"Worldling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chairs and gilded tables with courtly scenes painted on top, which he said Mistress Hortense had brought back as of the latest French fashion. The blackamoor drew close the iron shutters; for, though those in the world must know the ways of the world, worldling practices were a sad offence to New England. Shoving the furnishings aside, M. Picot picked from the armory rack two slim foils resembling Spanish rapiers and prepared to give me my lesson. Carte and ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... disgrace, it was a matter of course that such comparisons were excessively exasperating. It was fresh enough too in men's memory that the Earl in his Netherland career had affected sympathy with the strictest denomination of religious reformers, and that the profligate worldling and arrogant self-seeker had used the mask of religion to cover flagitious ends. As it had indeed been the object of the party at the head of which the Advocate had all his life acted to raise the youthful Maurice to the stadholderate ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... judged. Let us not undervalue the sterling worth of the genuine Christian, because it is blended with some obvious, or even some glaring incongruities. Let us equally beware of attributing undue value to the good qualities of the worldling, and thus annihilate the distinction between the natural and ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... Dives relinquishes his millions and Lazarus his rags. The poor man is as rich as the richest and the rich man is as poor as the pauper. The creditor loses his usury and the debtor is acquitted of his obligation. The proud man surrenders his dignity, the politician his honors, the worldling his pleasures. James Nelson Burnes, whose life and virtues we commemorate to-day, was a man whom Plutarch might have described and Vandyke portrayed. Massive, rugged and robust, in motion slow, in speech serious and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... a great speculation had fail'd; And ever he mutter'd and madden'd, and ever wann'd with despair; And out he walk'd, when the wind like a broken worldling wail'd, And the flying gold of the ruin'd woodlands ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... skilfully than the other. This man cleaves to the world as his portion, and that man has chosen the Saviour as his: but, in point of fact, he who has chosen the inferior object prosecutes it with the greater zeal. The superior energy of the worldling in the acquisition of gains is employed to rebuke the Christian for his slackness in winning the true riches. This is the main lesson of ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... fun, while his command of invective in a public meeting was little short of terrible. Great ladies and the country-houses courted him because of a certain wit, a certain charm—above all, a certain spiritual power—which piqued the worldling. He flouted and refused the great ladies—with a smile, however, which gave no offence; and he knew, notwithstanding, everybody whom he wanted to know. Occasionally he made quiet spaces in his life, and disappeared from London for days ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of a poet is not in accordance with his song, it may be suspected that the song itself is not genuine. Who can be a poet, and yet be a worldling in his passions and habits? An artificial poet is a disgusting dealer in trifles: nothing but the predominance of strong and unstimulated feeling will give that inspiration without which it is worse than an empty sound. When the passion is factitious, the excitement has always an immoral tendency; ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... that misery, attendant on a life of debauchery, which is, in fact, the offspring of prodigality, our author has, in the scenes before us, attempted the reformation of the worldling, by stopping him as it were in his career, and opening to his view the many sad calamities awaiting the prosecution of his proposed scheme of life; he has, in hopes of reforming the prodigal, and at the same time deterring the rising generation, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... had for years been tried: Who by Paul's test was willing to abide; Well knowing the advice which he had given To Ephesian Elders; and how he had striven To labor with his hands for the support Of self and friends, oft made the worldling's sport. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... this is shameless. I came to pay my respects to a philosopher, and I find a sordid worldling. Look at me! I am a man of the largest needs, spiritual and physical, yet I make my pittance of four hundred and fifty suffice, and never grumble. Perhaps you aim at an income equal to ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... of stormy dawn, Thou winter flower, forlorn of nurse; Chilled early by the bigot's curse, The pedant's frown, the worldling's yawn. ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... some lull of life, Some Truce of God which breaks its strife, The worldling's eyes shall gather dew, Dreaming in throngful city ways Of winter joys his boyhood knew; And dear and early friends—the few Who yet remain—shall pause to view These Flemish pictures of old days; Sit with me by the homestead hearth, And stretch ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... civilization; but fails to secure the great end which Christianity is designed to accomplish—the salvation of the soul. It dazzles but to blind, it promises but to deceive; it allures by worldly considerations to a heaven of purity, which no worldling can enter; it gives to its votaries, who long to eat of forbidden fruit, the assurance of impunity from the threatened evils, and leads them on by siren strains from the Paradise of purity into the broad road which ...
— The Revelation Explained • F. Smith
... small social rank. He was well off in worldly things; somewhat fond, it is said, of good living and of luxury; inclined, it may be, to say, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," and to sink more and more into the mere worldling, unless some shock awoke him from ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... been a good and even uxorious husband. But she evidently did not love him, though an admirable, patient, provident wife; and her daughter did love him—love him as well even as she loved her mother; and the hard worldling would not have accepted a kingdom as the price of that little fountain of pure and ever-refreshing tenderness. Wise and penetrating as Lumley was, he never could thoroughly understand this weakness, as he called ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Boccaccio. His theme is life and conduct, the true path to happiness and goodness. I write sermons in sport, he says; but sermons by a fellow-sinner, not by a dogmatic pulpiteer, not by a censor or a cynic. "Conversations" we may rather call them; the polished talk of a well-bred, cultured, practised worldling, lightening while they point the moral which he ever keeps in view, by transitions, personalities, ironies, anecdotes; by perfect literary grace, by the underlying sympathy whereby wit is sublimed and ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... "Beef'steak, s. a slice of beef for broiling."—Treasury of Knowledge. "As he must suffer in case of the fall of merchandize, he is entitled to the corresponding gain if merchandize rises."—Wayland's Moral Science, p. 258. "He is the worshipper of an hour, but the worldling for life."—Maturin's Sermons, p. 424. "Slyly hinting something to the disadvantage of great and honest men."—Webster's Essays, p. 329. "'Tis by this therefore that I Define the Verb; namely, that it is a Part of Speech, by which something ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... a man he was so exquisitely worldly that he fully merited the name of the Heavenly Worldling bestowed on him by an admiring duchess, and withal his texture was shot with a pattern of such genuine saintliness that one felt that whoever else might hold the keys of Paradise he, at least, possessed a private latchkey to ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... exercise of which at first had seemed to me a sort of treachery. And as I let myself criticize, I saw more clearly. The scales fell from my eyes. I realized that I had been nothing less than blind in regard to Marcus Harding. I saw him now as he was, a victim of egomania, a worldling, tyrannical, falsely sentimental, and unfaithful steward, a liar—perhaps even an unbeliever. His whole desire—I knew it now—was not to be good, but to be successful. His charity, his pity for the poor, his generosity, his care ...
— The Dweller on the Threshold • Robert Smythe Hichens
... energetic, prose experience of old Jocunda, and the downright way with which she sometimes spoke of things as a trooper's wife must have seen them, were repressed and hushed, down, as the imperfect faith of a half-reclaimed worldling,—they could not be allowed to awaken her from the sweetness of so blissful a dream. In like manner, when Lorenzo Sforza became Father Francesco, he strove with earnest prayer to bury his gift of individual reason in the same grave with his family name and worldly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... it bursts from the hill,— I pluck the fresh flowers that spring by the rill,— I watch the gray clouds as they curl round the peak That rises high over them, barren and bleak; And I think how the worldling who courts fortune's smile, In his heart, like that peak, may be lonely the while; And then my own heart sings aloud in its joy, That Heaven has made ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... mere sense of the beautiful will often confer the clearest perceptions of the real nature of moral excellence. You may hear the devoted worldling, or the selfish sensualist, giving the highest and most inspiring lessons of self-renunciation, self-sacrifice, and devotedness to God. Their lessons, truthful and impressive, because dictated by a keen and exquisite perception of the beautiful, which ever harmonizes with ...
— The Young Lady's Mentor - A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends • A Lady
... pillows Arrived, retired to his; but to despond Rather than rest. Instead of poppies, willows Waved o'er his couch; he meditated, fond Of those sweet bitter thoughts which banish sleep, And make the worldling sneer, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... limitations that there are but a few jokes which they may tolerate, and a small number of delights into which they may enter. Doubtless many a cheerful soul likes to meet such of the clergy, in order that the worldling may feel the contrast of liberty with bondage, and demonstrate by bombardment of wit and humor, how intellectually thin are the walls against which certain forms of skepticism and fun offend. Eugene Field did not belong to these. He called ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... laughing, "my secrets are of too profane a character to confide them to a bishop, however great a worldling he ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Kynnersley is lean and blanched and grey-haired. She wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have, when she chooses, a most gracious manner. As I, worldling and jester though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady's eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather. Ergo, I like Lady Kynnersley, and would put myself to much inconvenience in order to do her ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... no fervid man is there, No earnest, honest heart; One who, though dress'd in priestly guise, Looks on the world with worldling's eyes; One who can trim the courtier's smile, Or weave the diplomatic wile, But knows no deeper art; One who can dally with fair forms, Whom a well-pointed period warms— No man is he to hold the helm Where rude winds blow, and wild waves whelm, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... that freedom of thought is not incompatible with sincere religion. Those who knew Bunsen well, know how that deep, religious undercurrent of his soul was constantly bubbling up and breaking forth in his conversations, startling even the mere worldling by an earnestness that frightened away every smile. It was said of him that he could drive out devils, and he certainly could, with his solemn, yet loving voice, soften hearts that would yield to no other appeal, and ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... William. For this Drake calls him "a meer worldling and an odious time-server." He is said, however, to have exacted an oath from William that he would rule Normans and Saxons alike. Afterwards he excommunicated William for disregarding his oath, but William is said to have bought ...
— The Cathedral Church of York - Bell's Cathedrals: A Description of Its Fabric and A Brief - History of the Archi-Episcopal See • A. Clutton-Brock
... disgrace of chance or blood, God fails not to humiliate; Not these: but souls, found here and there, Oases in our waste of sin, Where everything is well and fair, And Heav'n remits its discipline; Whose sweet subdual of the world The worldling scarce can recognise, And ridicule, against it hurl'd, Drops with a broken sting and dies; Who nobly, if they cannot know Whether a 'scutcheon's dubious field Carries a falcon or a crow, Fancy a falcon on the shield; Yet, ever careful not to hurt God's ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... this dear, this precious hour, I would not, if I had the power, Exchange a worldling's life of ease, Whom all around him seek to please. I have no other friend beside, But here I safely may confide. Suspicion ne'er the bosom stains, Which poverty has bound ...
— Vignettes in Verse • Matilda Betham
... how it blooms in the blear dayfall, That flower of passionate wistful song! How it blows like a rose by the iron wall Of the city loud and strong. How it cries "Nay, nay" to the worldling's way, To the heart's clear dream how it whispers, "Yea; Time comes, though ...
— Gloucester Moors and Other Poems • William Vaughn Moody
... late and lingering seeks thy shrine, On him but seldom, Power divine, 10 Thy spirit rests! Satiety And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee, Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope And dire Remembrance interlope, To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: 15 The bubble floats ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... shallow worldling craves, And greatness need ambitious knaves, The lover of his maiden raves; O Lord! I ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... though I say it so badly; and I know it, because, as I tell you, Peter and I are just the same sort at heart. I've been teasing him, pretending to be a worldling, but foreign travel and entertaining in London are just about as unsuited to me as to Peter. I—I'm glad"—she uttered a quick, little sob—"that I—I played my part well while it all lasted; but you know it wasn't so much me as my looks that did it. And because I didn't ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... CONSTANTINE. 2. To the emperor—a mere worldling—a man without any religious convictions, doubtless it appeared best for himself, best for the empire, and best for the contending parties, Christian and pagan, to promote their union or amalgamation as much as ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... May, while the indignant blood flushed her cheeks, and her impulse to say something sharp and mortifying to the young worldling's pride, was strong within her; but she thought of the mild and lowly Virgin, and the humility of her DIVINE SON, and added, in a quiet tone, "Uncle Stillinghast will certainly expect ...
— May Brooke • Anna H. Dorsey
... determination of being righteous, both honorably striving and selfishly ambitious, but all within the bounds and permission of the law, the reigning system of casuistry; in short, an egotist in morals, and a worldling in impulses and motives. And yet by pride and by innate nobleness of nature munificent and benevolent, with all the negative virtues of temperance, chastity, and the like,—take this man on his road to his own worldly aggrandizement. Winding his way through a grove of powerful rogues, by flattery, ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... woman—by her dress and appearance a very worldling—and even braver in looks and apparel than many he had seen in the cities—seemed, in spite of all his precautions, to have fallen short of the hotel and been precipitated upon him! Yet under the influence of some odd abstraction ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... 'jumpin'.' He came to dine with them the day before the first Newmarket meeting. He had a soft spot for Sylvia, always saying to Lennan as he went away: "Charmin' woman—your wife!" She, too, had a soft spot for him, having fathomed the utter helplessness of this worldling's ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Etherington. "Since we are condemned to shock each other's eyes, it is fit the good company should know what they are to think of us. You are a philosopher, and do not value the opinion of the public—a poor worldling like me is desirous to stand fair with it.—Gentlemen," he continued, raising his voice, "Mr. Winterblossom, Captain MacTurk, Mr.—what is his name, Jekyl?—Ay, Micklehen—You have, I believe, all some notion, that this gentleman, my near relation, and I, have some ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... Worldling to the last extreme, depraved to his very core; past-master in the art of Parisian high life; an unbridled egotist, thinking himself superior to everything because he abased everything to himself; and, finally, flattering himself for despising all duties, ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... not there! Ideals need not be abandoned because they are not full-realised; and, were we in stern mood, it would be possible to declare that this lady had abandoned them more definitely than her poet had, since he at all times was frankly a worldling. Witty as she has become, there still remain in her, I fear, some traces of the poor pretty thoughtful thing. . . . To sum up, for this "tear" also we have but semi-sympathy; and Browning is again not at his best when he makes the Victim speak ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... flattering him and spoiling him, she was sure. Was he not looking to some great marriage, with that cunning uncle for a Mentor (between whom and Laura there was always an antipathy), that inveterate worldling, whose whole thoughts were bent upon pleasure and rank and fortune? He never alluded to—to old times, when he spoke of her. He had forgotten them and her, perhaps had he not forgotten other things ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her also, but a true Christian cannot mourn long; and as the tears of agony would force themselves down her cheek, and her feelings almost overpower her, she flew to her bible and in its gracious promises to the afflicted, found that support and consolation, the mere worldling can neither judge of, nor taste. Some delay, though no actual doubt, as to ultimately obtaining her pension, had caused inconvenience, as all their ready money had been absorbed in the alterations ...
— A Book For The Young • Sarah French
... her from the particular regrets Captain Welsh supposed to occupy her sinner's mind; so that, after some minutes of the hesitation and strangeness due to our common recollections, she talked of him simply and well—as befitted her situation, a worldling might say. But she did not conceal her relief in escaping to this quaint little refuge (she threw a kindly-comical look, not overtoned, at the miniature ships on the mantelpiece, and the picture of Joseph leading Mary with her babe on ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... if some woman's face, Seen at some rout in his old worldling days, Haunts him e'en now, e'en here, and urges him To fierier ...
— Seven Men • Max Beerbohm
... The worldling has his sneer at this as at the services of religion. "The churches can always be filled with women"—"Show me a man in one of your magnetic states, and I ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pleasure, and for his glory, in the world. You are no longer your own. You are bought with a price, adopted into the family of God, numbered with and entitled to all the privileges of his children. Your motives of action, your views, your interests, are all different from those of the worldling. Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, your aim must be, and will be, to do all to his glory. This must go with you, and be your ruling principle in all the walks of life. By your integrity, uprightness, ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... seeing with accuracy the persons and things which are nearest to us. The astonishment of the sisters—for the same feeling is expressed by Mrs. Forster—was very natural. In these early days, "Matt" often figures in the family letters as the worldling of the group—the dear one who is making way in surroundings quite unknown to the Fox How circle, where, under the shadow of the mountains, the sisters, idealists all of them, looking out a little austerely, for all their tenderness, on ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... grievous interior conflicts and buffetings of the enemy, wrought in him a great purity of heart, and prepared him for most extraordinary heavenly communications. The conversion of count Oliver, or Oliban, lord of that territory, added to his spiritual joy. That count, from a voluptuous worldling, and profligate liver, became a sincere penitent, and embraced the order of St. Benedict. He carried great treasures with him to mount Cassino, but left his estate to his son. The example of Romuald had also such an influence on Sergius, his father, that, to make ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... wife. For eight months in the year they lived at Vore, not unvisited by Philosophers; for four they kept open house in Paris. Both were good natured, charitable, and benevolent. Among the Philosophers Helvetius held the place of the rich and clever worldling, so often found in ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... rotten place," said the elderly worldling. "I wouldn't live in it myself for twenty thousand ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... man of the world—who, unlike the needy knife-grinder, had a story—told it. After getting on the boat, Spring Chicken had been taking mint with sugar and something; and he took it once too often. Seeing this, the worldling tried to get him forward to his state-room; but, as we passed the fort, a jolly passenger, who had also taken mint, waved his hat at the fortification and ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... called to prayer, As the muezzin calls from the minaret stair. Through ceiled chambers of secret sin Sudden and strong the light shone in; A guilty sense of his neighbor's needs Startled the man of title-deeds; The trembling hand of the worldling shook The dust of years from the Holy Book; And the psalms of David, forgotten long, Took the place ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... would say that the savage makes a mistake in his sensuality, and the worldling in his covetousness and his tyranny; that from an imperfect conception of their own true self-interest, they carry their philosophy to conclusions which the philosopher in his study must regret. But as to their philosophy being correct: there can ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... it, to mourn and rejoice, and this is to justify wisdom. These two are the pulse of a Christian. According as he finds his grief and joy, so is he. All of you have these affections, but they are not right placed. They are not pitched upon suitable objects. The worldling hath no other joy but carnal mirth, no other grief but that which is carnal, these are limited within the bounds of time. Some loss, or some gain, some pleasure or pain, some honour or dishonour, these are the poles all ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... fulness of my heart, agree with those that speak in favor of Messer Simone dei Bardi. It is the native, intimate, and commendable wish of a man to abolish his enemies—I speak here after the fashion of the worldling that I was, for the cell and the cloister have no concern with mortal passions and frailties—and Messer Simone was in this, as in divers other qualities, of a very manly disposition. He thought in all honesty that ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... sanctioned by God, it would disturb the order established in creation; and if it be not sanctioned by God, do you expect to hear truth? Can events be foretold, events which have not yet assumed a body to become subject to mortal inspection, can they be foreseen by a vicious worldling, who pampers his appetites by preying on ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... came up and began talking to Freda; he was so kind and so natural even in his loudness, that Freda felt as if she would rather trust him with every secret of her heart, than the polished worldling who ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... Tabard, himself—who, whatever resemblance he may bear to his actual original, is the anecestor of a long line of descendants, including mine Host of the Garter in the "Merry Wives of Windsor." He is a thorough worldling, to whom anything smacking of the precisian in morals is as offensive as anything of a Romantic tone in literature; he smells a Lollard without fail, and turns up his nose at an old-fashioned ballad or a string of tragic instances as out of date or tedious. In short, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... not asked for churches and services; they really do not care for anything of the kind—whether they ought is another matter. If the clergy choose to supply them, that is well and worthy. But they should understand their relation to the impenitent worldling, which is precisely that of a physician without a mandate from the patient, who may not be convinced that there is very much the matter with him. The physician may have a diploma and a State certificate authorizing him to practise, but if the patient do not deem himself ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... so suddenly and so powerfully as to render him a different being, as it might almost be, in the twinkling of an eye! Such changes often occur, and though it may suit the self-sufficiency of the worldling to deride them, he is the wisest who submits in the meekest spirit to powers that exceed ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... I trust singly, to Him from whom it came yesterday; and thither may I look till again the day break. Can I say, in full sincerity, "more than they that watch for the morning"? Alas that I am so versatile! Christian and worldling within a day. Oh for a deeper sense that I am not my own,—that I have no right to disturb the sanctuary of my own spirit when God has made it such,—that there is no other way than whole-hearted and honest-hearted Christianity to attain the ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall
... say did not appear, for he smilingly abandoned the opportunity for improving the occasion. He had put on flesh and vigor, and now, instead of regarding him as a flippant worldling, which was formerly his plainly expressed opinion, he even looked up in a curious way toward my partner, and once informed me that there was a gradely true soul in him under his nonsense. The spell of the mountains and the company of broad-minded cheerful toilers had between them done a ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Thirty-six Onslow Square, where he wrote "The Virginians." On the south side of the Square there is a row of three-storied brick houses. Thackeray lived in one of these houses for nine years. They were the years when honors and wealth were being heaped upon him; and he was worldling enough to let his wants keep pace with his ability to gratify them. He was made of the same sort of clay as other men, for his standard of life conformed to his pocketbook ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... often the case that the true humility of Christ is not understood. It was not in having a low opinion of his own character and claims, but it was in taking a low place in order to raise others to a higher. The worldling seeks to raise himself and family to an equality with others, or, if possible, a superiority to them. The true follower of Christ comes down in order ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... knows of the matter, I shall have the kindest and friendliest of explanations (with his arm on my shoulder) of how I am ruining your social position, destroying your health, etc., etc." This touch is very suggestive of the power of the old worldling, who could manoeuvre with young people as well as Major Pendennis. Kenyon had indeed long been perfectly aware of the way in which things were going; and the method he adopted in order to comment on it is rather entertaining. In a conversation with Elizabeth Barrett, he asked carelessly whether ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... equally certain that his words were a faithful and adequate presentation of what he saw. He spoke what he knew, and testified what he had seen. His accent of conviction was unmistakable. When men see the professed prophet of the Unseen and Eternal as keen after his own interests as any worldling, shrewd at a bargain, captivated by show, obsequious to the titled and wealthy; when they discover the man who predicts the dissolution of all things carefully investing the proceeds of the books in which he publishes his predictions—they are ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... exaggerations of design characteristic rather of the period than the man—notably with the two figures to the left of the foreground. The Christ in His meekness is too little divine, too heavy and inert;[37] the Pontius Pilate not inappropriately reproduces the features of the worldling and viveur Aretino. The mounted warrior to the extreme right, who has been supposed to represent Alfonso d'Este, shows the genial physiognomy made familiar by the Madrid picture so long deemed to be his portrait, but which, as has already ...
— The Later works of Titian • Claude Phillips
... and individuality, power of work and invention, imagination and aspiration have been bestowed upon us, in order that we may fulfil these things. For what do these qualities, as a whole, betoken? Not the conqueror, not the statesman, not the worldling, and not the man of business; it is a narrow and trivial misuse of all faculty for us to pretend to represent these types among the nations. They betoken the labourers of the spirit; and far as we are from being a nation of ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau
... prosperous man of the world, who thinks himself entitled to use all his own for his own sole gratification, will hear of these things with incredulity, and pity Ellis and Nash as enthusiasts, who foolishly sacrifice themselves for a whim; but we greatly doubt if the worldling's proudest or most luxurious hour gives one-half the true satisfaction which these men enjoy in the midst of their ragged adherents, under the blessed hope of rescuing them from destruction in ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... The selfish worldling may denounce as infamous and immoral, the heart-rending pictures of human suffering and degradation that the writings of Dickens and Sue have presented to their gaze, and declare that they are unfit to meet the eyes of the virtuous and refined—that ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... ill and none else but ill; * For suspicion is best of the worldling's skill: Naught casteth a man into parlous place * But good ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... afterwards: And when I farther objected our Disparity in Age she answer'd with another Musty Proverb, That 'twas good taking Shelter under an old Hedge; and that it was far better being an Old Mans Darling, then a Young Mans Worldling: And tho' this didn't Satisfie me, yet I soon found I must have him or none; For having been brought up too high to make a working Tradesmans Wife, that Portion now was gone that should have helpt me to a better Husband. And therefore making a vertue of Necessity, I began ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous
... been assured to our surprise by some self-satisfied worldling how he always hears ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... you are!" he said, smiling at her enthusiasm one day, when they had been talking of Italy and Dante; "your close knowledge of the poet puts my poor smattering to shame. Happily, an idler and a worldling like myself is not supposed to know much. I was never patient enough to be a profound reader; and if I cannot tear the heart out of a book, I am apt to throw it aside in disgust. But you must have read a great deal; ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... hurried out, the Cluniac, remembering his office, sought to offer comfort, but in his bland worldling's voice the consolations sounded hollow. She lay motionless, while he quoted the Scriptures. Encouraged by her docility, he spoke of the certain reward promised by Heaven to the rich who remembered ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... person whom he has plucked as a brand from the burning, the soul of John Cross warmed to the young sinner; and it required no great effort of the wily Stevens to win from him the history, not only of all its own secrets and secret hopes—for these were of but small value in the eyes of the worldling—but of all those matters which belonged to the little village to which they were trending, and the unwritten lives of every dweller in ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... rounded as are the sun and moon in Michelangelo's 'Creation.' But, forced for so many years now, by a sort of grafting process, to share the life of feminine humanity, they called to my mind the figure of the dryad, the fair worldling, swiftly walking, brightly coloured, whom they sheltered with their branches as she passed beneath them, and obliged to acknowledge, as they themselves acknowledged, the power of the season; they recalled to me the happy days when I was young and had faith, when I would hasten eagerly to the spots ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... who wishes to effect some etablissement or reform here, but he will not accomplish much in that respect, as he not only has no grace therefor, but there seems to be something in his life which will hereafter manifest itself more. For the present we can say with truth that he is a perfect worldling.[257] It seems that in these spiritually, as well as physically, waste places, there is nevertheless a craving of the people to accept anything that bears even the name of food, in order to content rather than satisfy themselves therewith. Nevertheless the Lord will take pity upon these ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... accomplishments, but when I questioned her as to her treatment of the negroes in general belonging to the estates, would say little on the subject, and shook her head; in it was plain that, like most females living in the south, she was a pampered worldling, entirely engrossed by principles of self-interest, and little regarding the welfare of her dependents, if not, as I have before observed, very severe towards them. She died prematurely, from the effects of one of those virulent ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... the GOD of this world, and has it is his power to prosper his votaries, this source of perplexity will always continue to those who do not enter into the sanctuary and consider the latter end of the worldling. ...
— A Ribband of Blue - And Other Bible Studies • J. Hudson Taylor
... went to be "guest with a man that is a sinner," and He changed the sinner into a saint. The worldling found wings. The stone became flesh. Gentle emotions began to stir in a heart hardened by heedlessness and sin. Restitution took the place of greed. The home of the sinner became the temple of the Lord. "To-day is salvation come to this ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... disbelieving in reason and out of humour with his world, abandons his soul to loose whimseys and passions that play a quarrelsome game there, like so many ill-bred children. Nevertheless, compared with the worldling's mental mechanism and rhetoric, the sensualist's soul is a well of wisdom. He lives naturally on an animal level and attains a kind of good. He has free and concrete pursuits, though they be momentary, and he has sincere ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... may require courage, even a certain childish simplicity; but were not courage and a certain childish simplicity always requisite for Christian faith? It never was a religion for the rationalist and the worldling; it was based on alienation from the world, from the intellectual world no less than from the economic and political. It flourished in the Oriental imagination that is able to treat all existence with disdain and to ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana
... craving for amusement. Under its pressure, as under the sculptor's thumb, the face of the century becomes transformed and insensibly loses its seriousness; the formal expression of the courtier at first becomes the cheerful physiognomy of the worldling, and then, on these smiling lips, their contours changed, we see the bold, unbridled grin ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... the party is dull, from a mere worldling's point of view. But it's a glorious field for the student of human nature. And here's an opportunity for exceptional research—something quite off the beaten track. The admirer of you and all your works is the lovely Miss Craven, and ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... between two persons,—not, indeed, in the usual and ordinary trifles of taste and sentiment, but in those essentials which form the root of character, and branch out in all the leaves and blooms that expand to the sunshine and shrink from the cold,—that the worldling should wed the worldling, the artist the artist. Can the realist and the idealist blend together, and hold together till death and beyond death? If not, can there be ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... summer-house of the garden. In days past I had coquetted many an hour away with her. Indeed, years before we had been lovers in half-earnest boy and girl fashion, and after that the best of friends. Grimly I resolved to keep the appointment and to tell this little worldling some things she needed much ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Besides, he was very nearly an Earl, and Hamilton Torrens was three-doors off his father's Baronetcy and Pensham Steynes. This may have had its weight with Juliet. Miss Dickenson candidly admitted that she herself would have been influenced; but then, no doubt she was a worldling. Mr. Pellew admired the candour, discerning in it exaggeration to avoid any suspicion of false pretence. He did not suspect himself of any undue leniency to this lady. She was altogether too passee to admit ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... which we desire to take pleasure. The idea of God lays down the rule that God is our highest good—in other words, that the knowledge and love of God is the ultimate aim to which all our actions should be directed. The worldling cannot understand these things, they appear foolishness to him, because he has too meager a knowledge of God, and also because in this highest good he can discover nothing which he can handle or eat, or which affects the fleshly appetites wherein he ...
— The Philosophy of Spinoza • Baruch de Spinoza
... a breakdown of comradeship is often bitterness, and cynical distrust of man. It is this experience which gives point to the worldling's sneer, Defend me from my friends, I can defend myself from my enemies. We cannot wonder sometimes at the cynicism. It is like treason within the camp, against which no man can guard. It is a stab in the back, a cowardly assassination of the heart. Treachery ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... clothes as from anything else. Matt had a conscience against whatever would separate him from his kind, but he could not help carrying himself like a swell, for all that; and Louise did not try to help it, for her part. She was an avowed worldling, and in this quality she now wore a drab cloth costume, bordered with black fur down the front of the jacket and around it at the hips; the skirt, which fell plain to her feet, had a border of fur there, and it ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... long history behind him on which we cannot now enter at any length. As a child, the little worldling, it was observed, took much after his secular father, but much more after his scheming mother. He was already a self-seeking, self-satisfied youth; and when he became a man and began business for himself, no man's business flourished like his. ...
— Bunyan Characters - First Series • Alexander Whyte
... burning throne! Mute watchers o'er man's strange, sad story Of crime and woe through ages gone! 'Twas yours, the wild and hallowing spell, That lured me from ignoble glens— Taught me where sweeter fountains Than ever bless the worldling's dreams. ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... you are still a dreamer, and will one time know, and feel, that your life is but a dream. Yet you call this fiction: you stave off the thoughts in print which come over you in reverie. You will not admit to the eye what is true to the heart. Poor weakling, and worldling, you are not strong enough ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... case of the Corinthian offender is much in point, as showing how the strict discipline of the Church must have availed to make Christianity unpopular with the mere worldling. ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... worldling as ever sought to hide his emotions; but he could not suppress an exclamation of rapture, nor an expression of triumph, which lit up his face as nothing had ever illumined ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... second and hated the first. To the spiritually minded, whose religion was founded on actual insight and disillusion, the joys of heaven could never be more than a symbol for the intrinsic worth of sanctity. To the worldling those heavenly joys were nothing but a continuation of the pleasures and excitements of this life, serving to choke any reflections which, in spite of himself, might occasionally visit him about the vanity of human wishes. So that Christianity, even in its orthodox ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... Klinger (1752-1831) was a fellow-townsman and friend of Goethe. His Sturm und Drang, which was at first named Wirrwarr, came out in 1776. The scene is 'America.' The speakers are Wild, a lusty and masterful man of action; Blasius, a blas worldling; and La Feu, a sentimental dreamer. They propose to try their ...
— An anthology of German literature • Calvin Thomas
... an entertaining companion, polished in manners, refined, intelligent, highly educated and witty; but a mere worldling, caring for the pleasures and rewards of ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... this awaking, as the 'destruction' and the 'end' of the godless, make it most natural to take it as here referring to the final close of the probation of life. That conclusion appears to be strengthened by the contrast which in subsequent verses is drawn between this 'end' of the worldling, and the poet's hopes for himself of divine guidance in life, and afterwards of being taken (the same word as is used in the account of Enoch's translation) by God into His presence and glory—hopes whose exuberance it ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... How should he but in desperate lunacy? Fond worldling, now his heart-blood dries with grief; His conscience kills it; and his [244] labouring brain Begets a world of idle fantasies To over-reach the devil; but all in vain; His store of pleasures must be sauc'd with pain. He and his servant Wagner are at hand; Both come from drawing Faustus' ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... Esperance, who had never had any jewellery except a gold chain that her mother's aunt had left her and the little ring her father had given her for her first communion, found herself, in one day, possessor of two ornaments which the most fastidious worldling would not have disdained. She put the ring immediately on her first finger, since it was a little loose for the ring finger, and looked at herself in the glass, arranging a lock of hair with the ringed hand, raising an eyebrow and laughing delightedly ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... accounts he gave of it to sympathetic acquaintances. All that is definitely known is that he now and then emerged from the struggle to dine at the Ritz or Carlton, correctly garbed and with a correctly critical appetite. On these occasions he was usually the guest of Lucas Croyden, an amiable worldling, who had three thousand a year and a taste for introducing impossible people to irreproachable cookery. Like most men who combine three thousand a year with an uncertain digestion, Lucas was a Socialist, and he argued that you cannot hope to elevate the masses ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... and Ruskin, and in her calling she was an enthusiast. But, in the words of the Elizabethan poet, she was perhaps 'unacquainted still with her own soul.' She imagined herself a Radical; she was in truth a tyrant. She preached Ruskin and the simple life; no worldling ever believed more fiercely in the gospel of success. But, let it be said promptly, it was success for others, rarely or never for herself; she despised the friend who could not breast and conquer circumstance; as for her own case, there were matters ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seek metaphors from the flowers of the field. But nature and its feelings are rooted in the heart of the warrior and the statesman, as well as in that of the tenderest maid who tends the sheep or milks the lowing kine; the difference alone is that many things besides find place within the worldling's bosom, while her breast is one sweet and gentle storehouse for God and for ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... Comforter thou art; Our rest in toil, our ease in pain; The balm to heal each broken heart, In storms our peace, in loss our gain; Our joy, beneath the worldling's frown; In shame ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... and not only was that final victory thus won by Him, but He arrived at it by a path full of the conflicts which threaten faith. He "endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself" (ver. 3). Year by year, day by day, from the Pharisee, from the worldling, from the leaders of religion, from the inconstant crowd, He had "contradiction" to endure—sometimes even from "the men of His own household." He was challenged to prove His claims; He was insulted over His assertion of them, or over His silence about them. In every ...
— Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews • Handley C.G. Moule
... feel this arm of mine—the tide within Red with free chase and heather-scented air, Pulsing full man; can Arthur make me pure As any maiden child? lock up my tongue From uttering freely what I freely hear? Bind me to one? The great world laughs at it. And worldling of the world am I, and know The ptarmigan that whitens ere his hour Wooes his own end; we are not angels here Nor shall be: vows—I am woodman of the woods, And hear the garnet-headed yaffingale Mock them: my soul, we love but while we may; And therefore ...
— The Last Tournament • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... elements of the world can do so only on the transporting barges of Satan. As a tree is known by its fruits, so is a true follower of Christ. The fruit borne by a Christian is directly opposite in its nature to the fruit borne by the worldling. It is not the profession merely that produces the separation, but it is the manner of life. The Son of God is the great exemplar of Christianity. Just what true Christian principles did in him will in the very nature of things ...
— The Gospel Day • Charles Ebert Orr
... flower Ere summer bids it with her gentle smile? Can it restore the verdure to the leaf When yellow Autumn marks it for her own? Or, in the noontide bid the dew-shower rise To fill one rosy chalice to the brim? Go! gild thee with it, worldling, as thou wilt, Yet all thy pains will ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... realization of themselves in others. The simple pathos, and the apparent indirectness of such a tale as that of 'Poticoushka,' the peasant conscript, is of vastly more value to the world at large than all his parables; and 'The Death of Ivan Ilyitch,' the Philistine worldling, will turn the hearts of many more from the love of the world than such pale fables of the early Christian life as "Work while ye have the Light." A man's gifts are not given him for nothing, and the man who has the great gift of dramatic fiction has no right to cast it away or to let it rust ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells |
