whining till he got free, which he did after two or three struggles, and then ran to join his young masters, who were whistling and calling him as loudly as they could, and who now turned their steps homeward, for Harry declared ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... slew it with the knife, and tossed its body on the ground. At length, it seemed, it reached the turn of the high- priestess. She set down the basket on the steps, moved into the centre of the ring, grovelled in the dust before the reptiles, and still grovelling lifted up her voice, between speech and singing, and with so great, with so insane a fervour of excitement, as struck a sort of horror ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... gentle reader will excuse me for dwelling on these and the like particulars, which, however insignificant they may appear to grovelling vulgar minds, yet will certainly help a philosopher to enlarge his thoughts and imagination, and apply them to the benefit of public as well as private life, which was my sole design in presenting this and other accounts of my travels to the world; wherein I have been chiefly studious of truth, ...
— Gulliver's Travels - Into Several Remote Regions of the World • Jonathan Swift
... scatter a wisp of mist and show startled eyes the grim fact that had always been there. And even while not consciously felt, guilt hampers the soul's insight into divine realities, clips its wings so that it cannot soar, paralyses its efforts after noble aims, and inclines it to ignoble grovelling as far away from thoughts of God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... purse of her lover, and his credit into the bargain, are taxed to the utmost to fit her out in becoming style. The wife of a free trapper to be equipped and arrayed like any ordinary and undistinguished squaw? Perish the grovelling thought! In the first place, she must have a horse for her own riding; but no jaded, sorry, earth-spirited hack, such as is sometimes assigned by an Indian husband for the transportation of his squaw and her pappooses: the wife of a free trader must have the most beautiful animal she can lay her ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... tired, and she began to feel angry with him, contemptuous too. The Arab could not find the money, and the little horn now piped its warning of departure. It was absolutely necessary for her to get in at once if she did not mean to stay at El-Akbara. She tried to pass the grovelling Arab, but as she did so he suddenly sprang up, jumped on to the step of the carriage, and, thrusting his body half through the doorway, began to address a torrent of Arabic to the passenger within. The horn sounded again, and ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... precincts of the temple were many priests gathered around the altars, praying, weeping, grovelling in the dust. Impostors in safety, they were not the less superstitious in danger! Calenus passed them, and entered the chamber yet to be seen in the south side of the court. Burbo followed him—the priest struck a light. Wine and viands strewed the table; ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton
... cumbered with rusty iron monsters of steam-boilers, wheels, cranks, pipes, furnaces, paddles, anchors, diving-bells, windmill-sails, and I know not what strange objects, accumulated by some speculator, and grovelling in the dust, underneath which—having sunk into the soil of their own weight in wet weather—they had the appearance of vainly trying to hide themselves. The clash and glare of sundry fiery Works upon the river-side, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... secure in this," replied Miss Malison, with ready flattery; for she knew Miss Grahame's love of designing, and really felt gratified at any plan tending to injure Mrs. Hamilton, whom she detested with all the malevolence of a mean and grovelling mind, which despised the virtue that was too ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... his cane tightly, as was his wont when working into a passion: 'juries is ineddicated, vulgar, grovelling wretches.' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... herself with the untimely fate of her lovely niece, and with the death of her mother, which had immediately followed it. At other times she congratulated herself for having repulsed far from her two wretched creatures, who, she said, had both dishonoured their family by their grovelling inclinations. Sometimes, at the sight of the many miserable objects with which Paris abounds, she would fly into a rage, and exclaim,—"Why are not these idle people sent off to the colonies?" As for the notions of humanity, virtue and religion, adopted by all nations, she said, ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... of the ambition to propagate one's own creed, and proselytize victoriously; hungerings to see self reflected in another convinced. In such efforts lie dangers as vulgar as the minds that make them, and love the excitement of them. But genuine love is far beyond such grovelling delights; and the peril of such a relation is in inverse proportion to the reality of ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... noble and proud heart felt humbled by this pious grovelling of her husband; "not so, we will be more than dust and food for worms. The dust of common mortals will be scattered in every direction by the hand of Time, and over their graves will History walk with destroying feet; but she ...
— Frederick the Great and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... littleness of his motives, which at once denoted both his baseness and his meanness, and marked him for a traitor and a trickster. Nay, in his style and writing there was the same mixture of vicious contrarieties;— the most grovelling ideas were conveyed in the most inflated language, giving mock consequence to low cavils, and uttering quibbles in heroics; so that his compositions disgusted the mind's taste, as much as his actions excited the soul's abhorrence. ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... upon Sheridan Knowles and Talfourd, among the moderns—and the base, malignant, and selfish partiality of theatrical managers, who insist upon performing those plays only which are adapted to the stage—whose grovelling souls have no sympathy with genius—whose ideas are fixed upon gain, have hitherto smothered those blazing illuminati, George Stephens and his syn—Syncretcis; have hindered their literary effulgence from breaking through the mists hung before the eyes of the public, by a weak, infatuated adherence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 5, 1841 • Various
... France grovelling at their feet, spending millions of francs to entertain the Tzar—France, a nation which must see a prospect of double her money returned before she parts with a sou; with the cathedrals filled with couronnes sent by the French press; ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... the inheritance. In most countries in these times the abjectness is vanishing; we have been set upon our feet; we have been allowed to walk; we are beginning to smile,—that is, some of us. Those whose fathers were helped on are nearer the man as he should be than those whose fathers are still grovelling. My child, I think, stands a perfect type of what culture and refinement can give. She is not an exception; there are thousands like her among our Jewish girls. Take any intrinsically pure-souled Jew from his coarser surroundings and give him the highest advantages, and ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... take this liberty, how mean, how grovelling and flat, would be their verse! As suppose they ...
— Essays and Miscellanies - The Complete Works Volume 3 • Plutarch
... blackest colours; though Dyer was by no means apt to deal in such portraits. Dyer said he was a man of the most mischievous, uncharitable, and malignant disposition. Sir Joshua Reynolds observed to me that Hawkins, though he assumed great outward sanctity, was not only mean and grovelling in dispostion, but absolutely dishonest. He never lived in any real intimacy with Dr. Johnson, who never opened his heart to him, or had in fact any accurate knowledge of his character.' Prior's Malone, pp. 425-7. See post, Feb. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... bent and grovelling, arms outstretched in ludicrous bewilderment, every line of him beseeching guidance along this path ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... ridding themselves of their vermin. As far as I can observe, many birds that dust themselves never wash: and I once thought that those birds that wash themselves would never dust; but here I find myself mistaken; for common house-sparrows are great pulveratrices, being frequency seen grovelling and wallowing in dusty roads; and yet they are great washers. ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... a somewhat soldierly manner; and the Catholic, by the very pomp with which he chants his Te Deum, somewhat conceals the meaning of his act, and, keeping God a little out of sight, makes his mass express the natural feeling of a human triumph. But the sleek Puritan, at once grovelling and presumptuous, mingles with his sanguinary mood all the morbid sickly conceit, all the crawling affected humility of the conventicle. All his bloodsheds are "mercies," and they are granted in answer to his long and miserable ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... in the darkness which she felt had been without a gleam of brightness for weeks and months. The mystery that had bewildered her was solved by the word; and from that moment she rose from grovelling in shame and self-pity, and began to live again ...
— Different Girls • Various
... your cathedrals: no! let the venerable orders of the hierarchy exist with all their advantages." And shall I tell them, "I reject your just and reasonable petition, not because it shakes the Church, but because there are others, while you lie grovelling upon the earth, that will kick and bite you"? Judge which of these descriptions of men comes with a fair request: that which says, "Sir, I desire liberty for my own, because I trespass on no man's conscience,"—or ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the stones bespattering the aged drunkard with its contents, he fell upon the grass wringing his hands and bemoaning his hard fate. The others met his grief with muttered curses, and one of them spurned the grovelling creature with his foot, showering ...
— The Old Homestead • Ann S. Stephens
... at an end forever, she disdained to seek meaner lovers among the humbler classes. Every offer made to her by men of medium rank, was spurned by the proud harlot with supreme contempt. 'I am a companion for nobility—not for the grovelling masses,' she would reply, in answer to all such offers; nor did the pinchings of want and hunger even for a moment shake her resolution, or disarm her prejudices. She might, had she been disposed, have still lived in comfort and even splendor, by becoming an inmate ...
— Venus in Boston; - A Romance of City Life • George Thompson
... amounting perhaps to monomania, and yielding one lesson to repay the world for his existence, viz. that there is no state of the soul so dangerous as that in which the vices of the sensualist are envenomed by the grovelling intellect of the scorner." ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... flowers, and peddling—in the portraiture of the moods and methods of love, living lives of frivolity, taking pleasure in mere riches and the lusts of the eye, while thousands of wretched mortals were grovelling in the mire.... Then where was our refuge? ... The Church was the refuge of God's people ... from Christ came the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... grovelling meanness, Philip sat and listened. Then, with eyes wandering across the floor, he said, "You have nothing to reproach yourself with. You did everything a man could do—everything. And she was innocent also. It ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... capable; to rob her highest faculties of their legitimate operation and reward; to belittle and narrow her mind; to dwarf her affections; to turn the harmonies of her nature to discord; and, as the human mind must be active, to compel her to employ hers with low and grovelling thoughts, which ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... chaff. It moved belly-deep in the standing grain, a hippopotamus, half-mired in river ooze, gorging rushes, snorting, sweating; a dinosaur wallowing through thick, hot grasses, floundering there, crouching, grovelling there as its vast jaws crushed and tore, and its enormous gullet swallowed, incessant, ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... talking about the flying machine. The brute looked as if he were quite capable of locking me up and starving or torturing me until I gave him the secret. My word, I should like to see him try! I'd have him grovelling at my ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith
... a poor politician who expects to see political liberty achieved or enjoyed by nations made up of 'base, grovelling' specimens of ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell
... it, shook my sword and cut at him, then we spun round and round in a mad waltz to the measured music of our meeting swords, and sometimes either wounded the other somewhat but not much, till I beat down his sword on to his head, that he fell grovelling, but not cut through. Verily, thereupon my lips opened mightily with ...
— The Hollow Land • William Morris
... believed just as now. The priest's authority has so mastered his faith, that it accommodates itself to any demand upon it; and the English stranger looks on the scene, for the first time, with a feeling of scorn, bewilderment, and shame at that grovelling credulity, those strange rites and ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of others to his. He cannot directly get any praise, therefore he would indirectly find excuse by shrouding his unworthiness under the blame of others. Hence detraction is a sign of a weak, ignoble spirit; it is an impotent and grovelling serpent, that lurks in the hedge, waiting opportunity to bite the heel of any ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... success had brought her, he had imagined himself a great writer, a man with a compelling message to his fellows. It seemed only necessary to reach out his hand in order to grasp a chaplet—a crown. With her the world seemed his debtor. Now he was a thing cast off, a broken boy grovelling at the foot of ...
— The Light of the Star - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... anything to do with all this underhand and grovelling intrigue. Mr. Ratcliffe was a man of dignity and self-respect, who left details to his subordinates. He waited calmly until the President, recovered from the fatigues of his journey, should begin to feel the effect of a Washington atmosphere. Then on Wednesday morning, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... know what you mean by grovelling, Mr. Bertram. I don't like grovellers myself. I like men who can keep their heads up—who, once having them above the water, will never allow them to sink. Some men in every age do win distinction and wealth and high place. These are ...
— The Bertrams • Anthony Trollope
... before the resurrection of their bodies cannot be conceived to suffer physically, since they lack the senses and organs of pain. So Dante pictures the damned united to forms shadowy yet real, palpable and visible. They sometimes lose the human semblance and assume more sinister shapes, grovelling as hideous serpents, bleeding and wailing from shrubs and trees, or bubbling ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... has at length struck. The flag is unfurled. The gentry want to extirpate us by means of poison, we will extirpate them with fire and sword. The brave shall live, the cowards shall die. Ye, who see your children, your parents tormented and grovelling in the dust, snatch up your arms and avenge them. Fear not the soldiers, they also will be on our side. Let none go who has short-cropped hair. Two deputies must proceed forthwith from every village to Hetfalu, which ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... conspirator!' said he. 'Get up, you grovelling hound! Here, Gerard, take charge of him and bring ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... far the greater part, thousands on thousands of the little monstrosities, fell prone and grovelling. Their hideous masklike faces hidden, there they lay on the moss and all among the undergrowth, the trampled, desecrated, befouled ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... grovelling before him wondered to see him calm, and plucking up spirit stood upright. "You must go back to her, and ask her to get it for you," Blondel said firmly. "You can be back within the ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... learn from an exceedingly well-penned epistle, addressed thus early to a school-fellow who had found his way to New York. In this remarkable letter, the boy seems to have written with prophetic instinct. "To confess my weakness, Ned," he says, "my ambition is prevalent, so that I contemn the grovelling condition of a clerk or the like, to which my fortune condemns me, and would willingly risk my life, though not my character, to exalt my station.... I mean to prepare the way for futurity.... I shall conclude by saying, I wish there was a war." This may be regarded ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... simply a wonder!—the most wonderful musical wonder in the world!—and she has a perfectly marvellous voice. Her master Gigue says that when she is sixteen she will have emperors at her feet! Emperors! There are only a few,—but they'll all be grovelling in the dust before her! You must prepare some pretty rooms for her, Spruce, those two at the top of the house that look right over the lawn and woods—and make everything as cosy as you can. I'll put the finishing touches. And I must send ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... Christianity as far as you are concerned—He would not have been different in essence from other teachers,—though high above them in degree,—who speak to us of the shining heights of duty that we are to scale, but leave us grovelling in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren |
