"Humbler" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... not be supposed that in this representation of society, I chiefly refer to the humbler classes. I refer to those who are considered as [gentlemen], and who, if wealth, and public employment may be said to constitute gentility, are the gentlemen of the States bordering on the Mississippi. My readers may perhaps recollect a circumstance which occurred but a short time ago, when a ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... content with drawing-room meetings for people of rank and money. If fellowship, said he, was good for lords, it must also be good for peasants. He wished to apply the ideas of Spener to folk in humbler life. For this purpose he now bought from his grandmother the little estate of Berthelsdorf, which lay about three miles from Hennersdorf {April, 1722.}; installed his friend, John Andrew Rothe, as pastor of the village church; and resolved that he and the pastor together ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... enforce his dominion, and occasionally those chiefs would unite for a common object; but, in ordinary times, they were much more likely to be found in hostility to one another. In such a state of things the rights of the humbler classes of society were at the mercy of every assailant; and it is plain that, without some check upon the lawless power of the chiefs, society must have relapsed into barbarism. Such checks were found, first, in the rivalry of the chiefs themselves, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... he learnt how to combine with his fellows for mutual defence and support. We gather from our examination of the tombs of these early races that they had attained to this degree of progress. There were chiefs of tribes and families who were buried with more honour than that bestowed upon the humbler folk. Many families were buried in one mound, showing that the tribal state had been reached, while the many humbler graves denote the condition of servitude and dependence in which a large number of the race lived. All this, and much more, may ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... of the weavers. It was not the worth of the artists that brought Brussels its greatest fame, but the humbler work of its tapissiers. Their lives, their endeavours counted more in textile art than did the Flemish school of painting. No such weavers existed in all the world. They were bound together as a guild, ...
— The Tapestry Book • Helen Churchill Candee
... streets—High and Castle and Crane Streets, and many others, including Endless Street, which reminds one of Sydney Smith's last flicker of fun before that candle went out; and the "White Hart" and the "Angel" and "Old George," and the humbler "Goat" and "Green Man" and "Shoulder of Mutton," with many besides; and the great, red building with its cedar-tree, and the knot of men and boys standing on the bridge gazing down on the trout in the swift river below; and the market-place and its busy crowds—all the familiar sights and ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... desired. It will readily be imagined, that in a county which had a language of its own (something similar to the Welsh) down to the time of Edward VI., if not later—in a county where this language continued to be spoken among the humbler classes until nearly the end of the seventeenth century, and where it still gives their names to men, places, and implements—some remnants of it must attach themselves to the dialect of English now spoken by the lower orders. This is enough of itself to render Cornish talk not ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... wonderful work of this kind, carefully illuminating the texts of works with marvelous design and color. Now and then some special genius arose and became a great fresco painter. Fra Angelico painted pictures for the world to marvel over, while some humbler brother pored over his illuminating. You will find some of this ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... various humbler homesteads, painted a lively pink, or a refreshing lavender, with gardens where the fuchsias were trees covered with crimson bloom, and where gigantic hydrangeas bloomed in palest pink and brightest azure in wildest abundance. Here Vixen beheld for the first ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... which they never dreamed; for in those Crusades the Moslem and the Christian had met face to face, and found that both were men, that they had a common humanity, a common eternal standard of nobleness and virtue. So the Christian knights went home humbler and wiser men, when they found in the Saracen emirs the same generosity, truth, mercy, chivalrous self-sacrifice, which they had fancied their own peculiar possession, and added to that, a civilisation and a learning which they could only admire ...
— Alexandria and her Schools • Charles Kingsley
... miserable mendicant, but was a lady of large possessions, of a respectable family, and with children whose position appears to have been such as, it might have been expected, would have afforded her the means of escaping the fate which overtook her humbler companions. ...
— Discovery of Witches - The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster • Thomas Potts
... the inhabitants keep carriages for their own private use; and near fifty have country houses. The relaxations of the humbler class, are fives, quoits, ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... greatest of generals, if not men,—you cannot mistake me,—I mean him, the presence of whose very ashes within the last few months sufficed to stir the hearts of a continent,—it was upon this plea that he abjured the noble wife who had thrown light and gladness around his humbler days, and, by her own lofty energies and high intellect, had encouraged his aspirations. It was upon this plea that he committed that worst and most fatal acts of his eventful life. Upon this, too, he drew around his person the imperial purple. It has in all times, and in every age, been the foe ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the idea that shall give light to the dark questionings of the intellect, or the vague yearnings of the heart. To Rome it has not been given to open a new sphere of truth, or to add one more to the mystic voices of passion; her epic mission is the humbler but still not ignoble one of bracing the mind by her masculine good sense, and linking together golden chains of memory by the majestic music ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... Feasting, gaming, and revelry were the occupations of all classes, without discrimination of age, or sex, or rank. Processions crowded the streets, boisterous with mirth: these illuminated the night with lighted tapers of wax, which were also used as gifts between friends in the humbler walks of life. The season was one for the exchange of gifts of friendship, and especially of gifts to children. It began on the 17th December, and extended virtually, to the ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... perish by ways so curious and inexplicable that one could almost credit the whispered idea (it must come from the Scotch skippers) that the ghosts of the women they drowned pilot them to destruction. But what form these shadows take—whether of "The Lusitania Ladies," or humbler stewardesses and hospital nurses—and what lights or sounds the thing fancies it sees or hears before it is blotted out, no man will ever know. The main fact is that the work is being done. Whether it was ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... been introduced into the prayers of the Church—an honor theretofore restricted to royalty. But she had a dearer honor and an honor more to be proud of, from a humbler source: the common people had had leaden medals struck which bore her effigy and her escutcheon, and these they wore as ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc Volume 2 • Mark Twain
... ever sent was a little old field school kept by one of his father's tenants, named Hobby, an honest, poor old man, who acted in the double capacity of sexton and schoolmaster. Of his skill as a gravedigger tradition is silent; but for a teacher of youth his qualifications were certainly of the humbler sort, making what is generally called an A, B, C schoolmaster. While at school under Mr. Hobby he used to divide his playmates into parties and armies. One of them was called the French and the other American. A big boy named William Bustle commanded the former; ...
— Washington's Birthday • Various
... fruit-trees grown from seedlings which came from France. Wild fruits, especially raspberries, cranberries, and grapes, were to be had for the picking, and the younger members of each family gathered them all in season. Even in the humbler homes of the land there was no need for any one to go hungry. More than one visitor to the colony, indeed, was impressed by the rude comfort in which the habitants lived. 'The boors of these manours,' wrote the voluble La Hontan, [Footnote: Louis Armand, Baron La Hontan, came ...
— The Seigneurs of Old Canada: - A Chronicle of New-World Feudalism • William Bennett Munro
... when the first manuscript from the future author of 'To Have and To Hold,' came in from an untried Southern girl. He walked up and down, reading paragraphs aloud and slapping the crisp manuscript to enforce his commendation. To take a humbler instance, I recall the words of over generous praise with which he greeted the first paper I ever sent to an editor quite as clearly as I remember the monstrous effort which had brought it into being. Sometimes he would do a favoured ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... probably give a good account of himself. But it's a crazy performance of mine—going into this thing—and I may as well plunge to the extent of lunacy. Mr. Farr, the rebellious unrest in this state must be organized. We need a house-cleaning. We need the humbler voters! The men with interests are too well taken care of by the Machine to be interested. I want you to go out and hunt for sore spots and get to the voters just as you have in your ward. Find the right men in each town and city to help you. You must know many on account ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... her were heard the murmurs of popular praise and approval, and while in addition to the appreciation of countless humbler readers, she was winning commendation from the highest literary authorities,—in 1833 she "startled the country by the publication of her noble 'Appeal in behalf of that class of Americans called Africans.'" Mr. Whittier says: "It is quite impossible for ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... risen to eminence were, on the paternal side at least, of humbler origin than Henry Kirke White. His father, John White, was a butcher at Nottingham; but his mother, who bore the illustrious name of Neville, is said to have belonged to a respectable family in Staffordshire. ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... for the passing of examinations that tested memory rather than intelligence, and character least of all. The unfortunate youths who could not stand even that test were left hopelessly stranded on the road, equally disqualified for a humbler sphere of life which they had learnt to despise and for the higher walks to which they had vainly aspired. Soured by defeat, and easily persuaded to impute it solely to the alien rulers responsible ...
— India, Old and New • Sir Valentine Chirol
... spirit of adventure inherited from the Middle Ages, and by a spirit of trade born of present opportunities; for every official in Canada hoped to make a profit, if not a fortune, out of beaverskins. Kindred impulses, in ruder forms, possessed the humbler colonists, drove them into the forest, and made them hardy woodsmen and skilful bushfighters, though turbulent and ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... with books, and learning and the music of thought and word; and he knew well that no one doing a man's work upon a farm could have much time left for study—certainly not a quarter of what the herd-boy could command. Therefore, with his parents approval, he continued to fill the humbler office, and receive the scantier wages belonging ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... meal, Welsh ale had flowed freely in horns or vessels of twisted glass. Mead and, in very grand houses, wine now began to circle in goblets of gold and silver, or of wood inlaid with those precious metals. In humbler houses, story-telling and songs, sung to the music of the harp by each guest in turn, formed the principal amusement ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education
... notorious Stede Bonnet, and a very quiet and respectful man he was. As has been seen before, Bonnet was a man able to adapt himself to circumstances. There never was a more demure counting-house clerk than was Bonnet at Belize; there never was an humbler dependent than the almost unnoticed Bonnet after he had joined Blackbeard's fleet before Charles Town, and there never was a more deferential and respectful prisoner than Stede Bonnet on board the Henry. It was really touching to see how this cursing ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... this land of liberty, in this age of increased and gradually increasing civilization, we shall hope to find few, if indeed any, among the higher classes who are eager or willing to obstruct the moral instruction and mental improvement of their fellow creatures in the humbler walks of life. If such there are, let them at length remember that the poor are endowed with the same reason, though not blessed with the same temporal advantages. Let them but admit, what I think no one can deny, that ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... flowers or other natural objects, but that the conventional forms should be beautiful in themselves and clearly traced in the pattern.—Akin to trimmings are all other appendages to dress,—jewels, or humbler articles; and as every part of dress should have a function, and fulfil it, and seem to do so, and should not seem to do that which it does not, these should never be worn unless they serve a useful purpose,—as a brooch, a button, a chain, a signet or guard ring,—or have significance,—as a wedding-ring, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... for plunder, the banner of some more powerful house. In course of time, when the Marches grew peaceful and morals improved, when cattle-lifting, no longer profitable, ceased to be an honourable occupation, such humbler marauders drifted away into the wide world, leaving no trace behind, save the grey ruins of their grim fortalices, and the incidental mention of some probably disreputable scion in a chapman's ballad. Neither mark nor memory ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... that intervened, reposed the charming little village with its neat cottages, white church, little red school house and one or two mansions that told of wealth. Here and there in the distance a pond was visible; while farm houses and humbler dwellings dotted ...
— Children's Edition of Touching Incidents and Remarkable Answers to Prayer • S. B. Shaw
... Falstaff might represent Shakespeare in his cups, just as Hamlet might represent him in his more sober moments. So I have always had a kind of fancy that Sam Weller might be regarded as Dickens himself seen in a certain aspect—a sort of Dickens, shall I say?—in an humbler sphere of life, and who had never devoted himself to literature. There is in both the same energy, pluck, essential goodness of heart, fertility of resource, abundance of animal spirits, and also an imagination of a peculiar kind, in which wit enters as a main ingredient. And having noted how highly ...
— Life of Charles Dickens • Frank Marzials
... noticed a sweet look of resignation that seemed to rest upon her features, it meant that Lord Ronald de Chevereux was kneeling at her feet, and that she was telling him to rise, that her humbler birth must ever be a bar to their happiness, and Lord Ronald was getting into an awful state about it, as English peers do at the least suggestion ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... but of an evidently humbler class of persons than those farther aft, were thronging the gangways, little dreaming of the physical suffering they were to endure before they reached the land of promise,—that distant America, towards which ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... of the ancients must have been superior to our humbler art, since they could find dainties in the tough membranous parts of the matrices of a sow, and the flesh of young hawks, and a young ass. The elder Pliny records, that one man had studied the art of fattening snails with paste so successfully, that the shells ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. II (of 3) - Edited, With Memoir And Notes, By His Son, The Earl Of Beaconsfield • Isaac D'Israeli
... high, that their minds had not been vulgarized by trash and sensationalism. Hamilton's sole bait was a lucid and engaging style, which would not puzzle the commonest intelligence, which he hoped might instruct without weighing heavily on the capacity of his humbler readers. That he was addressing the general voter, as well as the men of a higher grade as yet unconvinced, there can be no doubt, for as New York State was still seven-tenths Clintonian, conversion of a large portion of this scowling element was essential to the ratification of the ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... a good library at his command will find texts here not otherwise easily accessible; while the humbler student of slender resources, who knows the bitterness of not being able to possess himself of the treasure stored in expensive folios or quartos long out of print, will assuredly rise up and thank Mr. Unwin."—St. ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... while in common with others he bestows his due share of applause on the decorations of the rich, and is not insensible to the beauties and magnificence which are the lawfully allowed appendages of rank and fortune, cannot overlook the humbler dwelling of the poor. And if he should find that true piety and grace beneath the thatched roof which he has in vain looked for amidst the worldly grandeur of the rich, he remembers the declarations in the ...
— The Annals of the Poor • Legh Richmond
... arranged, with the aid of a lawyer, to allow her a certain regular income—with the consequence to himself that he had been obliged to give up his floor in Montagu Place and settle down in the humbler and dingier refuge of Alfred Place. Meanwhile, he had taken steps to collect sufficient evidence for a divorce. He had not yet entered his suit, and he felt pretty certain that when he did so, and Cora was made aware of it in the usual manner, she would find some way ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... auspices, the two ladies were in some measure acquainted with each other. Of her married life, also, Dr. Thorne had seen something, and it may be questioned whether the memory of that was more alluring than the reality now existing at Greshamsbury. Of the two women Dr. Thorne much preferred his humbler friend, and to her he made his visits not in the guise of a doctor, but as a neighbour. "Well, my lady," he said, as he sat down by her on a broad garden seat—all the world called Lady Scatcherd "my lady,"—"and how do these long summer days agree with you? Your roses are ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... chair by his wife's fire and told stories of his travels to her and anybody else who might drop in, that not only the wife but the neighbourhood was appeased. His old friends came back to him, he began to receive overtures to write in some of the humbler papers, to lecture on his adventures in the Yorkshire and Lancashire towns. Daddy expanded, harangued, grew daily in good looks and charm ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... there retaliation, scolding, and abuse against the author of the second Don Quixote—I mean him who was, they say, begotten at Tordesillas and born at Tarragona! Well then, the truth is, I am not going to give thee that satisfaction; for, though injuries stir up anger in humbler breasts, in mine the rule must admit of an exception. Thou wouldst have me call him ass, fool, and malapert, but I have no such intention; let his offence be his punishment, with his bread let him eat it, and there's an end of ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Summer fair, And joyous Spring demand a share Of Fancy's hallow'd power, Yet these I hold of humbler kind, To grosser means of earth confin'd, Through mortal sense to reach the mind, By mountain, ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... meet, however, that we say a word or two concerning Lamberton, for though, now-a-days, it may lack the notoriety of Gretna in the annals of matrimony, and though its "run of business" may be of a humbler character, there was a time when it could boast of prouder visitors than ever graced the Gretna blacksmith's temple. To the reader, therefore, who is unacquainted with our eastern Borders, it may be necessary to say, that, at the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... subsidized the king of Prussia to his interests. He destroyed the navy of France and wrested from her the larger part of her possessions beyond sea. Having always a clear conception of the remotest aim of national aspiration, he was content to leave the designing of operations in detail to the humbler servants of the government, reserving to himself the mighty concentration of his powers upon the general purpose for which the nation was striving. The king trusted him, the Commons obeyed him, the people adored him and ...
— A Short History of Pittsburgh • Samuel Harden Church
... ambitions, no fantastic desires, had ever drawn just censure upon Upper Farm, and wreaths and crosses decked with tasteful streamers bore witness to this fact. There was actually an exquisite white wreath from Miss Le Pettit of Ignores, laid proudly upon the humbler greener offerings of farmers and fisher folk, overpowering with its elegance even an artificial wreath under glass which came from the Bugletown corn-chandler, who was Mr. Lear's ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... Priests had contented themselves with ministering to the peasantry, but in the course of their travels it had become painfully apparent that the clergy themselves were in urgent need of some awakening force. Those of good family led, for the most part, worldly and frivolous lives, while the humbler sort were as ignorant as the peasants among whom they lived. The religious wars had led to laxity and carelessness; drunkenness and vice ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... most new to ear and eye, The pilgrim rested here his weary feet, And gazed around on Moslem luxury, Till quickly wearied with that spacious seat Of Wealth and Wantonness, the choice retreat Of sated Grandeur from the city's noise: And were it humbler, it in sooth were sweet; But Peace abhorreth artificial joys, And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... Sofa. I, who lately sang Truth, Hope, and Charity, and touched with awe The solemn chords, and with a trembling hand, Escaped with pain from that advent'rous flight, Now seek repose upon a humbler theme: The theme though humble, yet august and proud The occasion—for ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... demanded. And it was in October that the chief of such corporations—the United States Steel Trust—had a Government suit for dissolution filed against it. The sturdy bell-wether of the corporation flock was attacked by the great United States Government. What would happen to the humbler members of the flock! Certain court decisions were reassuring to corporations in November and business brightened for the time being and during much of December in certain notable instances, for in that month the Interstate Commerce Commission report appeared and ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... apparently allotted to him; he was made to soar and not to creep; even as a young man, his acquirements were far beyond the age in which he lived. With his amiable qualities, and early love of domestic life, he would have been well content to tread an humbler path, but it ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... moment, to a different scene, and to much humbler persons, that pass and repass in the camera obscura of my early recollections. The only Irishman that was in Sheffield, I think, in those days, lived in my father's family for several years as a hired man,—Richard; I knew him by no other name ...
— Autobiography and Letters of Orville Dewey, D.D. - Edited by his Daughter • Orville Dewey
... The humbler portion of my brethren, in whose direct and more especial interest a part of this undertaking has been contemplated, will, it is to be hoped and expected, give it that assistance which the case demands from them. Their welfare is the great object sought; and I implore ...
— Suggestions to the Jews - for improvement in reference to their charities, education, - and general government • Unknown
... and the once numerous flock was long since dispersed. A Swiss society undertook two or three years ago a Protestant mission at Gap, and a friend in Geneva had given us the name of the present evangelist. A humbler or more thankless charge could scarcely be imagined than such a work in such a place. There is no nucleus of hereditary Protestants, as in the mountain-parishes of the department, and at the same time the little city is so isolated ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... seem neither to clothe themselves nor to feed themselves, nor to talk, pray, or swear like ordinary mortals. The "Vows of the Heron," a poem of the earlier part of King Edward III's reign, contains a choice collection of strenuous knightly oaths; and in a humbler way the rest of the population very naturally imitated the parlance of their rulers, and in the words of the "Parson's Tale," "dismembered Christ by soul, ...
— Chaucer • Adolphus William Ward
... minnesingers was succeeded in Germany by a class of humbler minstrels of the common people, known as the Mastersingers, the city of Nuremberg being their principal center. A few of these men were real geniuses—poets of the people. One of the most celebrated was Hans Sachs, since represented in Wagner's "Meistersingers." Sachs ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... were closely mixed up with philanthropy, for the conditions of labour in India are by no means wholly satisfactory, and it would be unfair to deny to many of Tilak's followers a genuine desire to mitigate the evils and hardships to which their humbler fellow-creatures were exposed. Prominent amongst such evils was the growth of drunkenness, and it would have been all to his honour that Tilak hastened to take up the cause of temperance, had he not perverted it, as ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... am too young and too poor for such an elevation. I have not had the experience in that great theater of politics to qualify me for a place so exalted and responsible. I prefer therefore the humbler ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... history. By remains of art I do not so much refer to those desolate palaces which crumble forgotten in the gloom of tropical woods, nor even the enormous earthworks of the Mississippi valley covered with the mould of generations of forest trees, but rather to the humbler and less deceptive relics of his kitchens and his hunts. On the Atlantic coast one often sees the refuse of Indian villages, where generation after generation have passed their summers in fishing, and left the bones, shells, and charcoal as ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... use. "Oh! Oh!" he cried; "I bleed! I bleed! And this is what has done the deed! But, truly, what had been my fate, Had this had half a Pumpkin's weight! I see that God had reasons good, And all His works were understood." Thus home he went in humbler mood. ...
— The Talking Beasts • Various
... this line of procedure, for the simple reason that no such undertaking as that of 1789 is in hand. It is not now proposed to legislate into existence a new Liturgy. The task before us is the far humbler one of passing judgment upon certain propositions of change, almost every one of which admits of segregation, has an independent identity of its own, and may be accepted or rejected wholly without reference to what is likely to ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... we are far from having made the tour of this miraculous and incommensurable kingdom through which this admirable master leads us, and I should never be done were I to attempt to exhaust all the spectacles which he offers us. Let us descend yet another step, among creatures yet smaller and humbler. We shall find tendencies, impulses, preferences, efforts, intentions, "Machiavellic ruses and ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... age of natural democracy is surely at an end through these machines. There comes a time when men will be sorted out into those who will have the knowledge, nerve, and courage to do these splendid, dangerous things, and those who will prefer the humbler level. I do not think numbers are going to matter so much in the warfare of the future, and that when organised intelligence differs from the majority, the majority will have no adequate power of retort. The common man with a pike, being only sufficiently indignant and abundant, could chase ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... have entered into his mind to consider in connection with his wife's name or his own. He was simply thinking of his financial integrity. It might get noised about that the Pontelliers had met with reverses, and were forced to conduct their menage on a humbler scale than heretofore. It might do incalculable mischief ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... for your sake I will strive to do so, or perish in the attempt. For myself, I confess that, after the brief experience I have had of the little satisfaction wealth and splendour can afford, I would rather live in a quiet home in England, devoting myself to doing all the good in my power to my humbler neighbours, than be compelled again to play the part of an ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... religious reform which occurred during the first half of the seventeenth century, and to which the names of Vincent de Paul, Olier, Berulle, and Father Eudes are attached, the church of Saint Nicholas du Chardonnet filled, though in a humbler measure, the same part as Saint Sulpice. The parish of Saint Nicholas, which derived its name from a field of thistles well known to students at the University of Paris in the middle ages, was then the centre of a very wealthy neighbourhood, the principal ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... investment and their expected profits from the vessel, lived in the little house she had owned before her marriage, and sank into the plainer class of people, almost losing her identity with the ruling families to which her son was kin, but in her humbler class highly respected and ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... the poor like a mystery. They never see him; when he is here the park is shut up; the common report is that he walks at night; and he lives alone in that enormous house with his books. The county folk have all quarrelled with him, or nearly. It pleases him to get a few of the humbler people about, clergy, professional men, and so on, to dine with him sometimes. And he often fills the Hall, I am told, with London people for a day or two. But otherwise he knows no one, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... case which we unpacked at Srinagar proved to contain a "life-sized" work-table. The package holding our camp beds and bedding, having a humbler aspect, had been sent to Bombay and cost as a world of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... guest to Firbank Chapel, where the Seekers' service was to be held, high up on the hill opposite Drawwell. Yet he seems to have had some misgivings that his guest might be too full of his own powerful message to remember to behave courteously to others, who, although in a humbler way, were still trying to declare the Truth as far as they had a knowledge of it. ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... proprietor.' That this was from no invincible necessity, the uniform prosperity of numerous estates shows. But these estates are all conducted economically, while, on the other hand, reckless extravagance was the rule in the palmy days of the olden time, and has remained, even in humbler circumstances, an inborn trait of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... reveal the humbler immigrant parents to their own children lay at the base of what has come to be called the Hull-House Labor Museum. This was first suggested to my mind one early spring day when I saw an old Italian woman, her distaff against her homesick face, patiently spinning a thread ...
— Twenty Years At Hull House • Jane Addams
... how far it may be a national custom, but I observed that the women of the humbler classes, in meeting or parting with friends at the stations, saluted each other on both cheeks, never upon the mouth, as our dear creatures do, and I commended their good taste, though I certainly approve the American ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... may have to repeat the word thus unmeaningly. I sit here, like Pope's bard "lulled by soft zephyrs through the broken pane," and scribbling high-sounding phrases of monarchy, patriotism, and republics, while I forget the humbler subject of our wants and embarrassments. We can scarcely procure either bread, meat, or any thing else: the house is crouded by an importation of prisoners from Abbeville, and we are more strictly guarded than ever. My friend ennuyes as usual, and I grow impatient, not having sang froid enough for ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... already assembled there to hear the drums, oboes, clarinets, trumpets, and cornets played upon by the military, the city musicians, and whoever else might furnish his tones. The New-Year's gifts, sealed and superscribed, were divided by us children among the humbler congratulators; and, as the day advanced, the number of those of higher rank increased. The relations and intimate friends appeared first, then the subordinate officials; even the gentlemen of the council did not fail to pay their ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... their oppressors. Sir, there is but one way of converting the Irish, and it this:—Let them find the best arguments for Protestantism in the lives of its ministers, and of all who profess it. Let the higher Protestant clergy move more among the humbler classes even of their own flocks—let them be found more frequently where the Roman Catholic priest always is—at the sick-bed—in the house of mourning, of death, and of sin—let them abandon the unbecoming pursuits of an ungodly ambition—cast from them the crooked and dishonest ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... submissive, obedient slave; betray no disappointment, discontent, or impatience at your lot. The harsher he is, the humbler must you be; the more despotic he becomes, the more subservient you must seem. Make yourself so perfectly complying in all his moods that he shall believe you to be the very 'perfect rose of womanhood,' more excellent even than he thought when he married you, and so as he grows older and ...
— For Woman's Love • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... had been led to expect. Half desperate, he went to the diggings, leaving his wife with little money, and many promises of quick remittances of gold by the escort. But week followed week, and neither remittances nor letters came. They removed to humbler lodgings, every little article of value was gradually sold, for, unused to bodily labour, or even to sit for hours at the needle, the deserted wife could earn but little. Then sickness came; there were no means of paying for medical advice, and one child died. After this, ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... vernacular of English aspirations after a free, manly, and well-ordered political life—a vernacular rich in stately tradition and noble phrase, to be found in a score of a thousand of champions in many camps—in Buchanan, Milton, Hooker, Locke, Jeremy Taylor, Roger Williams, and many another humbler but not less strenuous pioneer and confessor of freedom. Ah, do not fail to count up, and count up often, what a different world it would have been but for that island in the distant northern sea! These were the tributary fountains, that, as time went on, swelled into the ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... political methods and customs were like at the time of the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. The character of Mr. Rufus Lyon, the independent minister, is an admirable study of the non-conformist of that period. Esther's renunciation of a brilliant fortune for a humbler lot with the man she loved and admired, was quite in accord with the teaching George Eliot inculcated all her life. The scene of the story is laid in the Midlands, and the action, covering about nine months, begins ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... The Italianist employes of the Rieka town council who took the census in 1910 asked the humbler classes if they were acquainted with the Italian language; those from whom they received an affirmative reply were put down as Italians. Had they, on the other hand, asked the people if they spoke Croatian and put down ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... a man to approach her—that she had felt herself sufficient to herself, and had in the independence of her girlish heart fancied there was a certain degradation in renouncing the simplicity of a maiden existence to become the humbler half of an indifferent matrimonial whole—were facts now bitterly remembered. Oh, if she had never stooped to folly of this kind, respectable as it was, and could only stand again, as she had stood on the hill at Norcombe, and ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the tribute of one friend; let me add my own. I do not presume to say what I think about him as a spiritual guide and example; I confine myself to humbler topics. Whatever else he is, Henry Scott Holland is, beyond doubt, one of the most delightful people in the world. In fun and geniality and warm-hearted, hospitality, he is a worthy successor of Sydney Smith, whose official house he inhabits; and to ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... meadows, there on oak-bluffs, Fallen foam of Heaven's blue deep. Yet that blossom-white outbreaking Smoke wove soon a martyr's shroud. Reynolds fell, with soul unquaking, Ardent-eyed and open-browed: Noble men in humbler raiment Fell where shot their graves had plowed, Dying not for paltry payment: Proud of home, of ...
— Dreams and Days: Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... Wagner's music or do without your breakfast, you would do without Wagner. Pray does that make eggs and bacon more precious than music, or the butcher and baker better than the poet and philosopher? The scullery may be more necessary to our bare existence than the cathedral. Even humbler apartments might make the same claim. But which is the more essential ...
— Press Cuttings • George Bernard Shaw
... recorded pettinesses and perversities which revolt us in him, a vein of something which touched men, and made women devoted to him, until he splenetically drove both men and women away from him? With Madame d'Epinay and Madame d'Houdetot, as with the dearer and humbler patroness of his youth, we have now parted company. But they are instantly succeeded by new devotees. And the lovers of Rousseau, in all degrees, were not silly women led captive by idle fancy. Madame de Boufflers was one of the most ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... Reverend M. Macaire's solitary exploit as a spiritual swindler: as MAITRE Macaire in the courts of law, as avocat, avoue—in a humbler capacity even, as a prisoner at the bar, he distinguishes himself greatly, as may be imagined. On one occasion we find the learned gentleman humanely visiting an unfortunate detenu—no other person, in fact, than his friend M. Bertrand, who has fallen into some trouble, and is awaiting ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... marble scattered here and there gave the half-formed temple the air of a frowsy, ill-dressed child; and the mass rising to the sky resembled a cloud that might suddenly melt into the ether. He had seen the great temples of the world, yet found in this humbler, but still magnificent structure an element of wonder. From the old world, ancient, rich in tradition, one expected all things; centaurs might spring from its soil unnoticed. That the prosaic rocks of Manhattan should heave ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... sounds? The same forces that carved the mighty Niagara made Trenton falls, too, and it should not be ignored just because it is small. Having seen the Madonnas by Raphael, shall we now ignore the works of Powers? Or having seen the Rose of Sharon, shall we cease to admire the humbler flowers of spring? The wood thrush's song today is divine, yet, the simpler ditty of the wren has a sweetness not found in the larger minstrel's song. Here one is not bored with the "ohs" and "ahs" of gasping tourists, who scream their delights in tones that drown the voice of the falls. ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... was the Squire's Hall of the period, and was provided, like the great country houses of to-day, with all the best that contemporary life could give.[240] And, like these also, it was the centre of a large circle of humbler dependencies wherein resided the peasantry of the estate and the domestics of the mansion.[241] The existence amongst these of huntsmen (as inscriptions tell) reminds us that not only was the chase, then as now, popular amongst the squirearchy, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... which has lately bitten into that trade; the Palace Grill, much like the grills of Eastern hotels, except for the price; Delmonico's, which ran the Poodle Dog neck and neck to its own line; and many others, humbler ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... now a quill from thine own wing I pluck, thy lofty fate to sing; Whilst we behold the varions fight With mingled pleasure and affright; The humbler hinds do fall to pray'r, As when an army's seen i' th' air, And the prophetick spannels run, ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... two ideas and then exaggerated them both. In one way Man was to be haughtier than he had ever been before; in another way he was to be humbler than he had ever been before. In so far as I am Man I am the chief of creatures. In so far as I am a man I am the chief of sinners. All humility that had meant pessimism, that had meant man taking a vague or mean view ...
— Orthodoxy • G. K. Chesterton
... you a compartment of his pavilion,' said the youth; 'but it will prove a noisy resting-place, I fear, for a wounded man. I have a tent here, an humbler one, but which is at least tranquil. ...
— Tancred - Or, The New Crusade • Benjamin Disraeli
... rebuked by the Divine silence, what are the objects we may lawfully pray for, asking for a response? It must be confessed that with the exception of petitions for spiritual blessings—for a deeper faith, for a more complete obedience, for a humbler heart, for a wider sympathy—such as can never be out of place, it is impossible to draw a hard-and-fast line; there is, indeed, a whole vast category of possible objects of prayer which one cannot a priori pronounce legitimate or otherwise. We can only humbly confess that "we know ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... returning one escaped slave to bondage. I firmly, believe in our Declaration of Independence, that all men are created free and equal, and that no human being has a right to make merchandise of others born in humbler stations, and place them on a level with horses, cattle, and sheep, knocking them off the auction- block to the highest bidder, sundering family ties, and outraging the purest and tenderest feelings of ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... the public, the readers of newspapers and the frequenters of clubs or taverns, the rivalry of party leaders or the incidents of court life excite a much keener interest than painful efforts for the good of the humbler classes. During the closing years of George III.'s reign there were no party conflicts of special intensity. The whigs acquiesced in their self-imposed exclusion from office, and contented themselves with damaging criticism; the radicals ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... walked for several hours in the suburbs yesterday. In order to have the advantage of exercise, he carried a basket on his head, and was understood to intimate in a loud tone that it contained sprats, which he distributed to the humbler classes at ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, December 11, 1841 • Various
... the wilderness when he had reached the age of about thirty years, and began his ministry work, which extended for several years until his death at the hands of Herod. He gathered around him a large and enthusiastic following, beginning with the humbler classes and afterward embracing a number of higher social degree. He formed his more advanced followers into a band of disciples, with prescribed rules regarding fasting, worship, ceremonial, rites, etc., closely modeled upon those favored by the Essenes. This organization ...
— Mystic Christianity • Yogi Ramacharaka
... yet arrived: for humbler folk had partaken of very early dinner so as to get plenty of fun, and long hours of delight for the sixpenny toll ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... Were this done, this pensioned family, which never can possibly feel well affected towards our Government or any Government but their own, would alone send out men enough to fill all the civil offices open to the natives of the country, to the exclusion of the members of the humbler but better affected families of Muhammadans and Hindoos. If they obtained the offices they would be educated for, the evil to Government and to society would be very great; and if they did not get them, the evil would be great ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... gentleman—Doctor Forbes—may here be of much value. In his memorandums, made in Ireland in the autumn of 1852, he says: "At any rate, the result of my inquiries is that—whether right or wrong in a theological or rational point of view—this instrument of Confession is, among the Irish of the humbler classes, a direct preservative against certain forms of immorality at least."[58] "Among other charges preferred against Confession in Ireland and elsewhere, is the facility it affords for corrupting the female mind, and of its actually leading to such corruption. * * * So far ...
— Confession and Absolution • Thomas John Capel
... superior bliss; Thrice-bless'd, his virgin modesty shall be To snatch an evanescent ecstacy! The fierce extremes of superhuman love, For his frail sense too exquisite might prove; He turns, all blushing, from th'Aoenian shade To humbler raptures, with a ...
— Poetic Sketches • Thomas Gent
... munition factories, and dwells with great significance upon the rapidity of the women's piece-work and the mingling of classes, where educated and refined girls work side by side and very happily with those of an humbler type. What Mrs. Ward well calls "the common spirit" inspires them all, and holds them all in just and equal relations. At every step she is startled by the vastness of the work and the immense hand that ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... compared the case of Jeanne with that of Socrates. A much humbler parallel, curiously close in one respect, may be cited from M. Janet's article, 'Les Actes Inconscients dans le Somnambulisme' ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang |
