"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... when he retired into the country. The village blacksmith, whose ancestors had worked at the same forge since the days of Queen Elizabeth, was a fearless gentleman, and hated the mill-owner as an upstart. He therefore made reply that 'other people changed their religion because they wanted to be respectable and get folk like the Radcliffes to visit them—which they won't,' the last words being spoken with ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... was preposterous that this young upstart foreman on a second-rate ranch like Landson's should ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... rabble, from rising up and pulling down you who are gentlemen from your places, and saying "We will be gentlemen in our turn"? Now, Sir, that respect for authority is much more easily granted to a man whose father has had it, than to an upstart[451], and so Society is more easily supported.' BOSWELL. 'Perhaps, Sir, it might be done by the respect belonging to office, as among the Romans, where the dress, the toga, inspired reverence.' JOHNSON. 'Why, we know very little about the Romans. But, surely, it is much ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... a day, at dawn and at night, as the train tore a noisy tunnel in the quiet air, like the plebeian upstart it was, he sprinkled every grave, rising sometimes from a bed of pain, at other times defying wind and rain and hail. And for a while he believed that his holy device had deepened the sleep of his dead, locked them beyond the power of man to awake. ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... these upstart baronets and their insolent soldiers? Oh, how I wish women could fight! If the men can't drive them back, let us take the field, and Clinton shall never set his foot in the streets of Charleston;" and the brave little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... said, "then we may bring Austria with us; the old alliance of the three monarchies will be restored, and then will be the time for a new crusade against France, the natural enemy of Germany, and the upstart Emperor." ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... my adventure—you will come to our aid!' she cried in scorn. 'Fie on thee, thou upstart kitchen page! But if you will not go from me, then come, fool, and I shall see thee quickly shamed. Thou art proud with the too good living thou hadst in Arthur's kitchen, but one I know whose face thou wilt not dare to look into, my ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... jealousy of age for youth, of departed beauty for beauty in its prime, but it was mainly actuated by the old lady's sense of pride, her firm belief that there was some mysterious merit of birth in the Carter blood, and that to friendship with the Carters a mere upstart, a secretary, a working-woman, could not with any justice aspire. In a thousand ways, many of them approaching actual mendacity, she undermined Harriet's usefulness, and annoyed and distracted the domestic ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... get a card; and when she heard that Phineas Finn had received one, her wrath against Phineas was very great. He was "an Irish adventurer," and she regretted deeply that Mr. Bonteen had ever interested himself in bringing such an upstart forward in the world of politics. But as Mr. Bonteen never had done anything towards bringing Phineas forward, there was not much cause for regret on this head. Phineas, however, got his card, and, of course, accepted ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... I want to know what this means. I've discovered that that young upstart of a son of yours, who ought to be in short trousers yet, has been courting my niece, Madge Oliver, all summer. He has had the impudence to tell me that he wants to marry her. I won't have it, I tell you, and you can tell your son so. Marry my niece ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... name so much as the relentless frankness that furnished it, which overcame Mrs. Hanway-Harley. She sat down with an emphasis so sudden that it was as though her knees were glass and the blow had broken them. Once in the chair, she waggled her head dolorously, and moaned out against upstart vulgarians who, without a name or a shilling, insinuated themselves like vipers into households of honor, and, coiling themselves upon the very hearthstones, dealt ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... of the upstart town, for the horrible clouds of thick, dung-impregnated dust would not allow us to keep our eyes open. But we perceived that almost every trace of what was once little better than a second rate fortress and a village was obliterated; the ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... asked, and I knew that with the phrase, she had flung down her gauntlet on the table. Her very politeness veiled a purpose, not of iron, but finely tempered and resistless as a blade. Had she said to me: "Sir, you are an upstart, and I, sitting quietly at the same table with you, and inviting you to eat of the same dish of marmalade, am a descendant of the Blands and the Fairfaxes,"—her words would have stabbed me less ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... crisis. The Liberian Government in regulating commerce within its jurisdiction had enacted laws imposing duties on all imported goods. The English traders, accustomed for hundreds of years to unrestricted traffic on this very coast, were indignant at the presumption of the upstart colony, and ignored its regulations. The Government protested, but in vain. And at length the little colonial revenue schooner John Seyes, while attempting to enforce the laws at Edina, was actually seized by the stalwart Britisher and dragged before the Admiralty Court at ...
— History of Liberia - Johns Hopkins University Studies In Historical And Political Science • J.H.T. McPherson
... scarcely speak. To be called "Woman" by an upstart—for Prince Askurry had married Princess Sultanam for her ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... very sorry,' said Harry, with a nettled air. 'Do just let me tell you how it happened. We were at an inn, where there was an odd old fellow gave a supper; and there was your brother, and another fellow—as thorough an upstart as I ever met, and infernally impudent. He got drinking, and wanted to fight us. Now I see it! Your brother, to save his friend's bones, said he was a tailor! Of course no gentleman could fight a tailor; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... true Bostonians. Even when almost every one was crowded off the Hill and the Back Bay became the more aristocratic section of the two, there were still enough of the original inhabitants left to scorn these upstart social pretensions. And now Beacon Hill is again coming back into her own: the fine old houses are being carefully, almost worshipfully restored, probably never again to lose their rightful place in the general life ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... thoughts in my countenance, or not, I can't say; but, after most of the passengers had got out, he moved up to me and said, "Good boy—good boy—wasn't he? My dear, (and here his voice sunk to a confidential whisper,) I have got money enough to buy out all the upstart people that filled this omnibus, twenty times over, but I like this old coat and hat. They are as good as a crucible. Help me to find out the true metal. Good morning, my dear. Thank you for your pity, just as much as if I needed it"—and ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... trifling officer; an upstart. Also, the merry-thought of a fowl. Also, a small fish of the bonito kind, which frequently jumps out of the water. A name applied also to ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... it? A new-comer only needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rush blindly to him. A pupil of Liszt?—bah! Who was Liszt? A barrel-organ of execution; a perverter of taste; a worthy ally of that upstart who ruined melody, harmony, and form. Don't talk ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... Landover's contention that the upstart was bound to hang himself if they gave him rope enough, or in Ruth's patient reminder that Percival was getting results,—and ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... a braggart quailing with a quip, The upstart I can wither with a whim; He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip, But his laughter has an echo that is grim. When they're offered to the world in merry guise, Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will— For he who'd make his fellow creatures wise ...
— Bab Ballads and Savoy Songs • W. S. Gilbert
... what Dick wanted, for he had a plan for revenging himself on his upstart nephew. He drove on till he got to a place where there was a muddy and miry puddle beside the road. Then by a dexterous manoeuver, for he understood driving thoroughly, he managed to overturn the wagon, and Nicholas was thrown headlong into the puddle. ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.
... Against all systems built on abstract rights, Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims 525 Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time; Declares the vital power of social ties Endeared by Custom; and with high disdain, Exploding upstart Theory, insists Upon the allegiance to which men are born—530 Some—say at once a froward multitude— Murmur (for truth is hated, where not loved) As the winds fret within the AEolian cave, Galled by their monarch's chain. The times were big With ominous change, which, night by night, ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth
... there was not a Quaker heard of; namely, in the days of John. Friend, thou hast rightly said, there was not a Quaker heard of indeed, though there were many Christians heard of then. By this you yourselves do confess, that you are a new upstart sect, which was not at other times in the world, though Christian saints have been always in the world. Friend, here like a man in the dark, in seeking to keep thyself out of one ditch, thou art fallen into ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... is a blawsted upstart," said Paulding, lazily puffing at his cigarette. "He needs to be called down, don't ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... at home that evening of Hans Kuhn's upstart pretensions, his statements were received with an ominous silence. Aunt Hedwig only coughed slightly, and continued her knitting with more than usual energy. Herr Sohnstein only moved a little in ...
— A Romance Of Tompkins Square - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... Skewton, who was thinking of anything rather than of such sentiments—for, like many genteel persons who have existed at various times, she set her face against death altogether, and objected to the mention of any such low and levelling upstart—had borrowed a house in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, from a stately relative (one of the Feenix brood), who was out of town, and who did not object to lending it, in the handsomest manner, for nuptial purposes, as the loan implied his final release and acquittance from all further ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... have explained to him, or which he believes himself capable of conducting. The revelation acts on Job as the sign of the Macrocosmos on the modern Faust; but when he sinks, crushed, it is not as the rebellious upstart, struck down in his pride—for he had himself, partially at least, subdued his own presumption—but as a humble penitent, struggling to overcome his weakness. He abhors himself for his murmurs, and 'repents in dust and ashes.' It will have occurred to every one that the secret which has been revealed ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... your partners: And that supremacy of power, you claim, Extends but to the natives, not to us: Dare you, who in the British seas strike sail, Nay more, whose lives and freedom are our alms, Presume to sit and judge your benefactors? Your base new upstart commonwealth should blush, To doom the subjects of an English king, The meanest of whose merchants would disdain The narrow life, and the domestic baseness, Of one of those you call your ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... something about "upstart impudence," and obeyed the O.C. Troops, who thereupon boarded the rocking lighter, and exchanged with one step the fatal Peninsula for the safety ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... angrily, "as to serving Eustace, the clerk, no older than myself, half a head shorter, and a mere landless upstart, that my father's son ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... professional you must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?—tell people that he hasn't a diploma—that he doesn't know anything—that he couldn't reduce that hernia and had to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... of the blessed Empress Anna, to me, as the mother of Ivan, chosen as emperor by Anna, to me alone belongs the regency, and by Heaven I will reconquer that of which I have been nefariously robbed! I will punish this insolent upstart whose shameful tyranny we have endured long enough, and I hope you, my friends, will stand by me and obey ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach
... [Lat.], Saturnian age; golden time, golden age; bed of roses, fat city [Coll.]; fat of the land, milk and honey, loaves and fishes. made man, lucky dog, enfant gate [Fr.], spoiled child of fortune. upstart, parvenu, skipjack^, mushroom. V. prosper, thrive, flourish; be prosperous &c adj.; drive a roaring trade, do a booming business; go on well, go on smoothly, go on swimmingly; sail before the wind, swim with the tide; run smooth, run smoothly, run on all fours. rise in the world, get on in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Of death. O! blessed change, if there were one To love me in this solitude, and make Life beautiful. My soul is wearied out With earth's fierce warfare, and its selfish ease; The slights and coldness of the hollow crowds That are its arbiters; the changeful face, The upstart arrogance of base-born fools, Who crown them with their golden dross, and deem That ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... not remember all I said to the portly, well-fed, swaggering cockney upstart; but there was so much in it uncomplimentary to himself and his driving, that the crowd already assembled cheered, as all crowds will cheer profane and personal language; and he was glad enough to gather up his reins and touch his horses, and trot off, without having first gone through the ceremony ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... are not allowed to carry arms. What would a lord say—yes, or any other person of whatever condition —if he caught an upstart peasant with a dagger ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... return and the wars of the French, many chiefs have been deposed, and many so-called chiefs appointed. We have seen, in the same house, one such upstart drinking in the company of two such extruded island Bourbons, men, whose word a few years ago was life and death, now sunk to be peasants like their neighbours. So when the French overthrew hereditary tyrants, dubbed the commons of the Marquesas freeborn citizens of the republic, and endowed them ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... discharged his plans into the darkness with an abundance of expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they paced the vast, deserted square, majestically surrounded by its tightly-closed silent palaces, he looked up toward the bronze man on the column, as if calling to witness that great upstart, whose presence in the heart of Paris justifies the most extravagant ambitions and renders ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and deliberate scene shifting of mountains and mesas, showed them up for the brittle, dry hills they were, and left them behind. It was pitiful! It was as though a revered tragedian should overnight find that his vogue had departed; that he was no longer getting over; that an irreverent upstart, breaking in on his most sonorous periods, was getting laughs with slang. We had lots of water; the dust we left behind; it wasn't even hot in ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... to Aquileia, which is now an old cathedral, built upon the remains of a very early basilica, standing in a space in a scattered village. But across this dusty space there was carried the head of the upstart Maximinus who murdered Alexander Severus, and later Aquileia brought Attila near to despair. Our party alighted; we inspected a very old mosaic floor which has been uncovered since the Austrian retreat. The Austrian priests have gone too, and their Italian successors ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... they will not prevent me from speedily avenging myself on the young upstart who has appeared so suddenly to claim you for a bride. Stay, you need not go so quickly, or toss your head in pride. I will stand by my word, and let him keep who wins. But I have a word to say to you, Branwen. Come ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... wilt thou prove him?"; and the King answered, "I will send for him to the presence and entreat him with honour and give him a jewel which I have. An he know it and wot its price, he is a man of worth and wealth; but an he know it not, he is an impostor and an upstart and I will do him die by the foulest fashion of deaths." So he sent for Ma'aruf, who came and saluted him. The King returned his salam and seating him beside himself, said to him, "Art thou the merchant Ma'aruf?" and said he, "Yes." Quoth the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... a singular circumstance that the king who raised the personal power of English monarchy to a height to which it had never before attained, should have come of humble race and belonged to an upstart dynasty. For three centuries and a half before the battle of Bosworth one family had occupied the English throne. Even the usurpers, Henry of Bolingbroke and Richard of York, were directly descended in unbroken male line from Henry II., ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... did, the possibility of marriage between Joseph and Rebecca, and was not over well pleased that a member of a family into which he, George Osborne, was going to marry, should make a mesalliance with a little nobody—a little upstart governess. "Hang it, the family's low enough already without her," Osborne said to his friend Captain Dobbin. "A governess is all very well, but I'd rather have a lady for my sister-in-law. I'm a liberal man; but I've proper pride, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... new for him: seven days from Sicily to Rome, three hours from Rome to Interamna![151] Entered by night, did he? so he did before! No one went to meet him? neither did anyone on the other occasion, exactly when it should have been done! In short, I bring our young upstart to his bearings, not only by a set and serious speech, but also by repartees of this sort. Accordingly, I have come now to rally him and jest with him in quite a familiar manner. For instance, when we were escorting a candidate, he asked me "whether I had ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... religion when they knew that they felt no anxiety. They were anxious, in their way. They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart—in their own language, "this fellow—of whom every man knew whence he was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work onwards; bidding men's consciences be at rest; and commanding them not ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson
... the possessor, the bare remembrance of the means of acquisition: luxury forgets the innumerable ingenuities that minister to its cravings, and wealth, once obtained, unfits the mind for future self-exertion or sympathy for others. Many an upstart voluptuary surveys the elegancies of his well-furnished mansion in comparative ignorance of the means employed for their perfection; and, as regards his stock of knowledge conducive to happiness, he is in a more "parlous state" than ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... Crane is trying to get? Did he expect me to throw this creep out of my office and leave myself wide open? Maybe, maybe not. If not, what is Crane after? He's certainly achieved his purpose in getting even with an upstart government appointee. ...
— Ten From Infinity • Paul W. Fairman
... best costume of coloured German print, and carry down with her the spotless apron which Mrs. V. gave her the preceding New Year; and in spite of her advancing years, she would cause Anna, and every other upstart at the homestead, instinctively to play second fiddle to her. And when we suggested that our wife could measure swords (or, shall we say, forks) with her as a cook, she giggled and remembered some ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... We are essentially an Old Testament people; Christianity has never entered into our soul we see ourselves as the Chosen, and by no effort of spiritual aspiration can attain unto humility. In this there is nothing hypocritic. The blatant upstart who builds a church, lays out his money in that way not merely to win social consideration; in his curious little soul he believes (so far as he can believe anything) that what he has done is pleasing to God and beneficial to mankind. He may have ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... political standing; how we improved this standing by prodigious energy into the position of a conquering state; prospered rapidly by the opposition which we met; overthrew even our European competitors, of whom the deadliest were the French; pursued a difficult war with an able Mahometan upstart, Hyder Ali—a treacherous and cruel prince; next with his son, Tippoo Sahib, a still more ferocious scoundrel, who, in his second war with us, was settled effectually by one thrust of a bayonet in the hands of an English soldier. This war, and ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... Anna could not let old Katy serve at table—old Katy was too coarsely made from natural earth for that—and so Anna had all this to do herself and that she never liked, but even then this simple rough old creature was pleasanter to her than any of the upstart young. ...
— Three Lives - Stories of The Good Anna, Melanctha and The Gentle Lena • Gertrude Stein
... to conclude a treaty. Yet he, too, had his grave difficulties to encounter. Spanish arrogance had not declined with the decline of Spanish strength, and the concessions demanded from that ancient monarchy by the upstart republic seemed at once exasperating and humiliating. The career of Jackson in Florida, while it exposed the weakness of Spain, also sorely wounded her pride. Nor could the grandees, three thousand miles away, ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse
... have to ask Mr. Pitkin. I am sure he had good reason for the course he took. He's an impudent, low upstart in ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... sanction; she would rather have died than shared her authority with another mistress—and with such a mistress! Her brother's marriage had incensed her even more than Piotr Andreitch; she set herself to give the upstart a lesson, and Malanya Sergyevna from the very first hour was her slave. And, indeed, how was she to contend against the masterful, haughty Glafira, submissive, constantly bewildered, timid, and weak in health as ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... another, neither of them great parts. He acted, too, in plays written by other people. But it was as a writer that he made a name, and that so quickly that others grew jealous of him. One called him "an upstart Crow, beautified in our feathers . . . in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in the country."* But for the most part Shakespeare made friends even of rival authors, and many of them loved him well. He was good-tempered, ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... their father put no restraint upon his passions. Why should they put restraint on theirs? How can he command them when he has not commanded himself? And yet self- restraint is what they, above all men, need. Upstart princes—the sons of a shepherd boy—intoxicated with honours to which they were not born; they need the severest discipline; they break out into the most frantic licence. What is there that they ...
— David • Charles Kingsley
... have a new President. Loubet was succeeded by Fallieres. The father of the new one was a great gormandizer of Pantagruelian dimensions. He died of overloading his stomach. The son made his career like a cautious upstart. He is well enough acquainted with himself to know that he is not a Machiavelli. Therefore, he does not boast of his sagacity, but rather of his integrity. A politician is irresistible to a crowd when he cries out to them: "My opponents ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various
... blow of my life if I failed," he said to young Ned Wilson and his father one night, on their return from one of their meetings. "I should never dare to put my foot in Brunford again, neither would Mary, if this young upstart got ...
— The Day of Judgment • Joseph Hocking
... linguist, my fellow-Collegian, Gregory Martin, who will do this work with more learning and abundance of detail than I could; nor from others whom I understand already to have that task in hand. More wicked and more abominable is the crime that I am now prosecuting, that there have been found upstart Doctors who have made a drunken onslaught on the handwriting that is of heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have corrected some passages, tampered with ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion
... the princes now tributary to France, from the house of Habsburg to that of Bonaparte. [Sidenote: The "Empire of Austria."] Francis II. determined to forestall the possible indignity of the subordination of his family to an upstart dynasty. On the 14th of May 1804, Napoleon was proclaimed emperor of the French; on the 11th of August Francis II. assumed the style of Francis I., hereditary emperor of Austria. [Sidenote: End of the Holy Roman Empire.] Two years later, when the defeat of Austerlitz had led to the treaty of Pressburg ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... wires had thrilled Europe during every hour after ten o'clock on Thursday morning, but the thrills felt in Germany, Russia, and Turkey were supplemented by agonized squirming on the part of official Austria. That an upstart, a masquerader, a mountebank of a King, should actually have traversed Austria from west to east, without ever a soul cased in uniform knowing anything about him, was ill to endure, and the minions of Kosnovia's truculent neighbor swore mighty oaths that ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... upstart, who tries to seduce her footman, Joseph Andrews. Parson Adams reproves her for laughing in church. Lady Booby is a caricature of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... has been ever since upon the improvement; and we may, I think, with good reason believe, is arrived at its greatest height and perfection, if it is not got beyond it, even to its declension; for whatsoever new, upstart, out-of-the-way messes some humourists have invented, such as stuffing a roasted leg of mutton with pickled herring, and the like, are only the sallies of a capricious appetite, and debauching rather ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... situation, to use his own words, "of the cat in the thripe shop," he didn't know which way to choose. At last, after turning himself over in the sun several times, a new idea struck him. Couldn't he go to Fingal himself? and then he'd be equal to that upstart, O'Sullivan. No sooner was the thought engendered, than Barny sprang to his feet a new man; his eye brightened, his step became once more elastic,—he walked erect, and felt himself to be all over Barny O'Reirdon once more. "Richard was ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... because the inhabitants of that quarter, if left to themselves, would have passed their time in endless quarrels. The old world abounded in great cities, all of which owned the supremacy of Rome, from Gades to Thapsacus; and in modern India the most venerable places are compelled to bow before the upstart Calcutta. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... I gladly share, And breathe a purer, freer air; No more by wealthy upstart spurn'd, The bread is sweet by labour earn'd; Indulgent heaven has bless'd the soil, And plenty crowns ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and see the meanness of your intellect, the vulgarity of your character,—and tell me whether a woman like Aniela ought to remain true to you for an hour! How did you manage to get her, you spiritual and physical upstart? Is it not an unnatural monstrosity that you are her husband? Dante's Beatrice, marrying a common Florentine cad, ...
— Without Dogma • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Paul had behaved in a most exemplary manner, affording thereby the strongest proof that though he had risen he was no upstart. The numerous members of his family and the men who had married into it nearly all had to thank him for their advancement or actual support. Some were employed on his estate, others he had trained in his particular branch of agriculture, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... was meant as a sign of devotion to his will, signed to him to rise, and whispered, as if afraid of hearing his own words: "Act quickly and secretly; and, as you value your life, let no one know of the upstart's death. Depart, and when your work is finished, take as much as you like out of the treasury. But keep your wits about you. The boy has a strong arm and a winning tongue. Think of your own wife and children, if he tries to win you over with his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... a bad thing for a lullaby, and could only silence a baby by scaring it. If I should have committed to me the melodies of the world, I would care very little about my right to sing those subordinate parts that gather around them in obedient harmonies. At least, I think I would, unless some upstart man should deny my right to sing any thing but melodies. If it were committed to me to sing like a bird, I would not care, I think, to exercise my right to roar like a bull. If I can witch the ears and win the hearts of men and women by doing that which I can do ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb
... girl on the pillow was perfect in form and feature. Regular, delicate, refined, and lovely! Gila knew it would be counted rarely beautiful, and she was furious! How had that upstart of a college boy dared to send her here to see a beauty! What had he ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Merchants' and Manufacturers' Association, the best people of the city, those who were saving the country, and charging no more than the service was worth. So they roared with fury at this sacreligious upstart. A man whose mask was a joke, because he was so burly and hearty that everybody in the crowd knew him, took up the bloody whip. It was Billy Nash, secretary of the "Improve America League," and the crowd ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... wroth at these words. "Prate not to me," he said. "Thou art an upstart who wouldst teach their duty to thy betters—ay, puffed up with light-won fame, like a feather on the breeze. But I say this: the breeze shall fail, and thou shalt fall upon the goose's back once more. And I say ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... exploit would break into this exclusive and aristocratic circle and sometimes even exercised dominating influence which the aristocrats dared not oppose, though he was still regarded as a plebian upstart, and was despised by the upper ten, and his rank died with him. Ordinarily from seven to twelve judges sat for the trial of causes, but sometimes even a greater number were permitted. The civil court in time of peace took cognizance of civil and criminal ...
— Sioux Indian Courts • Doane Robinson
... was very Witty, but had but just Beauty enough to keep her from being Ugly, and consequently one that suffer'd most by this new Interloper; which rendered her so Malicious, that she had rather the whole House shou'd be blown up, than that Upstart shoul'd run away with all the Trading: And therefore she Writes the ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... Fissurella calyculata, Mitra obeliscus, a Turritella, a Murex, Columbella versicolor, and a new species off Cape York, Ranella pulchella, new, several Nassae, Phos senticosa and blainvillei, and sculptilis, in 3 and 5 fathoms, off Cape York; Strombus campbelli, in mud off Cape Upstart; Cerithium obeliscus, and a new species of the genus Obeliscus. In the deeper localities Cypraea fimbriata occurred, dead, off Cape Capricorn; and two species of Ranella, one being R. pusilla, in 17 fathoms, off the Percy Isles. The univalves dredged among the ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... him; he took pleasure in the pain of others, and fomented strife to turn it to his own account. His abilities were but slender, and he had little force of character, but the natural instinct which draws the upstart towards money and power served him as well as fixity of purpose. Lucien and Merlin at once took a dislike to one another, for reasons not far to seek. Merlin, unfortunately, proclaimed aloud the thoughts that ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... uttered by the King's jester, their remarks being dipped in envy, as they asked one another whether this French boy to whom the King was showing such favour—this French champignon, "impudent young upstart"—was to be the new favourite now, and one and all said to themselves that which was too dangerous to confide to another, that the King must have gone a little mad over the fit he had on discovering the loss of his favourite ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... Antelope Springs, the falsity of his insinuations against Davies, the trickery of his methods, one and all be brought to light. Already, through Haney, he heard of the sensation created among the men by his defence of Howard, and of the depth of feeling among the old hands against this airy upstart recruit, not a year in service, who frequently boasted that he had more influence with "Cap." than all the rest of them put together. Haney himself could not cipher out the secret of Howard's importance, and was plainly and palpably ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... cried Dornoch, "heed not the mawkish cries of this upstart stripling. Obey my bidding and spare not, ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... her wrinkled old head in solemn deprecation of tke evil omen. She knew it as well as Mrs. Oswald herself did, having heard the fact at least a thousand times before; but she made it a matter of principle never to encourage these upstart pretensions on the part of the lower orders, and just to keep them rigorously at their proper level she always made a feint of forgetting any steps in advance which they might have been bold enough to ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... believing in fountains of youth and St. Brandan's Isles, with Ariosto, Tasso, and Spenser still in its pockets. It returns from America either as the tattered fever-stricken ruffian, or as the vulgar, fat upstart of Spanish comedy, returns without honour or shame, holding money (and next to money, negroes) of greater account than any insignia of paladinship or the Round Table; it is brutal, vulgar, cynical; at best very sad, and it gets written for its delectation ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. II • Vernon Lee
... out-bursts and the moral irregularities of her long life, she bore, amidst her passion and her power, a stamp of courageous frankness and intellectual greatness which places her far above the savage who was her rival. Fredegonde was an upstart, of barbaric race and habits, a stranger to every idea and every design not connected with her own personal interest and successes; and she was as brutally selfish in the case of her natural passions as in the exercise ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume I. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... possessed his wealth, his wives, his children he acceded to his demands regarding everything except the Torah; that he refused peremptorily to surrender. (34) In the war that followed between himself and the Syrians, he was so indignant at the presumptuousness of the Aramean upstart that he himself saddled his warhorse for the battle. His zeal was rewarded by God; he gained a brilliant victory in a battle in which no less than a hundred thousand of the Syrians were slain, as the prophet Micaiah had foretold to him. (35) The same seer (36) admonished him not to ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... the revolution. Although at first an attack was only made against the noblesse, yet latterly, every rich and powerful family was included among the proscribed, and all the commercial houses of the first respectability were annihilated. These have never been replaced, and the upstart race of petty traders have not yet obtained the confidence of foreigners. The trade of France is therefore very confined; and even were opportunities now afforded of establishing a trade with foreign nations, it would be long before France could benefit by it, from the total ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison
... looking preacher is Jack, standing erect in his particolored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing,, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack to be at a glance, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... enlist powerful allies in the cause of reaction. Heathenism was still a living power in the world. It was strong in numbers even in the East, and even stronger in the imposing memories of history. Christianity was still an upstart on Caesar's throne. The favour of the gods had built up the Empire, and men's hearts misgave them that their wrath might overthrow it. Heathenism was still an established religion, the Emperor still its official head. Old Rome was still devoted ...
— The Arian Controversy • H. M. Gwatkin
... that I shrank from it; but because the material was wanting with which to make a respectable show among my consular peers in the large and handsomely misprinted volume of Commercial Relations annually issued by the enterprising Congressional publishers. It grieved me that upstart ports like Marseilles, Liverpool, and Bremen, should occupy so much larger space in this important volume than my beloved Venice; and it was with a feeling of profound mortification that I used to post my meagre account of a commerce that once was greater than all the rest of the world's together. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... as their equals. Scotland was at that time a very poor country, and the poor relation has {148} never been a popular character anywhere. Consequently Englishmen—and who was ever more English than Johnson?—commonly saw in the newly arrived Scot a pauper and an upstart come to live upon his betters: and they revenged themselves in the manner natural to rich relations. To Johnson's tongue, too, the Scots offered the important additional temptations of being often Whigs, ...
— Dr. Johnson and His Circle • John Bailey
... and she was nothing but a Petticoat Lane girl, after all. Its coarseness, its vulgarity underlay all her veneer. They had got into her book; everybody said so. Raphael said so. How dared she write disdainfully of Raphael's people? She an upstart, an outsider? She went to the library, lit the gas, got down a volume of Graetz's history of the Jews, which she had latterly taken to reading, and turned over its wonderful pages. Then she wandered restlessly back to the great ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... man, which only your life-blood can atone for,' exclaimed the pirate, as he drew a pistol from his belt, and presented it to the young man's breast. 'Die, upstart, die!' ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... choose to go to my room?" he answered, impudently, to our utmost amazement. "You may prefer an outside upstart over your son, if you like, but you can't always make your son ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... was fleet of foot despite his meagre limbs, and leapt over such obstacles as he could perceive, with the agility of a monkey. He darted into the lighted doorway—the entrance to the palatial mansion of an upstart politician. The large doors were thrown open, and the hall-porter stood in full livery awaiting the master's carriage. Larralde was already in the patio, and Conyngham ran through the marble-paved entrance hall, before the porter realised what was taking place. There was no second ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... the spoil. Full many a year[100] his hateful head had been 170 For tribute paid, nor since in Cambria seen: The last of all the litter 'scaped by chance, And from Geneva first infested France. Some authors thus his pedigree will trace, But others write him of an upstart race: Because of Wickliff's brood no mark he brings, But his innate antipathy to kings. These last deduce him from th' Helvetian kind, Who near the Leman lake his consort lined: That fiery Zuinglius first th' affection bred, 180 And meagre Calvin ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... blanched her cheeks and caught at her throat. The hand which held her dainty parasol of lace shook, and an indescribable thrill ran through her veins. She could no more think of this man as a clodhopper, a coarse upstart without manners or imagination. In many ways he fell short of all the usual standards by which the men of her class were judged, yet she suddenly realised that he possessed a touch of that quality which lifted him at once far over their heads, The man had genius. Without education ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Cambaceres!" I cried, stung with rage. "To wear a duchess's coronet, Blanche! Ha, ha! Mushrooms, instead of strawberry-leaves, should decorate the brows of the upstart French nobility. I shall withdraw my parole. I demand to be sent to prison—to be exchanged—to die—anything rather than be a traitor, and the tool of a traitress!" Taking up my hat, I left the room in a fury; ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... plaies.' He especially warns them against actors—because these, it seems, had given him up. His rancorous spite against them he expresses in the well-known words:—'Yes, trust them not: for there is an upstart Crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide, supposes he is as well able to bumbast out a blank verse as the best of you; and being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his owne conceit the onely 'SHAKE-SCENE ...
— Shakspere And Montaigne • Jacob Feis
... wasting time, Lactu!" exclaimed one of the men suddenly. "Settle with this upstart later. Now let us take a vote on the issue before us. The ship is waiting to blast off for Mercury. Do we ask for her assistance, ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell |
