"Grovel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... come, the young men go Each pink and white and neat, She's older than their mothers, but They grovel ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... yes!—fix your glittering eyes on me; contemplate me in the abyss of poverty where I am fallen! From the bottom of that pit I lift my brow boldly toward you, and your silent glance does not force me to grovel in the earth with shame! Here, in the presence of your noble images, I am alone with my soul, with my conscience;—hero, no mortification can touch the being who, as gentleman, Christian, brother, and father, ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience
... except yourself? You damned villain!" I broke out. "Understand at once that I am no spy or thief-taker. I am a kinsman of Monsieur de Saint-Yves—here in his interest. Upon my word, you have put your foot in it prettily, Mr. Burchell Fenn! Come, stand up; don't grovel there! Stand up, you lump ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grovel before a piece of fireworks. There was no firing in our neighbourhood; nothing to indicate a state of war between the British Empire and Germany; no visual evidence of any German army in France except that flare. However, if a guide who knows as much about war as ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... animals with which we have to cope under a bewildering variety of conditions. Especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits' end. We exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat-trap. As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... O how long will mankind worship a book? How long will they grovel in the dust before the ignorant legends of the barbaric past? How long, O how long will they pursue phantoms in a ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the Orthodox he remained a Protestant, a filthy thing. In his thirst for comfort he was driven back on dreams of greatness, of buried treasure some day to be found, which would cause the English and the natives of the land alike to grovel in the dirt before him. Warmed by such thoughts ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... boldly and demand provisions for yourself and your horse. Beware of offering any money in payment, or they will suspect you to be a fugitive and fall upon you; but if you hold yourself towards them with pride and sternness, giving them only curses and blows, they will respect and grovel before you, for such is ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... Salvation Army the next time they came round. I'm not saying now that there isn't misery enough there and in every like section of every city, but I'll say that in a great many cases the same people who grovel in the filth here would grovel in a different kind of filth if they had ten thousand a year. At that you can't blame them greatly for they don't know any better. But when you learn, as I learned later, that some of the proprietors of these second hand stores and ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... interest in any thing more important than a boat-race or a game of bowls, to save their lives; who are very fond of the phrase, "all that sort of nonsense," to express everything that rises above the dead level of their own dead mediocrity in intelligence and life. If you would not grovel in spirit; if you would not lose every tear that sparkles, and every sigh that burns; if you would not ossify the very power of passion; if you would not turn your soul into a mass of shapeless lead, avoid those despicable cynics, who never leave their discussion of the merits ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... current flowing over and around him he is soon mired in the sloughs of appetite, or swamped in the unclean sinks of sensualism—that steadfast holding to things above, without which he soon drops down to grovel along the earth—that unwavering faith and that utter trust in good which keeps alive and warm in the heart of humanity its ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... if the choice were presented to him, would not prefer instant death, which is but a change of conditions, a flight from world to world, or at worst annihilation, rather than to be hurled into the living tomb which I have depicted, there to grovel and writhe, pressed down by the sordid mass around him, until death comes to ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... lost their senses in the dazzling rays of her thousand perfections—of whom, I am ashamed to say, that I, for a time, had been insane enough to be one—that love had grown to be a sort of joke with her, and man, a poor, contemptible creature, made to grovel at her feet. Not that she liked or encouraged it; for, never having been moved herself, she held love and its sufferings in utter scorn. Man's love was so cheap and plentiful that it had no value in her eyes, and it looked as if she would lose the best thing in life by ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... her; to grovel at her feet and crave her pardon for my behaviour of last night. What else should I want to do, ...
— The Big Drum - A Comedy in Four Acts • Arthur Pinero
... diversity of types; a shutting of the doors on those who are obviously unfitted, however cheap their labour may be, would be salvation to the women who are trying to earn their bread in the theatre. For it is time we ceased to grovel before this misused word "Art," which covers the wasteful cruelty the present conditions in the ...
— Women Workers in Seven Professions • Edith J. Morley
... Wright, as Paul Pry, or Mr. Felix Fluffy. Besides the comedians, Mr. Footelights would also give you the leading tragedians, and would favour you (through his nose) with the popular burlesque imitation of Mr. Charles Kean, as Hablet. He would fling himself down on the carpet, and grovel there as Hamlet does in the play-scene, and would exclaim, with frantic vehemence, "He poisods hib i' the garded, for his estate. His dabe's Godzago: the story is extadt, ad writted id very choice Italiad. You shall see adod, how the burderer gets the love of Godzago's wife." ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... snapped Demetrius; "I'm not one of those crocodile-headed Egyptian gods that they grovel before in the Nile country. My cousin Agias here says he knows you. Now answer—are you ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... movement of the Spirit which he knows to be always identical both in the universe and in himself. He ceases the attempt to dictate to the Spirit, because he does not see in it a mere blind force, but reveres it as the Supreme Intelligence: and on the other hand he does not grovel before it in doubt and fear, because he knows it is one with himself and is realizing itself through him, and therefore cannot have any purpose antagonistic to his own individual welfare. Realizing ...
— The Dore Lectures on Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... The magnificence which he saw on all sides of him, even Salvator himself, who had received him dressed in the richest apparel, inspired him with deep respect, and, after the manner of little souls, who, though at first proud and puffed up, at once grovel in the dust whenever they come into contact with what they feel to be superior to themselves, Pasquale's behaviour towards Salvator, whom he would gladly have done a mischief to in Rome, was nothing but humility and ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... are! Cringe and grovel and whine! [Draws a Nibelung whip from under his coat.] I will put the lash upon your backs! I will strip your shams from you... I will see you as you are! I will take away your wealth, that you ...
— Prince Hagen • Upton Sinclair
... And so may a man be untrue to his troth,—and leave true love in pursuit of tinsel, and beauty, and false words, and a large income. But why should one tell the story of creatures so base? One does not willingly grovel in gutters, or breathe fetid atmospheres, or live upon garbage. If we are to deal with heroes and heroines, let us, at any rate, have heroes and heroines who are above such meanness as falsehood in love. This Frank Greystock must be little better than a mean villain, ...
— The Eustace Diamonds • Anthony Trollope
... was captain of the Thirds, and kicked off. It was, of course, a scrappy game. On such a day good football was impossible. The outsides hardly touched the ball once. But the forwards, covered in mud from head to foot, had their full share of work. Jeffries was ubiquitous; he led the "grovel" (as the scrum was called at Fernhurst), and kept it together. Gordon had very little chance of distinguishing himself; but he did one or two dribbles, and managed to collar Mansell the only time ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... simple, and bore that name, and wore the iron collar on their necks; and the rest were slaves in fact, but without the name; they imagined themselves men and freemen, and called themselves so. The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which his vivid imagination would place before him. He tried not to think of them. He knew he had drunk too much. Now he was seized with a desire to do horrible, sordid things; he wanted to roll himself in gutters; his whole being yearned for beastliness; he wanted to grovel. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... screwed themselves up as though endeavouring to make smaller parcels of themselves, or hoping to lessen their own obstructiveness to the passage of the devilish invader; some would flatten their backs against a wall—make pancakes of themselves—while others would fall prone to earth, and there grovel till the moment of peril was past. Many would rush helter-skelter towards the river-caves, vast places of refuge that had been dug into the deep-shelving clay and sandbanks of the Klip, and there, in their rocky hiding-places, breathe freely and await the inevitable fracas that told ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 2 (of 6) - From the Commencement of the War to the Battle of Colenso, - 15th Dec. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... chosen, to tread it with a firm step, prepared to meet danger—to confront destiny. This very hour, this very moment, I call upon you to make your decision; and it shall be a final decision. Will you grovel on in poverty—the worst of all poverty, the gentleman's pittance? or will you make yourself possessor of the wealth which your uncle Oswald bequeathed to others? Look me in the face, Reginald, as you are a man, and answer me, Which is it ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the worse calamities of a reverse of fortune, by the mastery of some handicraft or industrial avocation; she ought to lead a life of persistent and efficient industry, as the fulfillment of a universal duty; while her unportioned sister must do this or grovel in degrading idleness and dependence on a father's or brother's overtaxed energies, looking to marriage as her only chance of escape therefrom. For man's sake, no less than woman's, it is eminently desirable that that ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... than your keen-tongued wail, And ye, sit fast and sorrow; but what man Of all this land-folk and earth-labouring herd For heart or hand seems foremost, him I call If heart be his to hearken, him bid forth 650 To try if one be in the sun's sight born Of all that grope and grovel on dry ground That may join hands in battle-grip for death With them whose seed and strength is of ...
— Erechtheus - A Tragedy (New Edition) • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hair-shirts and midnight floggings are right; if convinced that the Church of Rome has too many ceremonies, they resolve that they will have no ceremonies at all; if convinced that it is unworthy to grovel in the presence of a duke, they conclude that it will be a fine thing to refuse the duke ordinary civility; if convinced that monarehs are not much wiser or better than other human beings, they run off into the belief that all kings have been little more ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... Aucassin. "Who is it that win to heaven? Old priests, and cripples that grovel and pray at altars, and tattered beggars that die of cold and hunger. These only go to heaven, and I do not want their company. So I will go to hell. For there go all good scholars and the brave knights that died in wars, and sweet ladies that had many lovers, and ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... betrayer; To be the Thunderer's slave, he was too great: To be his friend and comrade,—but a man. His crime was human, and their doom severe; For poets sing, that treachery and pride Did from Jove's table hurl him headlong down, To grovel in the depths of Tartarus. Alas, and his ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... "Better!—say better to grovel on this earth with our selfish, humbled race, wandering in mystery and awe, and doubt, when we can communicate with the intelligences above! Does not the soul leap at her admission to confer with superior powers? Does ...
— The Phantom Ship • Frederick Marryat
... at the bottom of some glacier; but, if I am to speak my mind, I would rather live for a couple of years among the heights, where there are no governments, nor excisemen, nor gamekeepers, nor procureurs du roi, than grovel in a marsh for a century. You are the only one that I shall be sorry to leave behind; all the rest of them bore me! When you are in the right, at any rate you don't worry one's ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... beautiful perfessional!" said Agnes, looking at her with admiration now. "I could—I could grovel at yer feet—pore me, so plain as I ham an' hall, an' you so wery genteel. There now, 'oo's ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... husband, but Gilgames would shower upon him riches and honours. "He will give thee wherein to sleep a great bed cunningly wrought; he will seat thee on his divan, he will give thee a place on his left hand, and the princes of the earth shall kiss thy feet, the people of Uruk shall grovel on the ground before thee." It was by such flatteries and promises for the future that Gilgames gained the affection of his servant Eabani, whom ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 3 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... he feels squeamish, it is the occasional whiff of a cigar. Then, added to the occasional whiff, were occasional catches of derogatory remarks, which came home to me as unpleasantly as did the tobacco: "A chap with a sword like that should live up to it, and not grovel over a basin."—And a quotation from the Burial of Sir John Moore: "He lay like ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... heard my father say the other day that it has often made him tired to see the way in which some of your titled nonentities grovel before a Lithuanian Jew who is a power on the Rand. But unbending is a different thing to ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... contented, ladylike in deportment, and agreeable in manner. What do you say? Silly! I am not silly at all. If you are going to make resolutions at all, you ought to do it properly. Aim at the sky, and you may reach the top of the tree; aim at the top of the tree, and you will grovel on the ground. You are too modest in your aspirations, and they won't come to any good; but as for me—with a standard before ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... in a day or two,' muttered Heathcliff. 'But first—get up, Linton! Get up!' he shouted. 'Don't grovel on the ground there ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... unwholesome, and disagreeable—make the most of them: they will always appeal to a certain section whose minds are correspondingly unpleasant." We prefer the "pure joy" gospel, as being nearer the truth: for spirit is ever pointing the vision upward to what we may become, instead of allowing it to grovel around in the very unpleasant circumstances in which some people are liable to find themselves. The outward vision is transient, the inner vision can build eternal realities. "Are we to beg and cringe and hang on ...
— Spirit and Music • H. Ernest Hunt
... expectancy, the air of one who confides, counting upon a delicate understanding. But Sam O'Neill, though perfectly willing to be delicate, could only say, after an anti-climacteric pause: "Is that right? Well, that bunch needed to grovel all right"—which was a little vague, say what you ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... will steady and animate his motive. It is well to have a high standard of life, even though we may not be able altogether to realize it. "The youth," says Mr. Disraeli, "who does not look up will look down; and the spirit that does not soar is destined perhaps to grovel." ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon
... the sea for pearls, Or drown them in a drain; We flute it with the merles, Or tug and sweat and strain; We grovel, or we reign; We saunter, or we brawl; We answer, or we call; We search the stars for Fame, Or sink her subterranities; The legend's still the same:- ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... elevation of God. The heavens are the very type of the unattainable; and to say that they are 'higher than the earth' seems, at first sight, to be but to say, 'No man hath ascended into the heavens,' and you sinful men must grovel here down upon your plain, whilst they are far above, out of your reach. But the heavens bend. They are an arch, and not a straight line. They touch the horizon; and there come from them the sweet influences of sunshine and of rain, of dew and of blessing, which bring fertility. So ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... from Stiepan that Moissey had been Mrs. Cheprakov's lover. I noticed that when people went to her for money they used to apply to Moissey first, and once I saw a peasant, a charcoal-burner, black all over, grovel at his feet. Sometimes after a whispered conversation Moissey would hand over the money himself without saying anything to his mistress, from which I concluded that the transaction was ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... spars a dozen rounds, before an audience, and he is loaded down with pounds, and shillings, crowns and pence. Where'er he goes the brawny Goth is lionized by all, like Caesar, when he cut a swath along the Lupercal. Promoters grovel at his feet, and offer heaps of scads, if he will condescend to meet some other bruising lads. The daily journals print his face some seven columns wide, call him the glory of the race, the nation's hope and pride. And having thus become ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... are artists in colored chalks, who limn the heads of Christ and Napoleon on the pavement, with the inscription: 'I am starving.' Very fairly are the portraits executed; very decent artists they are, and they grovel by the side of their handiwork in an attitude of broken-hearted despondency, and pocket the pennies of the charitable. Objects the most decrepit in nature, hideous, half-nude wretches, male and female, creep ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... grovel in this idolatrous spirit, animals forming the principal subjects of worship,—such as bulls, snakes, monkeys, and pigeons. One of the peculiar temples of the city is devoted solely to the worship of monkeys, where hundreds of these mischievous ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... professed in the possibility of compacts between the devil and mankind; but, nevertheless, there is abundant evidence in their writings of their having been keenly alive to the fact that men horror-stricken at the sight of the destruction of their wives and children by magic would grovel in the submission of abject terror at the feet of the priest ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the general good, he greets the promoted "ladies" with grave courtesy. It is otherwise with the upstart men. His pride of brain and life-long station makes him haughtily indifferent to them. He will not grovel with ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... Marlborough Street cell was a disgusting object— offensive to the eye and to one's sense of the dignity of man. At sight of me he sprawled, and when the shock of it was over he continued to grovel until the sight bred a shame in me for being the cause of it. What made it ten times worse was his curious insensibility—even while he grovelled—to the moral ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... description is perhaps as fine as anything that Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still the gentleman, with all the pride of gentry;—but not the less is he the humble bedesman, aware that he is living upon charity, not made to grovel by any sense of shame, but knowing that, though his normal pride may be left to him, an outward demeanour of humility ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... stands forlornly on a wind-swept Alaskan spit, while huddled around it a swarm of dirt-covered "igloos" grovel in an ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... see some of them!" she would wail to herself. "If I could just see mother or father or anybody from New York! Oh, I know I shall never see New York again, or Broadway or Fifth Avenue or Central Park—I never—never—never shall!" And she would grovel among her pillows, burying her face and half stifling herself lest her sobs should be heard. Her feeling for her husband had become one of terror and repulsion. She was almost more afraid of his patronising, affectionate moments than ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... back to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause, I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... some supreme abjection with which she might be inspired. Vague, but increasingly brighter, this possibility glimmered on her. It at last hung there adequately plain to Charlotte that she had presented herself once more to (as they said) grovel; and that, truly, made the stage large. It had absolutely, within the time, taken on the dazzling merit of being large for each of ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... advisers. I hardly know a more painful object of consideration than a man of genius in such a situation; those of lower minds do not feel the degradation, and become like pigs, familiarised with the filthy elements in which they grovel; but it is impossible that a man of Lord Byron's genius should not often feel the want of that which he has forfeited—the fair esteem of those by whom genius most naturally desires to be admired ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... life, Without some small attempt at strife, Our nature will not grovel; One impulse hadd both man and dame, He seized the tongs—she did the same, Leaving the ruffian, if he came, The poker and the shovel. Suppose the couple standing so, When rushing footsteps from below Made pulses ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... curtain which separates him from eternity, the salient characteristic of his being is unmasked and stands forth, naked. If he be at heart a coward, even though he may honestly never have suspected himself of cowardice, he will try to flee, or cringe and grovel for mercy; if his soul is stayed upon the immortal and everlasting truths, he will face what Fate may hold with the resigned fortitude which was the martyrs'; but, if he is merely a man, strong with the courage of ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... not, in thy own wise way, speak to the thoughtless man who feels content to grovel with the miserable diamond, who takes his lessons from the dead, dead rock, and feeds his soul upon such flinty food. Open his ears to hear thy words of life and light, and may he see in thee the brighter mirror ...
— Life in a Thousand Worlds • William Shuler Harris
... Cherubim. Still 'Give me light,' he shrieked; and dipped His thirsty face, and drank a sea, Athirst with thirst it could not slake. I saw him, drunk with knowledge, take 100 From aching brows the aureole crown— His locks writhed like a cloven snake— He left his throne to grovel down And lick the dust of Seraphs' feet: For what is knowledge duly weighed? Knowledge is strong, but love is sweet; Yea all the progress he had made Was but to learn that all is small Save love, for love is ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... principles tend to render men hateful, and hating one another: which has often rendered sovereigns, persecutors, and subjects, either rebels, or slaves: a religion, whose peculiar moral principles and maxims, teach the mind to grovel, and humble, and break down the energies of man; and which divert him from thinking of his true interests, and the true happiness of himself and his fellow men. Can such a religion, I would respectfully ask, be from God, since where ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... happy, to send her the Paget man, and to be quick about it. When I had said the last word that came to me, and begged all I thought becoming—I don't think with His face, that Jesus wants us to grovel to Him, at least He looks too dignified to do it Himself—I just stood there, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... offended. She had not expected that he would kiss the dust. She hated to see him thus. She thought: "It isn't all your fault. It's just as much mine as yours. But even if I was ashamed I'd never confess it. Never would I grovel! And never would I want to undo anything! After all you took the chances. You did what you thought best. Why be ashamed when things go wrong? You wouldn't have been ashamed if things ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of deep feeling in her voice, "is how anyone can possibly barter their happiness, their self-respect, all that is most worth having, for this world's goods, this world's ambitions, and expect to come out of it anything but losers. Oh, I know it's done every day. People fight and scramble—yes, and grovel in the mud—for what they think is gold; and when they've got it, it's only the basest alloy. Some of them never find it out. Others do—and break ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... day," said Coryston, with a provoking look. "Where's my hat?" He looked round him for the battered article that served him for head-gear. "Well, good-by, Marcia. If you can pull this thing off with your young man, I'm your servant and his. I'd even grovel to Lord William. The letter I wrote him was a pretty stiff ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dark retreats, Crime's foul stain the righteous beareth, Perjury and false deceits Hurt not him the wrong who dareth; But whene'er the wicked trust In ill strength to work their lust, Kings, whom nations' awe declareth Mighty, grovel in the dust. ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... you can do," I said, "is to grovel profusely. If you both cast ashes on your heads and let the tears run down ...
— Lalage's Lovers - 1911 • George A. Birmingham
... Curse may be upon us, and condemn us for Eternity To jostle with the ordinary horde; Though we grovel at the shrine of the professional fraternity Who harp upon one solitary chord; Still...we face the situation with an imperturbability Of spirit, from the knowledge that we owe To the witchery that lingers in the Curse of Versatility The balance ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... he was thinking. "I must wheedle Dickey into the bank to-morrow. A word from 'im, an' they'll all grovel, d—n 'em!" ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... out his hands to intercept her, and Mrs. Kilgour, released, fell upon the floor and began to grovel and cry entreaties. ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... Maria, you couldn't help thinking, and it's worse to bottle it up. I'm always quite candid on the subject of my appearance," returned Darsie calmly. "On principle! Why should you speak the truth on every other subject, and humbug about that? When I've a plain fit I know it, and grovel accordingly, and when I'm nice I'm as pleased as Punch. I am nice to-day, thanks to you and Mason, and if other people admire me, why shouldn't I admire myself? I like to admire myself! It's like the cocoa advertisements, 'grateful and comforting.' ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... rather glumly, "I suppose I must pay the score. I'll go and grovel to Gretton. I was simply beastly to him. My frank nature expanded ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... her store many dainties for their delectation. She talked with touching affection of her poor husband, afflicted with these strange fits of wolfish mania, in the paroxysms of which he was wont to tear himself and grovel in the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... me—" Kennedy began. Then a sudden indignation rushed through him. Why should he grovel to Fenn? If Fenn chose to stand out, let him. He was capable of ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... courts, in senates, who so fit to serve? And both invited, but you would not swerve, All meaner prizes waiving that you might In civic duty spend your heat and light, Unpaid, untrammelled, with a sweet disdain. Refusing posts men grovel to attain." —Lowell's ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... with me and brought me into pain, A known or unknown god has oppressed me, A known or unknown goddess has brought sorrow upon me. I seek for help, but no one takes my hand. I weep, but no one approaches me. I call aloud, but no one hears me. Full of woe, I grovel in the dust without looking up. To my merciful god I turn, speaking with sighs. The feet of my goddess I kiss imploringly (?). To the known or unknown god do I speak with sighs, To the known or unknown ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... begins a New Year." Well, every day did begin a New Year! So did every minute. Why not begin a New Year then, in that minute? He had only to say in a cajoling, good-natured tone, "All right, all right! Keep your hair on, my child. I grovel!" He had only to say some such words, and the excellent, simple, unresentful Maggie would at once be appeased. It would be a demonstration of his moral strength ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... enter on ignoble strife With man, 'tis yours to soar above— To all the higher things of life, Divine compassion, and pure love. 'Tis yours to stimulate, refine, To win men by a kindly heart; Not grovel with us where the sign Of Mammon hangs above ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... for the cause of science by his example as well as by his discoveries. By living a plain but honest life, declining magnificent offers of positions from royal patrons, at the same time refusing to grovel before nobility, he set a worthy example to other philosophers whose cringing and pusillanimous attitude towards persons of wealth or position had hitherto earned them the contempt of the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... and come down now and again to rest, if one must, than grovel consistently and always," ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... maintain an unresponsive silence. "Do not allow yourself to be thrashed by the provoking whip of a beautiful face," he told the disciples. "How can sense slaves enjoy the world? Its subtle flavors escape them while they grovel in primal mud. All nice discriminations are lost to the man of ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... from off his poke; he swings it o'er his head; The nuggets fall around their feet like grain. They rattle over roof and wall; they scatter, roll and spread; The dust is like a shower of golden rain. The guests a moment stand aghast, then grovel on the floor; They fight, and snarl, and claw, like beasts of prey; And then, as everybody grabbed and everybody swore, The man from Eldorado ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... Not to grow dizzy on unwonted heights. Ignoble was he not, and no betrayer; To be the Thunderer's slave, he was too great; To be his friend and comrade,—but a man. His crime was human, and their doom severe; For poets sing, that treachery and pride Did from Jove's table hurl him headlong down To grovel in the depths of Tartarus. Alas, and his whole race ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... they found the large distaff flung carelessly upon a bench. They returned yet a third time, and a third delusion was prepared for them; for Katla had given her son the appearance of a hog, which seemed to grovel upon the heap of ashes. Arnkill now seized and split the distaff, which he had at first suspected, upon which Kalta tauntingly observed, that if their visits had been frequent that evening, they could not be said to be altogether ineffectual, since they had destroyed ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... she was not telling the truth. The conviction swept over me that something had happened at the house in Park Lane since I slammed the front door and ran out. Diana might have thought twice before coming to grovel here to Eagle, unless she had been sure that I was not jumping to conclusions—sure that there could be no possible mistake about what I had found in Sidney's coat. Suddenly I knew as well as if she had put the story into words that Sidney had come home before she had made up her mind what ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... in one day, if he take truck, to keep him three, and but that he prefers fixing cucumbers to thrashing, and making moccasins to clearing land, he might do well enough. Though poor, he is none the least inclined to grovel, but, with the spirit of his land, feels quite at ease in company with any judge or general in ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... coarse sporting exercises to which he devoted his energies. He had no pride. He tramped the mud of the fields; he tore his ears in bramble bushes; and I have seen him so far lose all sense of our family's dignity as to grovel at the feet of his master, and raise one of his paws, to indicate that birds were near—common birds; I believe they ...
— Pussy and Doggy Tales • Edith Nesbit
... little hand, but it was withdrawn at once. He found it as warm as toast. Words of love surged to his humble lips; his knees felt a tendency to lower themselves precipitously to the frozen sidewalk; he was ready to grovel at her feet—and he wondered if they were as warm as toast. But 'Rast Little came up at that instant and the chance ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... dignity and degraded to servitude. And if you sometimes feel that,—you, in whose favor the arrangement tends,—what do you suppose your servants sometimes think upon the subject? It was no wonder that the millions of Russia were ready to grovel before their Czar, while they believed that he was "an emanation from the Deity." But in countries where it is quite understood that every man is just as much an emanation from the Deity as any other, you will not long have that sort of thing. You remember Goldsmith's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... for the compliment! Strange to say, I am much more like a man than anything else under the sun. I say, are you really going? Well, I forgive you for being naughty, if that's what you want. And I'm sorry I can't grovel to you, but I don't feel justified in so doing, and it would be very bad for you in any case. By the way—er—Miss Ratcliffe, I think you will be interested to learn that my visit to the Campions was of a social and not of a professional character. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... a hovel, Twiddle had a palace; Twaddle said: "I'll grovel Or he'll think I bear him malice"— A sentiment as novel As a castor on ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... a hut or a hovel, Come to the road: Mankind and moles in the dark love to grovel, But to the road. Throw off the loads that are bending you double; Love is for life, only labor is trouble; Truce to the town, whose best gift is a ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... quietly away and pretend that nothing has happened and that there never was a fleet. When the Mekinese arrive, the fleet will fight. It doesn't hope to win; it doesn't expect anything—except getting killed honorably when its enemy would like to have it grovel. But ...
— Talents, Incorporated • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... never knew what illness was before. O life! to think a man should stand so little On his own will and choice, as to be thus Cast from his high throne suddenly, and sent To grovel beast-like. All the glow is gone From the rich world! No sense is left me more To touch with beauty. Even she has faded Into the far horizon, a spent dream Of love ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... never, either now, or long since, Have heard of such a peace of nonsense; That one who learning's joys hath felt, And at the Muse's altar knelt, Should leave a life of sacred leisure To taste the accumulating pleasure; And, metamorphosed to an alley duck, Grovel in loads of kindred muck. Oh! 't is beyond my comprehension! A courtier throwing up his pension,— A lawyer working without a fee,— A parson giving charity,— A truly pious methodist preacher,— Are not, egad, ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... Athene came near to Achilles and spake winged words: "Now, at last, O godlike Achilles! shall we twain carry off great glory to the Achaian ships! He cannot now escape us, though the Far-Darter should grovel at the feet of Zeus with fruitless prayers. But do thou stay and recover thy breath; and I will go and persuade Hector to stand up against thee in fight." And he gladly obeyed her voice, and stood leaning on ...
— The Children's Hour, Volume 3 (of 10) • Various
... economically rotten it is easy to prove. In the words of Professor Hearnshaw, 'the government has ceased to govern in the world of labour, and has been compelled, instead of governing, to bribe, to cajole, to beg, to grovel. It has purchased brief truces at the cost of increasing levies of Danegeld drawn from the diminishing resources of the patient community. It has embarked on a course of payment of blackmail which must end either in national bankruptcy or in the social revolution which the anarchists ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... related to them. I have nothing to do with them. They cannot make any rules for me. If pride and dignity and independence are dead in them, why, so much the worse for them! It is no affair of mine. Certainly it is no reason why I should get down and grovel also. No; I at least ...
— The Damnation of Theron Ware • Harold Frederic
... words I late had mark'd. And, "Spirit!" I said, "in whom repentant tears Mature that blessed hour, when thou with God Shalt find acceptance, for a while suspend For me that mightier care. Say who thou wast, Why thus ye grovel on your bellies prone, And if in aught ye wish my service there, Whence living I am come." He answering spake "The cause why Heav'n our back toward his cope Reverses, shalt thou know: but me know first The successor of Peter, and the name And title of my lineage from that stream, That' twixt ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... understand our words. As if it felt its insignificance, and dreaded to be arrested in some lower phase of its development, its instinct for obedience becomes almost a passion. As the vine must twine or grovel, so the child comes unconsciously to worship idols, and imitates bad patterns and examples in the absence of worthy ones. He obeys as with a deep sense of being our chattel, and, at bottom, admires those who coerce ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... remained singularly just and accurate. He could not now have analysed his sense of protest and dissatisfaction; yet, while the charm grasped and encircled him, making him, as he said to himself, idiotically grovel or inanely soar, he repelled the poignant sweetness and the thrills that went through him were thrills of ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... by the undoubted historical probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and by so much more dangerous than the Tiger? Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once an egg, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of a Dog? Or is the philanthropist or the saint to give up his endeavours to lead a noble life, because the ...
— On the Relations of Man to the Lower Animals • Thomas H. Huxley
... the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? Have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... propriety of such a use of words I will not stop to question, but simply remark that such figures should never be employed in the instruction of children. As the mind expands, no longer content to grovel amidst mundane things, we mount the pegasus of imagination and soar thro the blissful or terrific scenes of fancy and fiction, and study a language before unknown. But it would be an unrighteous demand upon others, to require them to ...
— Lectures on Language - As Particularly Connected with English Grammar. • William S. Balch
... spiritual fear, but she had passed through them, in common with the man she upheld; a man who, like Louis the Well-Beloved, former master of the building beneath whose shadow she was sitting, was ready to grovel for her pardon, when threatened with a priest and the last terrors, and would have recalled his mistress, rejoicing, with the first day ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... responsibility which you can not shirk without paying the penalty in a shriveled soul, a stunted mentality, a warped conscience, and a narrow field of usefulness. It is more of a disgrace for a college graduate to grovel, to stoop to mean, low practises, than for a man who has not had a liberal education. The educated man has gotten a glimpse of power, of grander things, and he is expected to look up, not down, to aspire, not ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... the unrelenting crone; "hast thou ever spared man in thy hatred, or woman in thy lust? Ah, grovel in the dust!—crouch—crouch!—wild beast as thou art! whose sleek skin and beautiful hues have taught the unwary to be blind to the talons that rend, and the grinders that devour;—crouch, that the foot of the old and ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... make me grovel at your feet, if need be, in an agony of prayer. The means, I cry—and you are the means! What is there for me, then, but to beseech you to have faith in me? I suppose, as yet, you have little or no cause—though once ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... liberty, and who are Catholics for the same reason, add to the number of Catholics here, but their children's children will not be Catholics. Their children will not be very good Catholics, and even these immigrants themselves, in a few years, will not grovel quite so low in the presence of a priest. The Catholic Church is gaining ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the merited prosperity and honor of the individual cannot fail to be of benefit to the whole community. It is only in offices contingent on election or appointment that the aspirant incurs a heavy risk of failure; but when we consider how meanly men are often compelled to creep into office and to grovel in it, it can hardly be supposed that a genuine desire of superiority holds a prominent place among the motives of these who are willingly dependent on patronage or on ...
— A Manual of Moral Philosophy • Andrew Preston Peabody
... sometimes descends to sustain it. At the very moment of birth, just as the infant tasted for the first time the atmosphere of our troubled planet, it was laid on the ground. That might bear different interpretations. But immediately, lest so grand a creature should grovel there for more than one instant, either the paternal hand, as proxy for the goddess Levana, or some near kinsman, as proxy for the father, raised it upright, bade it look erect as the king of all this world, and presented ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... earth only in all the sources of her life and hopes, she was not earthy. If her spirit could not soar and sing in the sky, it also could not grovel in the mire of gross materiality. Some little time, therefore, before the company broke up, on the plea of not feeling well she lured her father away from his wine and cigars and a knot of gentlemen who were beginning to talk ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... this shadow. You would disport yourself in abominable fornications with this hallucination. Very well, I am amused at your clownish terror even more than I was amused at your burlesque ecstasies. Tremble now for here is a Medusa, a Messalina come to destroy you. Whimper and grovel, but observe in your idiot cowardice how Mallare, the indifferent one, sits and smiles—still supreme, still a spectator ravished by ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... desperate fight, His courage ne'er forsook, He javelled at the tiger Until his bayonet broke. One part was in the savage breast, And Turner understood If he could grovel out the steel 'Twould draw the ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... some favourable outcome, the night express from York was hurrying Capella to a weird conclusion of his efforts to discredit his wife. Had he but known what lay before him he would have left the train at the first station and hastened to Margaret, to grovel at her feet and beg her forgiveness for the ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... be," Amuba said thoughtfully, "and yet I think that the very poorest among us was far freer and more independent than the richest of your Egyptian peasants. He did not grovel on the ground when the king passed along. It was open to him if he was braver than his fellows to rise in rank. He could fish, or hunt, or till the ground, or fashion arms as he chose; his life was not tied down by usage or ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... starts to see the flames it fed Howling through the darkened sky With a myriad tongues victoriously, And sinks down in fear: so thou, O Tyranny, beholdest now 280 Light around thee, and thou hearest The loud flames ascend, and fearest: Grovel on the earth; ay, hide In the dust thy ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... which papas and mammas betrayed in the early Victorian era. This seems past all doubt when you realise that the common effort of all these pictures and prose is to glorify the impeccable parent, and teach his or her offspring to grovel silently before the stern law-givers who ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... trained to bend and grovel from the first, Crouching through life forever in the dark, Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark; And no one durst Deny their horrid dream, that they ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... Kelver. There is one of me must worship, adore a woman madly, abjectly; grovel before her like the Troubadour before his Queen of Song, eat her slipper, drink the water she has washed in, scourge himself before her window, die for a kiss of her glove flung down with a laugh. She must be scornful, contemptuous, cruel. There is another I would cherish, a ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... key from some corner. Money pours in apace—the draughts are deep, and long, and frequent, the mugs are large, the thirst insatiate. The takings, compared with the size and situation of the house, must be high, and yet, with all this custom and profit, the landlord and his family still grovel. And grovel they will in dirt, vice, low cunning, and iniquity—as the serpent went on his belly in the dust—to ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... your lordship's pardon, if I have said too much—but I do not believe I have. You have never sold yourself, and therefore have not been accessary to our destruction. You must be happy now not to have a son, who would live to grovel in the dregs of England. Your lordship has long been so wise as to secede from the follies of your countrymen. May you and Lady Strafford long enjoy the tranquillity that has been your option even in better days!—and may you amuse yourself without ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... to control them than other. And after all, Edith, there is a sense wherein no man can ever be fully satisfied in this life. We were meant to aspire; and if we were entirely content with present things, then should we grovel. To submit cheerfully is one thing: to be fully gratified, so that no desire is left, is an other. We shall not be that, methinks, ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... "You are the type of woman, I suppose, who sits at home and arranges flowers, very artistically, no doubt. You would pose in limp gowns of gauzy drapery, like a pictured saint, and expect your husband or your lovers to grovel and worship. But you are dangerously near to the borderland separating the sublime from the ridiculous. You expect me to apologise for a shot at random, which cost a valuable horse its life. Some savage black who worships ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... the principles of religion and morality, and gaining confirmed health and physical energy by the exercise and drill of the school playground. No children are left idle in the streets of the towns; no children are allowed to grovel in the gutters; no children are allowed to make their appearance at the schools dirty, or in ragged clothes; and the local authorities are obliged to clothe all whose parents cannot afford to clothe them. The children of the poor of Germany, Holland and Switzerland acquire ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... feet the black and white hounds of the Dominican order—Domini canes, according to the monkish pun—are hunting heretical wolves. Opposite this painting is the apotheosis of S. Thomas Aquinas. Beneath the footstool of this "dumb ox of Sicily," as he was called, grovel the heresiarchs—Arius, Sabellius, Averroes. At again a lower level, as though supporting the saint on either hand, are ranged seven sacred and seven profane sciences, each with its chief representative. Thus Rhetoric and Cicero, Civil Law and ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... disbelievest me," she said, with a little stamp. "Do so once more, Allan, and I swear I'll bring thee to grovel on the ground and kiss my foot and babble nonsense to a woman sworn to another man, such as never for all thy days thou shalt think of without a ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... termination of the ice. An intermittent disturbance of the air in these fissures made the flame flicker at intervals, though generally the candle burned steadily in them, and we could detect no current in the cave. The fourth column was in the low part of the cave, and we were obliged to grovel on the ice to get its dimensions: it was 3-1/4 feet broad and 4-1/3 feet high, the roof of the cave being only 2-3/4 feet high; and it poured out of the vertical fissure like a smooth round fall of water, adhering lightly to the rock at its upper end like a fungus, ...
— Ice-Caves of France and Switzerland • George Forrest Browne
... his shoulders and shuddered. He thanked his God that the spring was near by. Upon one thing he was determined, that whatever happened, though he should have to die—by his own hand, he would not grovel into Eternity upon his hands and knees as had that factor of ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... susceptible to abstract influence, still hesitated, drawing near to each other in growling consultation. Dolores gave them no sign, though she watched them keenly from under her lowered lashes. She gave her attention to the line of abject creatures who filed slowly past her, each one stopping to grovel in the dust at her feet and passing on. These Milo halted near by and herded into a shivering, frightened mob. And Dolores's cool disregard of the whites had its calculated effect. One by one they stepped out into the open as had the colored men; the more timorous, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... declare that God condemned this lie as to man's origin and character by condemning its symbol, 539:18 the serpent, to grovel beneath all the beasts of the field. It is false to say that Truth and error commingle in creation. In parable and argument, 539:21 this falsity is exposed by our Master as self-evidently wrong. Disputing these points with the Pharisees and arguing for the Science ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... deal of train oil in his system. Mrs. Chadband is a stern, severe-looking, silent woman. Mr. Chadband moves softly and cumbrously, not unlike a bear who has been taught to walk upright. He is very much embarrassed about the arms, as if they were inconvenient to him and he wanted to grovel, is very much in a perspiration about the head, and never speaks without first putting up his great hand, as delivering a token to his hearers that he ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... She leaned her swathed head upon her hand and appeared to be lost in thought, while the multitude before her continued to grovel upon their stomachs, only screwing their heads round a little so as to get a view of us with one eye. It seemed that their Queen so rarely appeared in public that they were willing to undergo this inconvenience, and even graver risks, to have the opportunity of ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... If it were simply to grovel in the dust before him it should be done. If humiliation would suffice,—or any self-abasement that were possible to me! But I should be false if I said that I look forward to any such possibility. How can he wish to have me back again after what he has ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... Tristram] Then the two ladies who looked beheld Houdaine fall down at the feet of Sir Tristram and grovel there with joy. And they beheld that he licked Sir Tristram's feet and his hands, and that he leaped upon Sir Tristram and licked his neck and face, and at ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... cried. "Having defied your God so long, shall I grovel to Him at the last? Having hated you so much, shall I seek your forgiveness now? At least of one thing I am glad—it was I who brought you here, and with me and through me ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... metals I also shall gather more priceless loot in the way of women. And then, having taken all that I desire, I will lay waste to this earth so that those who survive will fear the name of Zitlan and will grovel before him like a god when once ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... she got him his boots, and would have laced them for him, and kissed them too, if he would have let her, and did grovel at his feet to arrange the roll of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... thousandth-part of the unblushing impertinence of that countrywoman of mine who called your future king 'Tummy'! but she was a beauty, and I am not pretty enough to be anything but discreetly well-mannered. Shall you sit in his presence, or stand and grovel alternately? Does one have to curtsy? Very well, then, make any excuses you like for me, Hilda: say I'm eccentric, say I'm deranged, say I'm a Nihilist. I will hide under the scullery table, fling myself in the moat, lock myself in the keep, let the portcullis fall on me, die any ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... marshes. Now that Federal bayonets have been turned from her bosom, this poison, the influence of three fourths of a million of negro voters, will speedily ascend and sap her vigor and intelligence. Greed of office, curse of democracies, will impel demagogues to grovel deeper and deeper in the mire in pursuit of ignorant votes. Her old breed of statesmen has largely passed away during and since the civil war, and the few survivors are naturally distrusted, as responsible for past errors. Numbers of her gentry fell ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... dead?" she cried. "Have you no pity for me? Do you think that I have followed you here to grovel at your feet for mere whim? Am I acting like a woman sane and sound? Don't you see that I am mad, and why I am mad? Must I tell you before her? Dick—" She staggered towards him, and the fine cloak slipped from her shoulders; and then it was that Tommy changed from a child into a ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... collected in a coach and four, and transmitted to paper in a study overlooking the Green Park; with paper velvet-like, and golden pen ruby-headed, upon rose-wood desk inlaid with ivory, you may find that these essays have been transcribed: you will grovel, you will slaver, you will rub your nose in the pebbles, like a salmon at spawning-time, when this very immortal work shall come out, clothed in purple morocco, our arms emblazoned on the covers, and coroneted on the back, after the manner of publication of the works ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... as the extinct Megatherium of an elder world reappears after the gothic deluge; and now, careering in helm and hauberk with the other ruffians, bandying blows in the thickest of the fight, blasting with bell, book, and candle its trembling enemies, while sovereigns, at the head of armies, grovel in the dust and offer abject submission for the kiss of peace; exercising the same conjury over ignorant baron and cowardly hind, making the fiction of apostolic authority to bind and loose, as prolific in acres as the other divine right to have and hold; thus ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... man not without a divine consultation; others at once, man Thou didst first form, then inspire; others in several shapes, like to none but themselves, man after Thine own image ... others with qualities fit for service; man for dominion; other creatures grovel to their earth, and have all their senses upon it, this is reared ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... boast," said Andras, "of the delights of its villainy, and grovel in all that is low and base. Life is not worth living unless the air one breathes is pure and free! Man is ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... has any business to think himself humble," said Father Payne. "The moment you do that, you are conceited. It's not a virtue to grovel. A man ought to know exactly what he is worth. You needn't be always saying what you are, worth, of course. It's modest to hold your tongue. But humility is, or ought to be, extinct as a virtue. It belongs to the time when people felt bound to deplore the corruption ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... returned; no power short of physical force could have compelled her. More than once Magdalena wished that she was cast in her friend's anarchic mould. She felt that did her grip upon herself relax she should scream aloud and grovel on the very boards that had had their share in her brief love-life. But she was Magdalena Yorba, the proudest woman in California; in the very hour of her discovery, when she had been possessed of a blind terror rather than grief, she had remembered to be thankful that the world could not pity ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... other contradictory traits such as no one would have expected in a keen business man. Sometimes Mary had fancied that Peter was a little inclined to fall in love with Jim Schuyler, perhaps because he was one of the few men she knew who did not grovel at her feet. Now Mary looked at the man with intense interest, and could imagine a girl like Molly Maxwell making him her hero, in spite of the difference between their ages. Molly was not twenty-one. He must be thirty-eight or forty, and would have looked hard if it had ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... an opinion of herself," said Nora. "Look at Daisy and Edna. They act as though Eleanor were the Sultan of Turkey or the Shah of Persia, or some other high and mighty dignitary. They almost grovel before her." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... science are irreconcilable foes, for faith is the perversion, and science the development of human nature. Believing and knowing, religion and philosophy, are born antagonists, and man can make no rapid progress if he grovel in the errors of faith. The personality of God is not that of the individual but of the universal. The pantheism of Spinoza is the best solution of God's existence; "for," says Strauss, "God is not the personal, but ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... erected for its worship? How can we help cringing to Lords? Flesh and blood can't do otherwise. What man can withstand this prodigious temptation? Inspired by what is called a noble emulation, some people grasp at honours and win them; others, too weak or mean, blindly admire and grovel before those who have gained them; others, not being able to acquire them, furiously hate, abuse, and envy. There are only a few bland and not-in-the-least-conceited philosophers, who can behold the state of society, viz., Toadyism, organised:—base ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... how humiliating. He would go down on his knees to his father if she wished it. He would beg Willits's pardon—he would abase himself in any way St. George should suggest. He had done what he thought was right, and he would do it over again under like circumstances, but he would grovel at Kate's feet and kiss the ground she stepped on if she ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith |
