"Ignoble" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was useless to ask George to come aboard the Comfort, and try to tow his craft. That would seem too ignoble, worse than having a farm wagon drag the broken-down bubble wagon into ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... capital did not wholly cease to be the resort of students and of artists. The universities maintained themselves in a respectable position—- far different, indeed, from that which they had held in the last century, yet not ignoble. Much was being learned on many lines of study divergent from those prescribed by earlier humanists. Padua, in particular, distinguished itself for medical researches. This was the flourishing time, moreover, of Academies, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... resolved to "redeem" the unfortunate man should the opportunity occur. This is honest work, not Scribe make-believe. Cases in which men and women have wrought themselves into an exalted mood and planned and achieved deeds, great or small, noble or ignoble, but always more or less mad, are common enough in history to justify a dramatist in taking a specimen as one of the persons of his drama. Besides, Senta, from the moment she is seen, stands out as the principal figure. The Dutchman is there to give character ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... wealth is an engrossing pursuit—and now that I have amassed a good deal more than I quite know what to do with, it seems to me a very ignoble one. It chokes up everything that makes life worth living; it leaves so little time for the constant and regular practice of those ingenuous arts which faithfully to have learned is said to soften the manners, and make one an ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair. On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... poor Harriet, after all. Stern justice must take its course— justice tempered with delicacy, justice tempered with compassion, justice that pities a forlorn dead girl and refuses to strike her. Except in the back. Will not be ignoble and say the harsh thing, but only insinuate it. Stern justice knows about the carriage and the wet-nurse and the bonnet-shop and the other dark things that caused this sad mischief, and may not, must not blink them; so ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... solution is this. Murder in ordinary cases, where the sympathy is wholly directed to the case of the murdered person, is an incident of coarse and vulgar horror; and for this reason, that it flings the interest exclusively upon the natural but ignoble instinct by which we cleave to life; an instinct, which, as being indispensable to the primal law of self-preservation, is the same in kind, (though different in degree,) amongst all living creatures; this instinct therefore, because it annihilates all distinctions, ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... him. I think I know the thing that drove him here amongst us. It is a great temptation, which pursues him here—even here, where his life is so commendable. I have seen him fighting it. I have seen his torture, the piteous, ignoble yielding, and the struggle, with more than mortal energy, to be master ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... "please don't consider it is at all ignoble to be financially embarrassed. In fact, more than half of our girls are continually 'rationed,' as they call a cut in allowance. And if it is only a matter of ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... returned Judith slangily. "Undoubtedly you refer to the ignoble Miss Noble. Noble by name but not by nature," she added with ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... what will reflective readers say of a governing class, such as ours, addressing its workers with an indictment of 'over-production!' Over-production: runs it not so? 'Ye miscellaneous ignoble, manufacturing individuals, ye have produced too much. We accuse you of making above two hundred thousand shirts for the bare backs of mankind. Your trousers too, which you have made of fustian, of cassimere, of Scotch plaid, of jane, nankeen, and woollen broadcloth, are ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... was organized for practically the same purposes as our present national banks, but for lack of proper restrictions its use was soon perverted to ignoble purposes. The bank managers showed so much partiality in the distribution of their favors and accommodations, and meddled in politics to such an extent, that the people became disgusted with it, and a renewal of ...
— The Railroad Question - A historical and practical treatise on railroads, and - remedies for their abuses • William Larrabee
... enjoyment with them. From that moment the horizon becomes void; no fresh hope inflames you; there is nothing left but to die. And yet you still cling on, you won't admit that it's all up with you, you obstinately persist in trying to produce—just as old men cling to love with painful, ignoble efforts. Ah! a man ought to have the courage and the pride to strangle himself before his ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... one fadeless wreath upon his tomb. He would not play the ignoble part of a Twiggs or a Lynde. He offered a stainless sword to the Bonnie ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... general realization of the extremely high quality of "The New Machiavelli" has reduced almost to silence the ignoble tittle-tattle that accompanied its serial publication in the English Review. It is years since a novel gave rise to so much offensive and ridiculous chatter before being issued as a book. When the chatter began, dozens of people who would no more dream of paying four-and-sixpence for a ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... would live, again she would love, only this time it would be a better life, a deeper, purer love. Yet immediately afterwards she recollected that this was impossible, for she had been soiled and degraded by an ignoble, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... her by the hand and lead her to a higher seat on the dais, and place upon her head, or at least upon her letter-paper and the panels of her carriage, a coronet in which the strawberry leaves should stand out more prominently than in her brother's emblazonment. Lesbia's mind could not conceive an ignoble marriage, or the possibility of the most worthy happening to be found in a lower circle than ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... uncle to decide. They showed wisdom by their decision. Now, the greatest of all the Umbrian painters, before Raphael, was a queer little miserly man named Perugino, who at that time had a studio in Perugia, an Umbrian town not far distant from Urbino. Although he was of mean appearance and ignoble character, he had an unmistakable power in painting mild-eyed Madonnas and spotless saints against delicate landscape back-grounds. People disliked the man, but they could not help seeing the beauty of his art, and so his studio was crowded. Hither was sent the boy Raphael and when Perugino ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor
... abnegation, is of the imperishable things that draw weak man a little nearer to the angels. When Carlotta wept upon my shoulder during those few first moments of her return I knew that all resentment was gone from my heart, that it would have been a poor, ignoble thing. Had she come back to me leprous of body and abominable of spirit, it would not have mattered. I would have forgiven her, loved her, cherished her just the same. It was a question, not of reason, not of human pity, not of quixotism; not of any argument or sentiment for which I could ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... they two must play together. If his father had only winked at him! Surely he might have done that with safety! But not to be admitted to the secret,—not to be allowed to play the heroic part,—to be used as an ignoble tool by a father who neither loved him nor knew his courage,—that was too much! He would not betray his father—no, a thousand times, no! But ...
— The Calico Cat • Charles Miner Thompson
... and his canoe were put on board the stage for Moosehead Lake, sixty and odd miles distant, an hour before we started in an open wagon. We carried hard bread, pork, smoked beef, tea, sugar, etc., seemingly enough for a regiment; the sight of which brought together reminded me by what ignoble means we had maintained our ground hitherto. We went by the Avenue Road, which is quite straight and very good, north-westward toward Moosehead Lake, through more than a dozen flourishing towns, with almost every one its academy,—not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... seen; that they had seen her, and guessed, of course, that she was his mother, was positively unendurable to Blair. He tried to speak, but his voice shook into silence. His dismay was not entirely ignoble; the situation was excruciating to a man whose feeling for beauty was a form of religion; his mortification had in it the element of horror for a profaned ideal; his mother was an esthetic insult ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... which you are about to embark; for I will now openly declare, what I have often before left you to infer, that I have no sympathies for those who come to oppress and enslave my country; nor will I ever aid or sanction their ignoble purposes—not even to the withholding any intelligence I may gain of their movements, which may avert disaster or peril from our ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... bushman's boots, and his hands trembled as he drew them on. He could now see the form of Howie plainly enough as it lay half in the starlight and half in the darkness of the tent. He stepped over it without a mistake, and the ignoble strains droned ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... fallen, when the peasants anxiously draw their conclusions as to the expected yield. But however valuable the fruit, the wood of the tree is worthless for commerce, except to make walking-sticks, or to serve the ignoble purpose of supplying hotels and cafes with tooth-picks! Lemons, which are far more delicate than oranges and require to be kept protected by screens and matting during the sharp winter nights, are less common at Sorrento than on the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... and not in knowing; and that they have not used to enlarge their observation to match and sort that effect with instances of a diverse subject, which must of necessity be before any cause be found out. That they have passed over the observation of instances vulgar and ignoble, and stayed their attention chiefly upon instances of mark; whereas the other sort are for the most part more significant and of better height and information. That every particular that worketh any effect is a thing compounded (more or less) of diverse single natures, (more manifest ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... collection of "The Country Gentleman." I had never seen an agricultural paper before, though our little penny daily did occasionally contain extracts from some of them. I became immediately interested. The thought struck me that this bundle of old papers, now about to be used for such ignoble purposes as wrappers for groceries, must contain stores of the very information I was so laboriously seeking after. Hastily turning them over, my eye lighted on an article headed "Strawberries: how to plant and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... with the magnificent dreamer, who was regarded by his own generation as the fool of an idea. A more prosaic treatment would have utterly failed to represent that mind, which existed from boyhood in an ideal world, and, amid frustrated hopes, shattered plans, and ignoble returns for his sacrifices, could always rebuild its glowing projects, and conquer obloquy and death ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... at length, meditatively, removed the cigar from his lips and delicately knocked off the ash. "Circumstances alter cases. That method is too expensive. Son Altesse cannot afford the blood of the Fatherland in return for such ignoble carcasses. We—the price paid in the Herrero ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... hour; and certainly, although I could not discern his features, I saw him make no gesture either to invite help or to indicate that he had any understanding of his position. If mad, I thought (right or wrong) his death thus less ignoble than his life had become; if sane, he held a strong and steadfast heart, and bore himself well on his last voyage. By some strange chance, the boat spun and tossed among the breakers, yet kept an even keel, and boat and man together made a viking end. For, so standing, ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... the four cardinal points of the compass of suspicion, and govern the stormy sea of soliloquies. From these frightful tempests which ravage a woman's heart springs an ignoble, unworthy resolution, one which every woman, the duchess as well as the shopkeeper's wife, the baroness as well as the stockbroker's lady, the angel as well as the shrew, the indifferent as well as the passionate, at once ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... crowd's ignoble strife, Their sober wishes never learn'd to stray; Along the cool, sequester'd vale of life, They kept the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... and he who is devoid of wisdom is the destroyer of states and households. There are rulers and there are subjects in states. And the first claim to rule is that of parents to rule over their children; the second, that of the noble to rule over the ignoble; thirdly, the elder must govern the younger; in the fourth place, the slave must obey his master; fifthly, there is the power of the stronger, which the poet Pindar declares to be according to nature; ...
— Laws • Plato
... preservation. But yet there is a higher interest than that, that relates to the eternal interest of our souls. And truly to own and profess, and prosecute that interest of soul preservation, of eternal rest to our souls, is neither ignoble, nor unbeseeming a Christian; neither is it any way inconsistent with the pursuance of that more public and catholic interest of God's glory, in respect of which all interests, even the most general and public, are particular and private. For this is the goodness of our God, ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... express sentiments like these, shew only that they distinguish the slave and the freeman, the noble and the ignoble from each other by their virtues and their [1255b] vices; for they think it reasonable, that as a man begets a man, and a beast a beast, so from a good man, a good man should be descended; and this is what nature desires to do, but frequently cannot accomplish it. ...
— Politics - A Treatise on Government • Aristotle
... he, a minister of the connection, could not be kept in ignorance of. It was but a momentary pang. Phoebe was not so foolish as to shrink before the inevitable, or to attempt by foolish expedients to stave off such a danger. She shrank for a second, then drew herself up and shook off all such ignoble cares. "I am myself whatever happens," was her reflection; and she said with ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... lives, we have enjoyed the delight of seeing at the house of a friend one of the grand pictures of MURILLO, which was obtained by a distinguished connoisseur at Lima, in 1828, from the cloister of an old convent, where it had hung for countless years in ignoble seclusion. It had probably been brought from Spain during the life-time of the painter, as it is not described by any of his biographers, who have carefully enumerated the works of his pencil. This idea is strengthened by the fact of his having inscribed his name upon the ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... daily life. Yet the variety was considerable: hardy and danger-loving pioneers fulfilling the requirements of romance; shiftless vagrants curiously combining utter inefficiency with a sort of bastard contempt for hardship; ruffians who could only offset against every brutal vice an ignoble physical courage; intelligent men whose observant eyes ranged over the whole region in a shrewd search after enterprise and profit; a few educated men, decent in apparel and bearing, useful in legislation and in preventing the ideal from becoming altogether ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... vain: strike other chords; Fill high the cup with Samian wine! Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, And shed the blood of Scio's vine! Hark! rising to the ignoble call— ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... is to discuss the evils of the great modern Capitalist Press, its function in vitiating and misinforming opinion, and in putting power into ignoble hands; its correction by the formation of small independent organs, and their ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby
... fomenting always antipathies conformably with the ancient maxim of tyrants, Divide and govern,—this government has constituted itself the adversary of every generous thought, the ally and patron of all ignoble causes, the government declared by the whole civilized world paymaster of the executioners ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... irretrievably. The real brevity of the time at your disposal, whether for the training of your mind, or for your growth into the character of good men, consists in this, that deterioration is standing always at the back of any neglect or waste. Deterioration is the inseparable shadow of every form of ignoble life. ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... his hand on the young officer's shoulder as he was about leaving the house, said, 'Snelling, you need not go, I will excuse you.' 'By no means,' was the reply, 'I feel more like doing my duty now than ever.' 'Stay, it is a false alarm by my order,' said the General."[150] The ignoble surrender of Detroit by General Hull was deplored by many of the men under him. The story is told that while General Hull's aid was trying to place the white flag in position he called, "Snelling, come and help me fix this flag." Whereupon that officer ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... amazing paradox was revealed in the fact that Palla fascinated her; that she believed her to be as fine as she was perverse; as honest as she was beautiful; as spiritually chaste as she knew her to be mentally and bodily untainted by anything ignoble. ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... will with him, that is, she took her own gait. 'What that pace was there is no word mean enough to describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is slower than a run.' He must belabor her incessantly. It was an ignoble toil, and he felt ashamed of himself besides, for he remembered her sex. 'The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once when I looked at her she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who had formerly ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... on. And you need not fear that your virtue will be thrown away; the people of Scotland will be quick to understand, in default of visible fire and halter, that you have done a brave action for Christianity and the national weal; and if they are spared in the future any of the present ignoble jealousy of sect against sect, they will not forget that to that end you gave of your household comfort and stinted your children. Even if you fail—ay, and even if there were not found one to profit by your invitation—your ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and as the agreement was not observed, the troopers were useless. Before Chalons four hours had been lost—not by accident, as the royalist legend tells, for Valory the outrider testifies that it took but a few minutes to repair. Bouille knew the ignoble cause of his own ruin and of so much sorrow, but never revealed it. When he came to England he misled questioners, and he exacted an oath from his son that he would keep the miserable secret for half a century. The younger Bouille was true to his ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... looked at with a sportsman's eye. It is so with all forests and moorlands. The spirit of Robin Hood and Johnny of Breadislee is theirs. They are remnants of the home of man's fierce youth, still consecrated to the genius of animal excitement and savage freedom; after all, not the most ignoble qualities of human nature. Besides, there is no better method of giving a living picture of a whole country than by taking some one feature of it as a guide, and bringing all other observations into harmony with that original key. Even in merely scientific books this ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... beautiful man of his own times Ton chath eauton hathropon challei euprepestatos. He would therefore have looked the part admirably of the dying gladiator; and he would have died in his natural vocation. But it was ordered otherwise; his death was destined to private malice, and to an ignoble hand. And much obscurity still rests upon the motives of the assassins, though its circumstances are reported with unusual minuteness of detail. One thing is evident, that the public and patriotic motives assigned by the perpetrators ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... them that are given to change: for their calamity shall rise suddenly; and who knoweth the destruction of them both?'" and he finally warned them of the risk they incurred, after having been advanced and blessed in an unexampled way, of being flung back to their previous ignoble position upon the ash heap. There are plenty of respectable Boers in whose ears those expressions ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... the real object of his attention was her friend Laura. But if such was her object, she lacked the strength of mind and hardness of heart to carry it out, and in the end she becomes a benevolent providence, who labors for the reconciliation of the estranged couple. She proves too noble for the ignoble role she had undertaken. Instead of wrecking the marriage, she sacrifices herself upon the altar of friendship. To that there can, of course, be no objection; but in that case the process of her mental change ought to have been clearly shown. In Ibsen's "Rosmersholm," ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... instant that I was visited by the idea of writing the book which ultimately became "The Old Wives' Tale." Of course I felt that the woman who caused the ignoble mirth in the restaurant would not serve me as a type of heroine. For she was much too old and obviously unsympathetic. It is an absolute rule that the principal character of a novel must not be unsympathetic, and the whole modern tendency ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... dreams. To fully understand the sudden transformation of this illustrious author, it is necessary to realize the simplicity that constant work and solitude leave in the heart; all that love—reduced to a mere need, and now repugnant, beside an ignoble woman—excites of regret and longings for diviner sentiments in the higher regions of the soul. D'Arthez was, indeed, the child, the boy that Madame de Cadignan had recognized. An illumination something like his own had taken place in the beautiful ...
— The Secrets of the Princesse de Cadignan • Honore de Balzac
... entered France, like many other adventurous knights, in Garibaldi's suite, came to Paris after the siege, and immediately after the outbreak of the eighteenth of March was created general by the Commune, and gathered round him in guise of staff the most illustrious, or least ignoble, of those foreign parasites and vagabonds, who have made of Paris a grand occidental Bohemian Babel. These soldiers of fortune, most of whom had been "unfortunate" at home, formed the marrow of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... precipitate into an irrecoverable abyss of perilous communication or unwholesome truth. One's pillow became at once the legitimate and natural bourne to "the overheated brain;" and the generous rashness of the coenatorial reveller was not damped by untimeous caution or ignoble calculation. ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... pretty?" she said. "See, here is a falcon-gentil. We call it 'ignoble,' because it takes the quarry in direct chase. This is a blue falcon. In falconry we call it 'noble' because it rises over the quarry, and wheeling, drops upon it from above. This white bird is a gerfalcon from the north. It is also 'noble!' Here is a merlin, ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... diluted in its downward percolation till sutlers and horse-thieves would strive in vain to emulate the fraudulent audacity of their superiors. It was well he spared me then, for soon after landing, my eyes and ears grew weary with the repetition of all these ignoble details. To illustrate how heavily the taxes were already beginning to weigh on the non-militant part of the population, my informant proved to me by very clear figures that, if he individually could secure permanent exemption from such burdens by the absolute ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... upon the Northern Consolidated evening, he ran plump upon an incident that was to have a last profound effect upon this history. No one not a prophet would have guessed this from the incident's character, for on its ignoble face it was nothing better than just a drunken clash between a Caucasian, and an African triumvirate that had locked horns with him in the street. The Caucasian, moved of liquor and pride of skin, had demanded the entire sidewalk. He enforced his demands by shoving the obstructing Africans ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... with the utmost rigour of military discipline. His daughter Bess is not less a Tudor. The mean, unworthy treatment of the queen of Scots is striking; and you will find Elizabeth's jealousy of her crown and her avarice were at war, and how the more ignoble passion predominated. But the most amusing passage is one in a private letter, as it paints the awe of children for their parents a little differently from modern habitudes. Mr. Talbot, second son of the Earl of Shrewsbury, was a member of the House of Commons, and was married. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... the gentleman who sits near me [Mr. McDowell], and who represents another portion of that State. In him I recognize the feelings of our Western brethren; his were the sentiments that accord with their acts in the past, and which, with a few ignoble exceptions, I doubt not they will emulate, if again the necessity should exist. Yes, sir, if ever they hear that the invader's foot has been pressed upon our soil, they will descend to the plain like an avalanche, rushing to bury ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... tormentors. Have they said That they were guilty? O white innocence, That thou shouldst wear the mask of guilt to hide 25 Thine awful and serenest countenance From those who know thee not! [ENTER JUDGE WITH LUCRETIA AND GIACOMO, GUARDED.] Ignoble hearts! For some brief spasms of pain, which are at least As mortal as the limbs through which they pass, Are centuries of high splendour laid in dust? 30 And that eternal honour which should live Sunlike, above the reek of mortal fame, Changed to a mockery and a byword? What! Will you give ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... productiveness and fertility of the soil afford ample field for their encouragement. To hail their enslaved bondmen upon their deliverance, in the glorious kingdom of British Liberty, in the Canadas, we cordially invite the free and the bond, the noble and the ignoble—we have no ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... Venezuela two years, campaigning nearly all the time. But it was an ignoble warfare, cruel and ruthless, and had I not given my word to Carmen, to stand by him until the country was pacified, I should have resigned my commission much sooner than I did. Ramon, who acted as one of my orderlies, bore himself bravely ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... this, my frightened courage, in some extraordinary way, came back. I had played an ignoble part thus far, as almost any girl might have done. But now I resolved that, whatever might happen, my dear friend and guardian should not be entrapped and lose his life through my cowardice. We had been expecting ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... not only held to be undignified in a man or woman, but to weaken and corrupt the soul; the mind becomes foolishly dependent on applause, over-skilful in producing tawdry and momentary illusions of excellence; it is our experience that actors and actresses as a class are loud, ignoble, and insincere. If they have not such flamboyant qualities then they are tepid and ineffectual players. Nor may the samurai do personal services, except in the matter of medicine or surgery; they may not be barbers, for example, nor inn waiters, nor boot cleaners. But, nowadays, we have ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... sleeping passion of his animal nature. For this is the commencement of a struggle for mastery in which quarter is neither to be given nor taken. It is, once for all, "To be, or Not to be;" to conquer, means Adept-ship: to fail, an ignoble Martyrdom; for to fall victim to lust, pride, avarice, vanity, selfishness, cowardice, or any other of the lower propensities, is indeed ignoble, if measured by the standard of true manhood. The Chela is not only called to ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... yet they had no sooner formed the quintet than they all somehow seemed to feel insulted; and I really believe it was owing to the promptitude with which they consented to join. They had joined, of course, from a not ignoble feeling of shame, for fear people might say afterwards that they had not dared to join; still they felt Pyotr Verhovensky ought to have appreciated their heroism and have rewarded it by telling them some really important bits of news at least. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... so abruptly put out, the clouds lowered over him thicker and more hopelessly. He was worse off than the shipwrecked sailor; the pawnbroker had taken his last resources. All the romance with which he had invested the idea of his suicide now vanished, leaving bare the stern and ignoble reality. He must kill himself, not like the gay gamester who voluntarily leaves upon the roulette table the remains of his fortune, but like the Greek, who surprised and hunted, knows that every door will be shut upon him. His death would not be voluntary; ...
— The Mystery of Orcival • Emile Gaboriau
... became at thirteen, and in an English castle, the King of Scotland. His prison, however, proved a noble school instead of an ignoble confinement to his fine and elevated spirit. The name of Stewart has never been so splendidly illustrated as by this patriotic and chivalrous Prince. No doubt it is infinitely to the credit of the English kings, both Henrys, IV and V, that he received ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... has played an ignoble part among the nations. We have tamely submitted to seeing the weak, whom we have covenanted to protect, wronged. We have seen our men, women, and children murdered on the high seas without protest. We have used elocution as a substitute ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... face with those realities which, during this week of madness, he had simply refused to see. He could pit himself against her no longer. When it came to the point he had not the nerve to enter upon a degrading and ignoble conflict, in which all that was to be won was her hatred or her fear. That, indeed, would be the last and worst ruin, for it would be the ruin, not of happiness or of hope, but ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and ignoble saying, "If there were not a God it would be necessary to invent Him," we shall say nothing. It is the expression of the unclean scepticism of those conservatives who look upon religion merely as a means of government and whose interest it is that in the other life there shall be a hell ...
— Tragic Sense Of Life • Miguel de Unamuno
... without leaving a memory of a single generous deed, of a single service rendered—even involuntarily—to the polity of nations. Other despotisms there have been, but none whose origin was so grimly fantastic in its baseness, and the beginning of whose end was so gruesomely ignoble. What is amazing is the myth of its irresistible strength which is ...
— Notes on Life and Letters • Joseph Conrad
... trial, working with might and main, suffering from endless ills, in peril of their lives, and deprived of property and home, now joined in one heartrending wail of woe and disappointment. The consternation that followed the announcement of the ignoble surrender is thus described by Mr. Nixon, who was an eye-witness and sharer of ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... saying of him was that he made a fortune by "pinching the bellies of the soldiers"—that is, as an army contractor who defrauded in quantity and quality of supplies. By a multitude of underhand and ignoble artifices he finally found himself the lord of a manor sixteen miles long and twenty-four broad. On this estate he built flour and saw mills, a bakery and a brewery. In his advanced old age he exhibited great piety but held on grimly to every shilling that he could ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... face was thrown aside, and the tribes looked on the mis-shapen and degraded features of Tohomish the Pine Voice. He stood silent at first, his eyes bent on the ground, like a man in a trance. For a moment the spectators forgot the wonderful eloquence of the man in his ignoble appearance. What could he do against Wau-ca-cus the Klickitat and Snoqualmie the Cayuse, whose sonorous utterances still rang in their ears, whose majestic presence ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... unjust. If she were capable of the despicable course my ward is disposed to impute to her, I should cease to feel any interest in her career or fate; but I cherish the conviction that she would scorn to be guilty of conduct so ignoble. Her defects of character I shall neither deny nor attempt to palliate, but I trust her true womanly heart as I trust my own manly honor; and a stern sense of justice to the absent constrains me to vindicate her from Muriel's hasty and unfounded ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... these rudely but patiently resident races, possessing fields and orchards, quiet herds, homes of a sort, moralities and memories not ignoble, dwelt, or rather drifted, and shook, a shattered chain of gloomier tribes, piratical mainly, and predatory, nomad essentially; homeless, of necessity, finding no stay nor comfort in earth, or bitter sky: desperately ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... introspection, morbid or other, no pathos or complaint, no melodious informing of the public what dreadful emotions you labor under: here, in rapid prompt form, indicating that it is truth and not fable, are generous aspirations for the world and yourself, generous pride, disdain of the ignoble, of the dark, mendacious;—here, in short, is a swift-handed, valiant, STEEL-bright kind of soul; very likely for a King's, if other things answer, and not likely for a Poet's. No doubt he could have made something of Literature too; could have written Books, and left some ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... fostering of an anti-Davis spirit might seem less malicious if the fact were not known that many editors detested Davis because of his desire to abolish the exemption of editors from conscription. Their ignoble course brings to mind one of the few sarcasms recorded of Lee—the remark that the great mistake of the South was in making all its best military geniuses editors of newspapers. But it must be added in all fairness ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... ignorance and comparative degradation, they should make no atonement by elevating the other class by higher virtues, and more liberal attainments—if, besides degraded slaves, there should be ignorant, ignoble, and degraded freemen. There is a broad and well marked line, beyond which no slavish vice should be regarded with the least toleration or allowance. One class is cut off from all interest in the State—that abstraction so potent to the feelings ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... eager little man, so redolent of the elements that went into his careful grooming. She even tried in vain to read his novels; but they proved too much for her. She explained to him that his local colour was so brilliant that it dazzled her; but the ignoble truth was that she found it boring, although her letters going out of town were splashed thickly ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... was something half-alarmed and half-defiant in the pose of his lifted head, the glance of his handsome bright eyes. Her heart sank a little: it seemed to her that it would have been nobler in her husband to tell her the whole truth, and it had never occurred to her before to think of him as ignoble in ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... said to herself betimes, in a general way, that whatever habits her youth might form, that of seeing an interested suitor in every bush should certainly never grow to be one of them—an attitude she had early judged as ignoble, as poisonous. She had had accordingly in fact as little to do with it as possible and she scarce knew why at the present moment she should have had to catch herself in the act of imputing an ugly motive. It didn't sit, the ...
— The Wings of the Dove, Volume II • Henry James
... 5:10-12). This was because he remembered not that the name of God was in the command. Israel's trumpets of ram's horns (Josh 6:2-4), and Isaiah's walking naked (Isa 20:3), and Ezekiel's wars against a tile (Eze 4:1-4), would, doubtless, have been ignoble acts, but that the name of God was that which gave them reverence, power, glory, and beauty. Set therefore the name of God, and 'Thus saith the Lord,' against all reasonings, defamings, and reproaches, that either by the world, or thy own heart, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... destroy their organization. In the ensuing fracas the lumber barons came out only second best—and they were bad losers. After the war-fever had died down—one year after the signing of the Armistice—they were still trying in Centralia to attain their ignoble ends by ...
— The Centralia Conspiracy • Ralph Chaplin
... of all this was to make me feel, as I had never felt before, the intolerable nature of the yoke I was living under. When I looked into the future and saw nothing before me but years of this ignoble bondage, I told myself that nothing—no sacrament or contract, no law of church or ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... deny by my life that others are my superiors. I deny that anything can hurt the essential ME. I deny a vindictive God. I deny that slavery is religious. I deny that I am not the friend of the White Life. I deny that I am mean, low or ignoble in morals. I deny that my best life depends on creeds. I deny that the Universe is not for me. I deny that health is not my rightful claim. I deny that I am unhappy or depressed. I deny that I am weak and a nonentity. I ...
— Mastery of Self • Frank Channing Haddock
... Highlands, that the chiefs, at least, those of the northern ridge of the Grampians, were humane in their doings, even kindly, and certainly they were never fond of taking a clansman's life on the gallows-tree. Their whole code was against that ignoble death, unless when an enemy had played them unfair, or a vassal had proved himself traitor, and then they swiftly slipped a life to the other world, holding this world to have no ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... Let us forgive; it were wicked to forget. For fifty years no American has had such opportunity to serve his country in an hour of need. Never has an American so signally betrayed the trust—not once since Benedict Arnold turned a less ignoble traitor! ...
— The Trial of Theodore Parker • Theodore Parker
... marketplace unto the rulers." [93:2] We here discover one great cause of our Lord under the government of the pagan emperors. The Jews were prompted by mere bigotry to display hatred to the gospel—but the Gentiles were generally guided by the still more ignoble principle of selfishness. Many of the heathen multitude cared little for their idolatrous worship; but all who depended for subsistence on the prevalence of superstition, such as the image-makers, the jugglers, the fortune-tellers, and a considerable number of the ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... Perhaps she was of the enemy's country. Perhaps those she loved, those who made up her life, had set her feet in this path that she was treading. If she was a spy,—Lord! How the mere word hurt one!—it wasn't for ignoble motives; it ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... reality—were devised to destroy man's sense of causality: they are an attack upon the concept of cause and effect!—And not an attack with the fist, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! On the contrary, one inspired by the most cowardly, the most crafty, the most ignoble of instincts! An attack of priests! An attack of parasites! The vampirism of pale, subterranean leeches!... When the natural consequences of an act are no longer "natural," but are regarded as produced ...
— The Antichrist • F. W. Nietzsche
... they who moved the country, shaking its torpor like successive earthquakes. Risen against the conceit of riches, and the hypocrisies of Society, against unimpassioned and unimaginative religion, against ignoble success and the complacent economics that hewed mankind into statistics to fit their abstractions—one and all, in spite of their variety or mutual hostility, they were rebels, and their personality expressed itself in rebellion. That was the ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... have been a trace of aspiration. Otherwise the whole affair was a hodge-podge of petty people and ignoble motives—of Una and Wilkins and S. Herbert Ross and Bessie Kraker, who married a mattress-renovator, and Bessie's successor; of fifteen dollars a week, and everybody trying to deceive everybody else; of vague reasons for going, ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... washerwoman, a barber's wife, a milkmaid, and the daughter of a land-owner- choosing the darkest time of night and the most secret part of the house, he drank with them, was sprinkled and anointed, and went through many ignoble ceremonies, such as sitting nude upon a dead body. The teacher informed him that he was not to indulge shame, or aversion to anything, nor to prefer one thing to another, nor to regard caste, ceremonial cleanness or uncleanness, but freely to enjoy all ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... a note that rings false in the very name of that happy country now. Its traditions have been vulgarised by people who have never passed its borders. All sorts of charlatans have soiled its history with ignoble use, and the very centre and citadel of its capital has an air of being built of gingerbread. In point of fact, though its inhabitants are sparser than they once were, and its occasional guests of distinction fewer, the place itself is as real ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... straight stem—an American invention, by the way—is held to be more dangerous in case of collisions. Many of the old-time sailing ships have been shorn of their towering masts, robbed of their canvas, and made into ignoble barges which, loaded with coal, are towed along by some fuming, fussing tugboat—as Samson shorn of his locks was made to bear the burdens of the Philistines. This transformation from sail to steam has robbed the ocean of much of its picturesqueness, and seafaring life of much ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... little dove afraid of in her nest?" pinching Kitty's cheek as though she had been a dove very lately fledged indeed. She had always in fact the feeling when with Kitty that through her she suffered to live and patted on the back the whole ignoble, effete race of domestic women. Catharine caught sight of her satchel, which portended ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... preach, 'In greatness is no trust.' Here is an acre sown indeed With the richest, royall'st seed That the earth did e'er suck in, Since the first man died for sin. Here the bones of birth have cried, 'Though gods they were, as men they died.' Here are sands, ignoble things, Dropt from the ruined sides of kings. Here's a world of pomp and state, Buried in dust, once ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... Debats—a sworn enemy to Napoleon, a fanatic partisan of the Bourbons; he is one of our men. I looked, at him. At every fresh epithet of the Minister the Abbe bowed his head down to his plate with a smile of cheerfulness and self-complacency, and with a sort of leer. I never saw a more ignoble countenance. Fouche explained to me, on leaving the breakfast table, in what manner all these valets of literature were men of his, and while I acknowledged to myself that the system might be necessary, ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... you took me, as soldiers use fascines to build entrenchments between the enemy and themselves. You brought me to Les Touches to mask your real feelings and leave you safe to follow your own secret adoration. The scheme was grand and ignoble both; but to carry it out you should have chosen either a common man or one so preoccupied by noble thoughts that you could easily deceive him. You thought me simple and easy to mislead as a man of genius. I am not a man of genius, I am a man of talent, and as ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... headland." This was literally true; but the fact is, the headlands of America had been decorated with gibbets from the very commencement of the war, and the surrender of Lord Cornwallis had nothing to do with the matter. As for the fall of Cornwallis, it was not an ignoble one; for his handfull of men could scarcely have been expected to hold out against the united arms of France and America. One member, Mr. Courtenay, in reply, justly observed that his chains were wreathed with laurels; that he ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... sad at heart, perplexed by the rather incomprehensible dealings of God with man. Yet, to the end, she would remain charming, gently gay even, both out of consideration for others and a fine self-respect, since she held it the mark of a cowardly and ignoble nature to let anything squalid appear in her attitude towards ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... born spirit of immortal fire Is stranger to ignoble deeds, and shuns The name of cowardice. But well thy mind, Sage, and matur'd by long experience, weighs The perilous attempt, to storm the town, And rescue thence, the suff'ring citizens. For but one pass to that peninsula, On which ...
— The Battle of Bunkers-Hill • Hugh Henry Brackenridge
... very first Of human life must spring from woman's breast, Your first small words are taught you from her lips, Your first tears quench'd by her, and your last sighs Too often breathed out in a woman's hearing, When men have shrunk from the ignoble care Of watching the last hour of him ...
— What Great Men Have Said About Women - Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 77 • Various
... afar. And so, if one comes to her from the country, or returns to her from her own hills, it is ever with a sense of loss, of sadness, of regret: she has lost her soul for the sake of the stranger, she has forgotten the splendid past for an ignoble present, a strangely wearying dream of ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... she had not confined her assurance to the verdict of a jury, that she had protested that she would not accept Major Grantly's hand as long as people thought that her father had stolen the cheque; but the archdeacon felt that it would be ignoble to hold her closely to her words. The event, according to his ideas of the compact, was to depend on the verdict of the jury. If the jury should find Mr Crawley not guilty, all objection on his part to the marriage was ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... Charles asked leave to seek out the woman who had betrayed Henri, and by us was detailed on secret service. He gave up home, family, friends. He lived in exile, in poverty, at all times in danger of a swift and ignoble death. In the War Office we know him as one who has given to his country services she cannot hope to reward. For she cannot return to him the years he has lost. She cannot return to him his brother. But she can and will clear ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... fully aware of the disadvantages as well as sinfulness of this habit, deprecates it with a qualification at which it is impossible to repress a smile. It savours so much of "beating the Devil round a bush." Thus he says—"May God preserve me from the indecent, ignoble, criminal slavery, to the mean delight of smoking a weed, which I see so many carried away with. And if ever I should smoke it, let me be so wise as to do it, not only with moderation, but also with such employment of my mind, as ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... Mr. Adams, were shown to him, on which he remarked, "The thing is not new. From the nature of our institutions, competitors for public favor and their respective partisans seek success by slander of each other. I disdain the ignoble warfare, and neither wage it myself or encourage it in my friends. But, from appearances, they will decide the election to ...
— Memoir of the Life of John Quincy Adams. • Josiah Quincy
... pugnacity and acquisitiveness have been the real foundation of much miscalled patriotism, better motives are generally mingled with these primitive instincts. It is the subtle blend of noble and ignoble sentiment which makes patriotism such a difficult problem for the moralist. The patriot nearly always believes, or thinks he believes, that he desires the greatness of his country because his country stands for something intrinsically great and ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge |
