"Humiliating" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of intelligence beamed from her lovely eyes. I referred to my college days (and I suspect she took me for a Freshman), I hinted at Stillton, I even suggested that we had met as babies; but she only said that her recollection did not extend to that early period, and left me—for what? it is humiliating, but I will acknowledge it—for another fellow. This at last convinced me that she could not be my Jennie. Her resemblance to the photograph, however, was perfect,—really startling. In justice I must add that she ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... a majority of whose inhabitants are female, demoralization has naturally extended far and wide, till strict veracity has become unpractical. The first falsehood (after the serpent's) must have been humiliating to him who uttered it, and a fatal example to those who heard; but mankind soon grew used to the new fashion. I pass over the rude barbarian ages, whose gross and inartistic lying offers no claim to respectful and sympathetic interest, and no excuse but the lame one of ...
— A Pessimist - In Theory and Practice • Robert Timsol
... future had appeared couleur de rose, and she had sunned herself in the prospect of increased importance at home, and the honour which would be paid to the beautiful young bride by her husband's friends and relatives. How miserable, how humiliating, if all these dreams came to naught, and she found herself bound to an unsuccessful man, with all her ambitions nipped ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... besides, both of them had a fund of gay humor. She was always the first to laugh at herself. She was still eating her heart out: for the old passion still had its grip on her: she still thought of the blackguard she loved: and she could not bear to be in so humiliating a position or, above all, to have Christophe suspecting ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... himself brought Suzanne to the house at about twelve o'clock. Red with shame, her eyes swollen with tears, she submitted to Mme. Morestal's humiliating reception and took her seat by ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... good-fellowship the lonely painter should be abandoned to his own melancholy. Stroeve had set up a Christmas-tree in his studio, and I suspected that we should both find absurd little presents hanging on its festive branches; but he was shy about seeing Strickland again; it was a little humiliating to forgive so easily insults so outrageous, and he wished me to be present at the reconciliation on which he ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... round that they build up a world that is fiercely and tremendously complete. Every detail fits in, and the world in which they live is not, as is commonly supposed, a world of disconnected and fantastic imaginations, but one of iron-bound and remorseless logic. No task is more humiliating, nor more likely to shake one's sense of security in fundamental convictions, than that of arguing out ...
— Among Famous Books • John Kelman
... never told to any one. I am lonely and wretched. With the exception of yourself, I do not think that there is anybody who really cares for—I mean who really sympathises with me in the world. I daresay that it is my own fault and it sounds a humiliating thing to say, and, in a fashion, a selfish thing. I never should have said it to any living soul but you. What is the use of being great when there is nobody to work for? Things might have been different, but the world is a hard place. ...
— Beatrice • H. Rider Haggard
... unlikely that—seeing himself unmasked—he had found a sure and rapid way of allowing the money to pass through St. Genis' hands into those of de Marmont, and at the same time hopelessly humiliating and discrediting his rival in the affections of Mlle. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... from the EXAMINER here, that Hearst was making a very strong fight for a delegation from Illinois. His boom seems to me to be increasing. That it is possible for such a man to receive the nomination, is too humiliating to be thought of. ... ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... to be expected and is to an extent unavoidable, we should court no more of that kind of experience than is necessary to avoid a repetition of it. The Socialist Party has already achieved some victories of this kind which proved to be defeats, crushing and humiliating, and from which the party has not even now, after many years, entirely recovered [referring, doubtless, to Haverhill and Brockton.—W. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... simple: to bring about a difference, touch by touch, without letting either of the three, and least of all her father, so much as suspect her hand. If they should suspect they would want a reason, and the humiliating truth was that she wasn't ready with a reason—not, that is, with what she would have called a reasonable one. She thought of herself, instinctively, beautifully, as having dealt, all her life, at her father's side and by his example, only ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... high—she was bulky—she was built like an ox—and she could no more have squeezed herself under that rock than she could have passed between the cylinders of a sugar mill. What could she gain by it, even if she succeeded? To be chased and abused by a savage husband could not be otherwise than humiliating to her high spirit, yet it could never make her feel so flat as an hour's repose under that ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tyranny and infant avarice exemplified in the social conditions of Great Britain.— Superstitions of the dark ages still in force amongst the trading community, furnishing valuable hints to certain American journalists, and highly suggestive of reflections humiliating to the national vanity. ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... to dinner has wounded me to the quick. I cannot come for reasons of the most humiliating nature—my personal appearance. You may imagine my mortification in making this disclosure to you, but it ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... changes,—she utters sentiments that chill and revolt me; the very beauty seems vanished from her face. I recall with a sigh the simple sweetness of Susan, and I feel as if I deceived both my mistress and myself. Perhaps, however, all the circumstances of this connection tend to increase my doubts. It is humiliating to me to know that I woo clandestinely and upon sufferance; that I am stealing, as it were, into a fortune; that I am eating Sir Miles's bread, and yet counting upon his death; and this shame in myself may make me unconsciously ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hatchway in a most undignified manner. The frontispiece shows you how this was done. They put him in his box and put a rope round it and fastened the rope to the donkey engine, a little steam-engine which is used for hoisting and such purposes. How humiliating for a horse to be dragged aloft by a donkey engine! The captain stood near to give the signal when the steamer rested for a moment on a level keel. The donkey engine puffed, and the sailors stood ready to steer the patient upward, just as you see in ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 5, March, 1878 • Various
... you have twelve hundred thousand fighting men; but we had a million in 1794, and shall have still. The love of honour and independence is not extinct in France; it will fire every heart, when the business is to repel the humiliating and unjust yoke, that you ...
— Memoirs of the Private Life, Return, and Reign of Napoleon in 1815, Vol. II • Pierre Antoine Edouard Fleury de Chaboulon
... spent the next ten minutes trying to force his prisoner to beg his pardon. They were long and humiliating and painful minutes for Macalister, but he endured them doggedly and in silence. The officer's temper rose minute by minute. The forward wall of the firing trench was built up with wicker-work facings and the officer drew ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... last to you, my misfortunes have but gone on accumulating. It seems as though Destiny would discharge all its wrath and fury upon the poor Country which I had to rule over. The Swedes have entered Pommern. The French, after having concluded a Neutrality humiliating to the King of England and themselves [Kloster-Zeven, which we know], are in full march upon Halberstadt and Magdeburg. From Preussen I am in daily expectation of hearing of a battle having been fought: the proportion of combatants being 25,000 against 80,000 ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... smarting under his humiliating defeat, had spies constantly watching his foes, intending, if possible, to take them by surprise. When the spies reported to him the lack of vigilance on the part of the enemy, he stealthily crossed to the island with his force and ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... ask you, will you say of that working-man, since such I must acknowledge him to be, who, at such a time, deserts his post, and sells his flag; who, at such a time, turns a traitor and a craven and a recreant, who, at such a time, is not ashamed to make to you the dastardly and humiliating avowal that he will hold himself aloof, and will not be one of those associated in the gallant stand for Freedom ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... Hague in December 1784, when this very question brought Joseph II to the brink of war with Holland, quoted the declaration of the Grand Pensionary, that the Dutch ought to spend their last florin "rather than submit to so destructive and humiliating a measure as the opening of the Scheldt."[122] The effusive thanks of the Dutch when the Court of Versailles opposed the demand of Joseph II, shows that they looked on the control of that estuary as vital to their interests. This question was brought to an issue on 23rd November, ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... however, he realized that the end had come and raised the white flag. Nearly twenty-four hours passed before the terms of surrender were agreed upon, but Grant, who had served in the same division with Pemberton in the Mexican War, was not inclined to exact humiliating conditions upon his old acquaintance whose men had made such a long and gallant fight. He, accordingly, offered to free all the prisoners upon their signing a written promise not to take arms again unless properly exchanged, and to allow all the officers to retain their side arms ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... wife wishes a dollar of that money she must ask her husband for it; and if he be of a niggardly nature, she will hear him say, every time, "What have you done with the twenty-five cents I gave you yesterday?" Isn't such a position humiliating enough to be called "servitude?" That husband sued and obtained damages for the loss of the services of his wife, precisely as he would have done had it been his ox, cow or horse; and exactly as the master, under the old regime, would have recovered ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... his hope grew cold. Her motherhood was only another sanctuary from which she shut him out. There was something so humiliating in his pain that he would have hidden it even from Edith. But Edith was ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... a return to the Jewish communion. Having recanted his heresies, he was readmitted after an excommunication of fifteen years, but was soon excommunicated a second time. After seven years of exclusion, he once more sought admission, and, on passing through a humiliating penance, was again received. His vacillating autobiography, Exemplar Humanae Vitae, was published with a "refutation'' by Limborch in 1687, and republished in 1847. In this brief work Acosta declares his opposition ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... it cost her to come back and look after Colin. That knowledge was beyond Adeline Fielding. She congratulated Anne and expected Anne to congratulate herself on being "well out of it." Her safety was revolting and humiliating to Anne when she thought of Queenie and Cutler and Dicky, and Eliot and Jerrold and all the allied armies in the thick of it. She had left a world where life was lived at its highest pitch of intensity for a world ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... exasperation and amusement were about equally blended. It was amusing to note the signs of apprehension on the part of Miss Wickham's disagreeable relatives as they noted their aunt's doting fondness for her hired companion. And while she felt that they richly deserved this little punishment, it was humiliating to be so ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... inalienably connected in his memory with unnecessary washing up; with boring parties; with stiff collars; with unending polishing of shoes; humiliating walks down the avenue, stammering, idiotic phrases, while from every window the eyes of malicious friends were set in mockery. Girls never slid down the banisters or fell out of apple trees, or snapped garter snakes, or raised white mice or collected ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... ambassadors of those who are called rebels, are in Paris. In Paris they transact the reciprocal business of America and France. Can there be a more mortifying insult? Can even our ministers sustain a more humiliating disgrace? Do they dare to ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... Flying Childers could lay themselves out at full speed in a city building lot; and it is reasonable to suppose that, notwithstanding all his fortitude, the spirits of the youth were depressed, and his faculties chilled by such humiliating neglect, and such reiterated disappointments. Who is he that would not, under such circumstances, sink into languor? It cannot be doubted that dejection every day detracted from his powers, and that by a kind of irresistible gravitation, he descended like ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... always been able to comfort herself with the idea that the child under her particular training was as well-behaved as any of those of her more demonstrative friend. But now, all this consolation had been put to flight; she could not meet Mrs. Kittridge without most humiliating recollections. ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... be humiliating," he wrote in a letter to one of his officers, "to offer peace on the principles established in the declaration of the Republic of Venezuela,[1] which ought to be the foundation of all negotiations; first, because it is ordered by a law of the Republic, and second, ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell
... in the same age; only in Ireland the anarchy endured much longer from the incompleteness of the conquest and the absence of the seat of supreme government, which kept the races longer separate and antagonistic. Perhaps the most humiliating notice of the degrading effects of conquest on the noble Saxon race to be found in history, is the language in which Giraldus Cambrensis, the reviler of the Irish Celt, contrasts them with his countrymen, the Welsh. ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... remain at home, but was easily prevailed upon to go. She was not entirely happy, for the humiliating failure of her hopes had left her for the moment without a recognised admirer, and the fear of old maidenhood had again laid hold of her heart. Her Aunt Laura's case was no consoling example. Not one man in a hundred would choose a wife for Colonel ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... by her friend's sorrow and humiliating poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking to ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... acquaint the holy Patriarch with the various revolutions which would take place in his Order, and he signified them to him by the statue itself, by the different metals of which it was composed, either thus to modify by these humiliating foreshowings the honor which he derived from being the Founder of so wonderful a work as that of the establishment of his Order; or to inspire him with the intention of sending up fervent prayers to heaven, which should draw down graces on his flock ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... affection. Bitter as she was, she could not blame him; she had been madly foolish and must suffer for it. She called her pride to the rescue, but it failed her. The torturing anxiety about the man's fate remained, and with it a humiliating regret, which was not altogether selfish, that it was Sylvia Marston he had chosen. Sylvia, who was clever, had, of course, tricked him; but this was no consolation. It was, however, needful to hide her feelings from her father and assume an interest ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... they came face to face, to give the cut direct. Their greeting was scarcely more than a nod, and showed their mutual constraint. Leigh read in Emmet's bold eyes a warning such as an injured husband might convey to the man that had wronged him, and a defiant reassertion of himself after his humiliating confession. He suspected also, what indeed was the truth, that the discovery of his own feeling for the bishop's daughter had opened Emmet's eyes anew to her value, and had cleared them of the mists of passion for the unfortunate Lena Harpster. From now on the mayor ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... not think of letting him go without having eaten. A special service was prepared for him in the kindest way possible, and Keith enjoyed very much the many dainties offered him. Nevertheless he felt the situation as humiliating and was actually glad when he got away at last. But the gladness was only a surface gloss on a burning core of regrets ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman
... passed in a thick mist of empty, senseless longing. She made no fire, cooked no dinner, drank no tea, and only late in the evening ate a piece of bread. When she went to bed it occurred to her that her life had never yet been so humiliating, so lonely and void. During the last years she had become accustomed to live constantly in the expectation of something momentous, something good. Young people were circling around her, noisy, vigorous, ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... these duties for her ears and eyes; Heard by what service she must gain her bread, And went with scorn and sorrow to her bed. Jane was a servant fitted for her place, Experienced, cunning, fraudful, selfish, base; Skill'd in those mean humiliating arts That make their way to proud and selfish hearts: By instinct taught, she felt an awe, a fear, For Jesse's upright, simple character; Whom with gross flattery she awhile assail'd, And then beheld with hatred when it fail'd; ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... first who discovered the great river of the Amazons; and also the first who sailed up that of St. Lawrence. Even to the present day, they carry on a considerable traffic in small ornaments made of ivory, a humiliating memento of their connection with Senegal: but all the rest of their commerce is dwindled into the fishery, and a small portion ...
— Architectural Antiquities of Normandy • John Sell Cotman
... a force of fourteen hundred raw recruits, unused to Indian warfare, St. Clair marched into the heart of the Indian country and suffered an inglorious defeat, on November 4, 1791. More than half of his command were killed, and scarcely a man escaped unscathed. It was a most humiliating reverse for the new Government, occurring almost under the eyes of British garrisons, and just as opposition was coming to a head ...
— Union and Democracy • Allen Johnson
... we must deal with life; it is no good making up a philosophy which just keeps us gay when all is serene and prosperous. Unpleasant, tedious, vexing, humiliating, painful, shattering things befall us all by the way. That is the test of our belief in life, if nothing daunts us, if nothing really mars ...
— Joyous Gard • Arthur Christopher Benson
... he had gathered from the earl's manner. But he had not imagined the proud lord's great-heartedness would go so far as to trust him with the guardianship of the boy. That moved, and that humbled him, though it was far from humiliating. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... those days was known of the interior of Japan, as the Dutch ambassadors were compelled to submit to the most humiliating conditions to keep up their intercourse with the country. On visiting the capital, they were conveyed in palanquins, well enclosed with fixed lattice-work, like prison-vans in England; and the bearers dared not, ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... have told you already that you are right. You insist on saving me from a humiliating position. I respect your courage and your straightforwardness. You remind me of an ancient Spartan having it out with a silly ass of a stranger who took advantage of her parents' good-nature. I am as little vain, I think, as any man, ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... Ruling. To an outsider, this seemed almost to mean the longest way round to an end that everybody had seen from the beginning. Parliamentary Ruling also seemed apt to lead its followers into paths unexpected even by them, from which they did not know how to get out, and it also led to revelations humiliating ...
— Emmy Lou - Her Book and Heart • George Madden Martin
... obviously uneasy. There are certain things to which in good society one does not refer, first and foremost humiliating antecedents. The present circumstances were exceptional to be sure, but it was to be hoped that Mr. Mutimer would outgrow this habit of advertising his origin. Let him talk of the working-classes if he liked, but always in the third person. The good lady ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... thought Joyce; it lowered her in their estimation and laid her open to impudence. Though she was attractive to many, she never succeeded in holding the attention of her admirers very long; which was humiliating to say the least of it. Joyce looked upon her as an example of a true flirt, and feared her accordingly—not on her husband's account, for Ray gave her a wide berth—but as a criminal at large. Women had whispered tales which she found impossible to credit; the world ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi
... only too glad to do so, for I felt ashamed of seeming, by my silent presence, to be joining in Ikonin's humiliating prayers for grace. I have no recollection of how I threaded my way through the students in the hall, nor of what I replied to their questions, nor of how I passed into the vestibule and departed home. I was ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... itself furnishing two to three millions of the aggregate result. But this putting her collection of customs into the hands of foreigners, though it has taught China her own wastefulness and the superiority of Western finance, is a burden so humiliating that it cannot always continue. When China fully awakes, she will realize her strength and will reclaim what her weakness ceded to ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong
... to grief several times at Kenton brook, essaying to jump it at places obviously—as the Duffer pointed out—beyond his stride. The Duffer and he put their names down for the house-handicaps, and curtailed their visits to the Creameries. After this self-denial it is humiliating to record that neither boy succeeded in winning anything. Caesar won the house mile handicap; Scaife won the under sixteen high jump—a triumph for the Manor; and Fluff, the despised Fluff, actually secured an immense tankard, ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... the sentiments of the Northern people; whereas, as a matter of fact, but for the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, I believe the great majority of the Northern people, and the soldiers unanimously, would have been in favor of a speedy reconstruction on terms that would be the least humiliating to the people who had rebelled against their government. They believed, I have no doubt, as I did, that besides being the mildest, it was ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... trials wherewith the lot of man in every station is chequered and environed; and when he heard those bondmen of hard labour, jocund after sound slumbers and light suppers, laughing contemptuously as they beheld the humiliating sight, which divers gallants and youngsters, courtiers of the court, degraded with debauch, made of themselves as they stumbled homeward, he thought there was surely more bliss in the cup that was earned by the constancy of health and a willing mind, than in all the possets ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... be tedious to read the various wars between Charles and his rival. Each of them gained, at different times, great successes, and each experienced, in turn, the most humiliating reverses. Francis was even taken prisoner at the battle of Pavia, in 1525, and confined in a fortress at Madrid, until he promised to the victors the complete dismemberment of France—an extorted promise he never meant to keep. No sooner had ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... subside, and she put out her mouth for the cake and bit a piece; and then Tom bit a piece, just for company, and they ate together and rubbed each other's cheeks and brows and noses together, while they ate, with a humiliating resemblance to two ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... which are so swollen that I can hardly draw on my sleeves, and for two days stockings have been an impossibility, and I have had to sew up my feet daily in linen! The swellings from the bites have become confluent, and are scarlet with inflammation. It is truly humiliating that "the crown of things" cannot defend himself against these minute enemies, and should be made as miserable as I am ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Konrad Krause is good during the day as well. When he wants something, he speaks without humiliating me; and something in the sound of his voice makes me happy. He does not permit anything nasty to be said about me in his presence. ...
— The Prose of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... Dinner had gone on a little way, and her companion had begun to put the usual questions to her about where she had been, and where she was going, questions to which Chatty, who had been nowhere, and had not as yet one other invitation (which feels a little humiliating when you hear of all the great things that are going on), could make but little reply, when in one of the pauses of the conversation, she was suddenly aware of a laugh, which made her start slightly, and opened up an entirely new interest in this as yet not very exciting company. It ...
— A Country Gentleman and his Family • Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant
... were to vie with each other in endeavours to overcome the arrogance of the young Count. The style of the whole is more sententious than imaginative: the glowing colours of fancy could not with propriety have been employed on such a subject. In the passages where the humiliating rejection of the poor Helena is most painfully affecting, the cowardly Parolles steps in to the relief of the spectator. The mystification by which his pretended valour and his shameless slanders are unmasked must be ranked among the ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... great presence? Why is it that I recall these things? Why do I bring forward what many of us, forgetting the iron weight with which the sentiments of his age press down even upon the mightiest genius, might look upon as a humiliating circumstance far greater than it is, in the life of a man we ought all to love so much? Is history a thing done away with, or is not the past for ever in the present? And is it not but too probable that we ourselves are occasionally guilty of things which, for our lights, are as sad aberrations ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps
... thereby finally goaded the nations to resist him. In 1810 he exclaimed triumphantly, 'Three years yet, and I shall be master of the world!' And when he lately took the field against Russia, he said, 'After humiliating Russia and reducing her to an Asiatic power, I shall establish at Paris a universal European court and universal archives!' He believes himself to be the master of the world; he thinks the thunderbolts of heaven are ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... non-appearance she would not think; but when the fear that she was perhaps looking for him in vain assailed her, the blood crimsoned her face as if she felt the shame of a humiliating insult. Yet why should she make the period of waiting more torturing than ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and least of all in that lazy and good-natured place. Considering, too, the errand on which I had come, not for my own convenience but for the sake of another, my treatment seemed to me very hard. What was still more humiliating was the fact that my spirit seemed just as powerless in the hands of these ruffians as my body would have been on earth. I was pushed, hustled, insulted, hurt. I could have summoned Amroth to my ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... that for which the Hemerlingues were waiting, following with their eyes to its last stage that heart-rending, humiliating exit which piles upon the back of the rejected one something of the shame and horror of an expulsion; then, as soon as the Nabob had disappeared, they looked at each other with a silent laugh and left the gallery, the old woman not daring to ask them to ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... idea of power from such distinction, though from the weakness of mankind it is impossible to disconnect them. What services, then, can a man render to society to compensate for the outrage done to the dignity of our nature when we bind ourselves to address him and his posterity with humiliating circumlocutions, calling him most noble, most honourable, most high, most august, serene, excellent, eminent, and so forth; when it is more than probable that such unnatural flattery will but generate vices ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... a humiliating sense of being no match for the little stranger on sea topics, so he changed ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... they had taken her at a flying pace down the road to destruction. And when the end came, at the same time that I had my first financial blow, the surprise was overwhelming. It was an end so shameful and to me so humiliating that I could not bear at first to go out among men and meet my friends. It was a critical time and my affairs needed my closest attention. But I was too broken down and overcome by the disgrace to attempt to do anything. And when I did go ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... and all the wild and amusing caprice, and daring wilfulness, and grand affectation, that distinguish and inspire a circle of patrician youth, there came over him the consciousness that to him something dark had occurred, something bitter and disappointing and humiliating, and that the breaking morn would not bring to him a day so bright and ...
— Lothair • Benjamin Disraeli
... Algerian, Greek, Arab, Khabyle, Russian, Indian, Italian, Englishman, Scotsman, Jew, and Nubian rub shoulders in the thronged streets. The miles of docks are crammed with ships. Food of all sorts abounds. In the bright, dry light all is gay and busy. The most sthetic, and perhaps most humiliating, sight that a Westerner could see we came on there: two Arab Spahis walking down the main street in their long robe uniforms, white and red, and their white linen bonnets bound with a dark fur and canting slightly backwards. Over ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... first articles of religion, and respect and reverence for their lords and superiors, and initiated them in the ceremonies of a court. They were called pages, valets, or varlets, and their office was to carve, to wait at table, and to perform other menial services, which were not then considered humiliating. In their leisure hours they learned to dance and play on the harp, were instructed in the mysteries of woods and rivers, that is, in hunting, falconry, and fishing, and in wrestling, tilting with spears, and performing other ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... bodice, which broke the point of the furious Frenchman's rapier. The sight of the bleeding beauty—for she received a slight scratch—brought the diplomat to his senses. Falling on his knees, he poured forth his remorse in passionate self-reproaches, but only received his pardon on the most humiliating terms, namely, that he should present her with the weapon which had so nearly pierced her heart, on which was to be inscribed this memento of the jealous madness of its owner: "Epee de M———, qui osa frapper La Gabrielli." Only Metastasio's persuasions (for Gabrielli prized his friendship ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... no avoiding the humiliating scene of a public trial, the noble relatives of the Count endeavored to predispose the minds of the magistrates before whom he was to be arraigned. They accordingly made urgent and eloquent representations of the high descent, and noble and powerful connexions ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... and cruel question as I think it—of social inequalities. Circumstances which will try you to the quick, spare me the ungracious necessity of paining a man who has lived in friendly intimacy under the same roof with myself by any humiliating reference to matters of rank and station. You must leave Limmeridge House, Mr. Hartright, before more harm is done. It is my duty to say that to you; and it would be equally my duty to say it, under precisely the same serious necessity, if you ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... short time and that ultimately a coalition must take place under the direction and supremacy of Sir Robert Peel. This is jumping to a conclusion over many difficulties. However, nothing can be more meagre than the triumph of the Whigs nor more humiliating than their position; even my Whig-Radical friends write me word that 'O'Connell holds the destiny of the Government in his hands, and is acknowledged to be the greatest man going.' It was hardly worth while (in a national point of view, whatever it may have been in a party one) to ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... aching senses, wearied and reeling already, gave way beneath this terrible violence; her useless struggles ceased, her arms fell inert by her side: and losing consciousness completely, her proud, unbendable spirit was spared the humiliating knowledge of her final removal by the rough soldiers, and of the complete wreckage ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... themselves above the prejudices of education and of the society in which they were born. Pyrrhonism is now the fashion above everything else. People think that the legitimate exercise of the mind consists in not believing rashly, and in knowing how to doubt many things. What can be more intolerable and humiliating than to see our pretended great men boast themselves of believing nothing, and of calling those people simple and credulous who have not perhaps examined the first proofs of religion?" The condition of things was no better in ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... Davison under his breath, and laughed. But the meaning of his laugh was lost on every one except Mildred. She flushed hotly at the thought of having to bear the responsibility of that ridiculous scene on the Cherwell; it was humiliating, indeed. She took up the crystal to conceal ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... recalled it, and then vacillating again, he drew a second, in slightly altered words, which he signed and did not recall. There had been a struggle in which the weaker nature had prevailed, and the orthodox leaders made haste to improve their triumph. The first step being over, confessions far more humiliating could now be extorted. Bonner came to his cell, and obtained from him a promise in writing, "to submit to the king and queen in all their laws and ordinances, as well touching the pope's supremacy, as in all other things;" with ...
— The Reign of Mary Tudor • James Anthony Froude
... suppose all would be wofully exaggerated and painfully vulgarised by the actors and actresses on such a stage. What, I cannot help asking myself, would they make of Mr. Rochester? And the picture my fancy conjures up by way of reply is a somewhat humiliating one. What would they make of Jane Eyre? I see something very pert and very affected as an answer ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... to his room and started in on his report. It had stuck in Crowley's crop—seemed humiliating—to be made a subaltern in the case of women operatives. He believed that at last he was in right and proper on the grand opportunity of his career; he would come down from the bush with the bacon; Elsham had fallen down ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... Tommy congregated in the back-yard, expostulated with Melons; in vain the unhappy father shook his fist at him. Secure in his position, Melons redoubled his exertions and at last landed Tommy on the roof. Then it was that the humiliating fact was disclosed that Tommy had been acting in collusion with Melons. He grinned delightedly back at his parents, as if "by merit raised to that bad eminence." Long before the ladder arrived that was to succor him, he became ...
— Urban Sketches • Bret Harte
... was any place he could not follow his Master. He declared that he would even lay down his life for his sake. "Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?" answered the Master. "Wilt thou, indeed?" Then he foretold Peter's sad, humiliating fall—that, instead of laying down his life for ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... I am trying to earn something to support her," sobbed Katy, who, with her independent notions of trade in general, and of the candy trade in particular, would not have revealed this humiliating truth, except under the severe pressure ...
— Poor and Proud - or The Fortunes of Katy Redburn • Oliver Optic
... The effort, however, to tie down so spirited a nation to so tame a policy, proved to be futile. The recollections of the empire, which the government itself did so much to arouse, moved the people to compare the achievements of the past with the humiliating position of their country under the ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... "It is humiliating—very," sighed Mr. Rhinds. "Still, I shall be the last to offer any objection to any arrangement that seems wise to the ...
— The Submarine Boys' Lightning Cruise - The Young Kings of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... war party returned: "Where's he been? Well, I'll tell you where he's been. And I just want you to know who done this." Here Exhibit A got behind a post. The recital of the details of his catastrophe was humiliating. But the mother continued: "Henry Perkins done this. I don't believe in stirring up neighborhood quarrels and all that, but I've just stood this long enough. My boy can't stick his nose out of the door without that Perkins boy jumpin' on him. If you ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... care of half a life in gathering; then the compulsory abdication of the great and conspicuous mansion for the small, obscure, hired cottage; then the saddening bodings and deep concern felt in seeing the means of living daily diminishing, with no prospect of ever being replenished; and, finally, the humiliating resort of the wife and children to the needle or menial employments, for the actual necessaries of life,—these, all these, are but the usual graduated vicissitudes of sorrow and trial which are allotted to those whose folly and extravagance have suddenly thrown them on the downward ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... cycle of fiction stands is a certain most important truth about the enduring spirit of youth, the truth of the near kinship between terror and joy. The Bronte heroine, dingily dressed, badly educated, hampered by a humiliating inexperience, a kind of ugly innocence, is yet, by the very fact of her solitude and her gaucherie, full of the greatest delight that is possible to a human being, the delight of expectation, the delight of an ardent and flamboyant ignorance. She serves to show how futile it is of humanity ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... if you got the chance or get the crowd to lynch him. That if a thief stole from you the shrewdest thing to do was to induce him as a set-off to give you the proceeds of his next thieving. That it was humiliating to live in a town where a self-confessed rascal could snap his fingers at the law ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... naïve Americans, who believed that their weakness for the French capital was returned, a painful surprise. They imagined in the simplicity of their innocent hearts that she loved them for themselves, and have awakened, like other rich lovers, to the humiliating knowledge that a penniless neighbor was receiving the caresses that Croesus paid for. Not only did the entire Parisian press teem at that moment with covert insults directed towards us, but in society, at the clubs and tables of the ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... fascinating room and perfect dream of a bed. I feel an ungrateful wretch for so much as mentioning this matter to you after the way in which you have indulged me. Only something rather extraordinary really did happen, of which I honestly confess I am still expiring to find a reasonable and not too humiliating explanation. For, though I blush to ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... water". Such was the legal form of words which implied banishment from Rome, outlawry, and social excommunication. Every man knew against whom the motion was levelled. It was carried—carried in spite of the indignation of all honest men in Rome, in spite of all Cicero's humiliating efforts to obtain ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... management of which he was in any way responsible. He was, in fact, entirely ignorant of the art of boat sailing. But the men who sat on the window sills of Brannigan's shop, battered sea dogs every one of them, had their eyes fixed on him. It would be deeply humiliating to have to own up before them that he knew nothing about boats. Sir Lucius's order applied, very properly, to Priscilla who was a child. Peter Walsh looked as if he thought that Frank also ought to be treated as a child. This was intolerable. The day seemed very calm. It was difficult to think ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... Sophia's mother for nearly sixteen years had not been lost on Mrs. Baines, and though she was now discovering undreamt-of dangers in Sophia's erratic temperament, she kept her presence of mind sufficiently well to behave with diplomatic smoothness. It was undoubtedly humiliating to a mother to be forced to use diplomacy in dealing with a girl in short sleeves. In HER day mothers had been autocrats. But ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... important measure occurred at the very period when the power of Cimon was weakened by the humiliating circumstances that attended his expedition to Ithome, and by the vigorous and popular measures of the opposition, so there seems every reason to believe that it was principally advised and effected by Pericles, who appears shortly ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... by making it obligatory on the members of the Hanlin Academy, the Emperor's "Forest of Pencils," to come there for a course of instruction in science and international law. Against this daring innovation, Wojin, a Manchu tutor of the Emperor, protested, declaring that it would be humiliating to China to have her choicest scholars sit at the feet of foreign professors. The scheme fell through, but before many years the Emperor himself had taken up the study of the English language, and two of our students ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... attack which Hole-in-the-Day had made on the Sioux a short time before, Major Plympton decided not to execute the prisoners. They were turned over to their own people to be flogged in the presence of the officers. More humiliating than death was their punishment. Their blankets, leggins, and breech-cloths were cut into small pieces, and finally the braves whipped them with long sticks while the ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... (England, Russia. Austria, and Sweden), only to see Napoleon hurl it to the ground on the field of Austerlitz (December, 1805). England's isolation seemed as complete as the Emperor's victory. Russia, Austria, and Prussia made humiliating peace with the victor, who carved his conquests into new states and kingdoms. Pitt, who, at the news of Austerlitz, had pointed to the map of Europe with the words "Roll up that map, there will be no use for it these ten years," survived ...
— Ten Englishmen of the Nineteenth Century • James Richard Joy
... now took charge of her and led her to a room where she was searched by a matron for concealed weapons, a humiliating ordeal to which even the richest and most influential visitors must submit with as good grace as possible. The matron was a hard-looking woman of about fifty years of age, in whom every spark of human pity and sympathy had been killed during her many years of constant ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... are to come into this right relationship with Him, the first thing we must learn is that our wills must be broken to His will. To be broken is the beginning of Revival. It is painful, it is humiliating, but it is the only way. It is being "Not I, but Christ,"[footnote1:Gal. 2: 20.] and a "C" is a bent "I." The Lord Jesus cannot live in us fully and reveal Himself through us until the proud self within us is broken. This simply means that the hard unyielding self, which justifies itself, ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... the time their vessels were ready most of them had changed their mind and declined to go, but they wrote letters to Spain bitterly complaining of the admiral and his brothers, and accusing them of oppression and despotism. Columbus found himself obliged to agree to the most humiliating terms with the rebels, conceding a complete pardon, restoring them to their official posts, promising to pay their salary in arrears and distributing lands and Indians among them. Nevertheless, other quarrels followed, Columbus was forced to take severe ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... join his arms to those of Kajaaga.' A message of this nature from so powerful a prince could not fail to create great alarm; and the inhabitants of Teesee, after a long consultation, agreed to conform to his good pleasure, humiliating as it was to them. Accordingly, one and all publicly offered up eleven prayers, which were considered a sufficient testimony of their having renounced paganism, and embraced ...
— Travels in the Interior of Africa - Volume 1 • Mungo Park
... miserably humiliating, but I could do no more. It was madness to keep the poor wretch where I had laid him; discovery might come at any time. Once I thought of leaving him there and going away myself— disappearing, as it were, from the world. I could keep my chambers untouched for months—perhaps years—by ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... mongrel! Ah, white-galled Norman eft! God's feet, if I pommel you for this!' Pommel him he did; and, having drawn blood at his ears, he turned him over his knee as if he had been a schoolboy, and lathered his rump with a chair-leg. This humiliating punishment had humiliating effects. Gilles believed himself a boy in the cloister-school again, with his smock up. 'Mea culpa, mea culpa! Hey, reverend father, have pity!' he began to roar. Dropping him at last, Richard tumbled him on to the bed. 'Blubber yourself ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... priest of a century ago—a friend of Whitefield." He is likely to come under the spell of this reverend Ghost who haunts the "Manse" and as it rains and darkens and the sky glooms through the dusty attic windows, he is likely "to muse deeply and wonderingly upon the humiliating fact that the works of man's intellect decay like those of his hands" ... "that thought grows moldy," and as the garret is in Massachusetts, the "thought" and the "mold" are likely to be quite native. ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives
... It is a humiliating confession, is it not, that one has wilfully thrown away something that perhaps one might have had, for something that one knows one can never have? It is sheerest folly. And to do it with one's eyes open ...
— Only an Incident • Grace Denio Litchfield
... shall encounter many unsolved theories. Indeed, the facts of his life are suggestive of the mystery of being. If it be suggested that he is "part and parcel" of nature and has slowly arisen out of lower forms, it should not be a humiliating thought, for his daily life is dependent upon the lower elements of nature. The life of every day is dependent upon the dust of the earth. The food he eats comes from the earth just the same as that of the hog, the rabbit, or ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... thing. Her cheeks scorched with the thought and she shivered at the remembrance of all that she had gone through. She had been down into the depths and she would carry the scars all her life. The girl who had started out so triumphantly from Biskra had become a woman through bitter knowledge and humiliating experience. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... inveigled on board under false pretences, by my advertising the Candace as the newest thing in yachts. I've had a letter and several cypher telegrams from the assistant conductor, a useful chap, telling me the whole story of the plot, which he's nosed out; and I'm faced with humiliating failure unless I can save the situation by a grand coup at the eleventh hour. Now, you can guess why on the spur of the moment I bought up your rights to dig in the Sudan, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... any detailed description of the appearance of Concepcion, for I feel that it is quite impossible to convey the mingled feelings which I experienced. Several of the officers visited it before me, but their strongest language failed to give a just idea of the scene of desolation. It is a bitter and humiliating thing to see works, which have cost man so much time and labour, overthrown in one minute; yet compassion for the inhabitants was almost instantly banished, by the surprise in seeing a state of things ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... extinguished, as the first spark is extinguished which the steel gives birth to. He could not confide himself to Wilhelm; the understanding which this very confidence would give birth to between them, must separate them from each other. It was humiliating, it was annihilating. But for Sophie? No, how could he, after that, declare the love of his heart? how far below her should he be placed, as the child of poverty and shame! But the mother of the family? Yes, she was gentle and kind; with a maternal sentiment she extended ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... she began again very suddenly with renewed assurance. "These things never last, and I think Patty is quite wrong to insist upon telling you. Of course it is humiliating for a time, but—but"—she hesitated, and then brought out triumphantly—"he married very young, you know, and men aren't like women—there's no use pretending they are. Now when a woman loves ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... impetuosity of his own sovereign, Christian V., and his fall in the beginning of 1676 not only, as he had foreseen, involved Denmark in an unprofitable war, but, as his friend and disciple, Jens Juel, well observed, relegated her henceforth to the humiliating position of an international catspaw. Thus at the peace of Fontainebleau (September 2, 1679) Denmark, which had borne the brunt of the struggle in the Baltic, was compelled by the inexorable French king to make ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... one must be careful not to confirm him in the coward's code. The injustice of it he must see, see by smarting under it. If ever punishment before others is wise it is in this case; for surely he who delights in humiliating others must be humiliated. But though justice suggests this course, experience shows that it does not always work; the bully only bides his time, and, cherishing resentment, he wreaks it on the ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... The poor girl had become so nervous under the ordeal, which for her had been of a very violent character, that she imagined nothing could be more disgraceful and humiliating than to have her name mixed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various |
