"Downtrodden" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disagree with much that you said to-night. But you are on the side of wealth and aristocracy. I am on the side of the downtrodden and oppressed." ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... downtrodden, poor, subdued and persecuted people. Renan says it is a religion of sorrow. And primitive Christianity—the religion of conduct—is a beautiful and pure doctrine that no sane person ever ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... several long and tiresome errands to be done—there always were on days like this—and Sara was sent out again and again, until her shabby clothes were damp through. The absurd old feathers on her forlorn hat were more draggled and absurd than ever, and her downtrodden shoes were so wet that they could not hold any more water. Added to this, she had been deprived of her dinner, because Miss Minchin had chosen to punish her. She was so cold and hungry and tired that her face began to have a pinched look, and ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... where he can. His sons are consigned to a corner in the village school, and the schoolmaster, if not superior to caste prejudices, discourages their attendance. Nevertheless, Mahars will not remain for years downtrodden in this fashion, and are already pushing themselves up from this state of degradation. In some places they have combined to dig wells, and in Nagpur have opened a school for members of their own community. Occasionally a Mahar is ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... spells of exhaustion which had to be relieved. Women played a small, almost comic, and not very exalted part in his life. He looked upon them compassionately as very imperfect, morbid creatures. In his love-affairs he had not been specially fastidious. His mother had been a downtrodden little woman, who had never understood him; his sister full of provincial pettiness. So he had no very high opinion of the sex. Incidentally he considered horses also as particularly stupid animals, and was capable of flying into a temper when a horse-lover ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... revealing the artificial and criminal relations which exist between men—for telling the whole truth in regard to that position without confusing the issue by attempting to vindicate myself, and without rousing the envy of the rich and feelings of oppression in the hearts of the poor and downtrodden. I am so placed that I not only have no desire to vindicate myself; but, on the contrary, I find it necessary to make an effort lest I should exaggerate the wickedness of the great among whom I live, of whose society I am ashamed, whose attitude towards ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... of love and honour being once fairly before me, it did not cost me a thought. I was a Saint-Yves de Keroual; and I decided to strike off on the morrow for Wakefield and Burchell Fenn, and embark, as soon as it should be morally possible, for the succour of my downtrodden fatherland and my beleaguered Emperor. Pursuant on this resolve, I leaped from bed, made a light, and as the watchman was crying half-past two in the dark streets of Lichfield, sat down to pen a letter of farewell to Flora. And then—whether ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... science, industry, and art; it is the patron of all useful inventions; it is the preserver of the state, and everything that gives strength and prosperity to the state; it is the champion of law, justice, and order, and extends its protecting aegis over the weak, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. It has taken two centuries, as we have already said, to make the press what it is; and a terrible uphill fight has it had to wage. Tyranny, dogmatism, and intolerance in high places, and ignorance and superstition in low, have ever been its sworn enemies. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Volume V. Issue I • Various
... has played an honorable part in the making of our country, and for this part she should have full credit. If she had been as poor a stick, as downtrodden and ineffective as sometimes painted, she would not be a fit mate for the man beside whom she has struggled, and she would be as utterly unfit for the larger life she desires as the most bigoted misogynist ...
— The Business of Being a Woman • Ida M. Tarbell
... in its way has become a very factor. It stands not over-high, yet the shadow of it has fallen athwart the whole length and breadth of France, and in that shadow the tyrants have trembled, shaken to the very souls of them by the rude hand of fear; in that shadow the spurned and downtrodden children of the soil have taken heart of grace. The bonds of servile cowardice that for centuries had trammelled them have been shaken off like cobwebs, and they that were as sheep are now become the wolves that prey on those that preyed on ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... now with my hands empty and my mind fairly made up. Everything depended on a new theory, which I was about to test, a mere Chinese theory concerning eunuchs—that their mutilation makes them bestial, but also downtrodden and quite spiritless and peculiarly weak. That is why the old Empress could thrash them to death whenever they displeased her, without their daring to raise their hands or make one single struggle. ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... except himself, his nieces, and Joe Beecher ever knew exactly what happened, what was the aspect of the door-mat erected to human life, of the worm turned to menace. It must have savored of horror, as do all meek and downtrodden things when they gain, driven to bay, the strength to do battle. It must have savored of the god-like, when the man who had borne with patience, dignity, and sorrow for them the stings of lesser things because they were lesser things, at last ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... righteousness, without counting the cost. In like manner he now had the opportunity of illustrating afresh his attitude toward the law, for he held that law was for the accomplishment of justice, and that it was most glorious when its strong arm protected and defended the weak and downtrodden. By a natural course, therefore, he became a prominent counsel for those unfortunate negroes who, at this time, in Boston, were held as fugitive slaves. While the ingenuity of some was expended in putting the law on the side of the strong and the rich, Dana, who was convinced in his mind ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... are not clear, while the Deus ex machina adds nothing to the story. It is redeemed by some splendid passages, but is interesting as revealing a further development of Euripides' thought. He here makes the slave, another downtrodden class, free of the privileges of literature, for to him none is vile or reprobate. The famous painting Captive Andromache indicates to us the loneliness ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... Catholic nations justifies this statement; their zeal for the propagation of the faith will explain their rise and downfall in the eyes of the Church. Ireland is a classical illustration of this point. Poor, persecuted, downtrodden, the land of the Gael still remains the seminary of the world's apostles. The foreign missions always appealed to the Irish people and "the limits of the earth have heard the voice" of its zealous missionaries. ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly
... in holding this to be the effective cause of the situation we have now to meet, it is true that it is by no means the only one. The emancipation and deliverance of the downtrodden masses of men who owed their evil estate to the destruction of the Christian society of the Middle Ages, was a clamourous necessity; it was a slavery as bad in some ways as any that had existed in antiquity, and the number of its victims ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... distinguished so wonderfully the warlike and barbarous Spain of the sixteenth century; and lastly, in the beggars covered with sores, pale, starving, with their malodorous rags, you feel strangely the swarming poverty of the vast population, downtrodden and vivacious, which you read of in the picaresque novels of a later day. And these same characteristics, the deep religious feeling, the splendour, the poverty, the extreme sense of vigorous life, the discerning may find even now among the Andalusians for all the modern modes with which, ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham
... Aline's weakness. She had never clearly recognized it, but it had been partly pity that had induced her to accept Freddie; he had seemed so downtrodden and sorry for himself during those Autumn days when they had first met. Prudence warned her that strange things might happen if once she allowed ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... first appeared as the public champion of the poor and downtrodden, who publicly denounced the greed of the rich and the corruption of the men ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... scalding tears falling between her words, she imparted the whole miserable story; she bared her fallen pride. There was no other person in the world to whom she could thus have revealed that inner agony, that lacerating shame. But Mrs. Lorimer, the despised, the downtrodden, was as an angel from heaven that day. A new strength was hers, born of her friend's utter need. She held her up, she sustained, her, through that the darkest hour of her life, with a courage and a steadfastness of which no one had ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... orders were being given. The man who had fired the shot was arrested, handcuffed and marched away. The people were ordered right and left, and the officer's horses rode ruthlessly through the masses. Law and order had arrived and there was nothing for the downtrodden but to flee. ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... moment Jonah, under the stimulus of George's heels, charged, and Christmas, with a squeal of terror, thundered blindly among the trees. Now was he convinced of the grisliness of the visitation. That downtrodden, servile Jonah, from whom he exacted prompt obedience to every passing whim, should be thus translated and so puffed up with audacity as to chase him was proof of the presence of incredible mischief from which the most valorous might with discretion retire; and without pause he galloped—free ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... always master the details of the problem he is dealing with, granted that he sometimes propounds schemes before they are ripe; yet against that place (1) his wonderful personality, (2) his boundless vitality and energy, (3) his heartfelt sympathy for the downtrodden ones of the world, (4) his wonderful ideas and ideals, (5) his quickness of intelligence, (6) his ardent patriotism, (7) his remarkable powers of oratory, and (8) his almost uncanny gift of seeing into the future—and you have a man whose superior ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... labor from the coal regions and to substitute importations of coolie Huns and Bohemians. Thus, the wicked American laborers will be chastened for trying to get higher wages and cut down a pious man's dividends; and the downtrodden coolies will be brought where they can enjoy the blessings of liberty and of the preaching of ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... organize the various movements which keep the world going and make it tolerable. The organ-blower works harder with his muscles, for that matter, than the organ player, and may perhaps be exasperated into thinking himself a downtrodden martyr because he does not receive the same ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... be affected by the passion of love had somehow never come into her head. She thought of the back streets she had looked out on from her bedroom window. Could anything like passion spring up in those dismal alleys? The people who lived there, poor downtrodden things, had enough to do to keep themselves alive. She knew all about them; they were in the air; their condition was deplorable! Could a person whose condition was deplorable find time or strength for any sort of lurid exhibition such as this? ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... persecution behind her made her quick to appreciate suffering in others, and gave her an innate sense of fellowship with the downtrodden. She resolved to use that sense as a searchlight aiding her to see and overcome obstacles. She told herself that she was done with maudlin sentimentality. On the rare occasions when she had accompanied her mother to Chicago, the two women had found delight in wandering ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... his sympathies have always been interested in behalf of his downtrodden countrymen. I won't admit that they are downtrodden, Josie, even to you; but Cragg thinks they are. His father was an emigrant and Hezekiah was himself born in Dublin and came to this country while an infant. He imagines he is Irish yet. ...
— Mary Louise in the Country • L. Frank Baum (AKA Edith Van Dyne)
... analyse the sentiments and psychological causes which bring about a war. A war waged to redeem its independence by a nation downtrodden by another nation is perfectly legitimate, even from the point of view of abstract morality. A war which has for its object the conquest of political or religious liberty cannot be condemned even by the ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... prowess? Can we not hope that if ever the banners of England and the banners of the United States are again to meet on the battlefield, they shall meet entwined together in the defense of some holy cause, in the defense of holy justice, for the defense of the oppressed, for the enfranchisement of the downtrodden, and for the advancement ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter
... accomplished? To build up, not to tear down, should be the object of the scientific anarch. Stop! You need not say the earth has to be levelled and ploughed before sowing the seed. That suits turnip fields, not the garden of humanity. Educate the downtrodden into liberty, is my message, not the slaughtering of monarchs. How am I going to go about it? Ah! that's my affair, my dear sir. After I read a certain book by Tolstoy, I realized that art was as potent an agent for mischief as the knout. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was vanity of character among them, as there is among ladies; but, for the most part, they were wont to rush towards their human friends in a body, and peck the crumbs—at first timidly, then boldly—from their palms. There was one hen—a black and ragged one, with only half a tail, and a downtrodden aspect—which actually went the length of jumping up on little Tilly's knee, and feeding out of her lap. It even allowed her to stroke its back, but it evidently permitted rather than ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... sided with Mere, of course. In the first place, she was a poor, downtrodden woman; in the second, she was their broker. Her job was to get them things. They gave her the credit for what she got them. They gave Pop no praise for yielding—no credit for extracting somehow from the dry-soil of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... becoming familiarized to the idea of women speaking in public, and the way was gradually being cleared for the advance-guard of that noble army which has brought about so many changes favorable to the weak and downtrodden of its ...
— The Grimke Sisters - Sarah and Angelina Grimke: The First American Women Advocates of - Abolition and Woman's Rights • Catherine H. Birney
... One at this, "may all the stars of the celestial regions look down upon your greatness with benign eyes, valiant knight, and shed every prosperity and valour upon your heart, that it may be the shield and safeguard of the abused and downtrodden race of duennas, detested by apothecaries, sneered at by squires, and made game of by pages. Ill betide the jade that in the flower of her youth would not sooner become a nun than a duenna! Unfortunate beings that we are, we duennas! Though we may be descended in the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... Apparently Socialists will elevate downtrodden woman by compelling her to work for a living, and it is doubtful, as will be seen in Chapter XXXVI., whether she will be allowed to select her task or whether she will have to work under a system of forced labour. ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... New World. Colonies rapidly multiplied. "Massachusetts, by special law, offered free welcome and aid, at the public cost, to Christians of any nationality who might fly beyond the Atlantic 'to escape from wars or famine, or the oppression of their persecutors.' Thus the fugitive and the downtrodden were, by statute, made the guests of the commonwealth."(447) In twenty years from the first landing at Plymouth, as many thousand Pilgrims ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... good, and by their own free choice, would control the institutions and destiny of nations. The wise men of the East may then journey westward again, to see the rising star of a regenerated humanity, the fall of thrones and dynasties, the lifting up of the downtrodden masses, and the political redemption of our race, not by a new dispensation, but by the fulfilment thus of the glorious prophecies and blessed promises of Holy Writ. And can we not lift ourselves ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 1 January 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... royalty, was tying a tin to the blue-blooded one's tail, doubtless in furtherance of some altruistic project, when Pussy resented the liberty with a paw that wore five big fish-hooks for the occasion. The howl of downtrodden America roused America's mother. The deft and womanly blow that she aimed with her book was miraculously avoided, and Pussy took flight, up-stairs, of course. A hunted Rat runs down-stairs, a hunted Dog goes on the level, a hunted Cat runs up. ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... endless despair. A tale of freedom is being told above, but their chains of death clank in solemn music as the midnight revelry sports with the very agony of their sorrows. Oh! who has made their lives a wanton jest?-can it be the will of heaven, or is it the birthright of a downtrodden race? They look for to-morrow, hope reverberates one happy thought, it may bring some tidings of joy; but again they sink, as that endless gloom rises before them. Hope fades from their feelings, ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... go out to the downtrodden or oppressed, beast or human. Now she suddenly saw Millicent Gray, erstwhile teacher in Second-year English, as an appealing figure, very shabby, a pinched look on her oval-shaped face that gave the impression of hunger. Her hair would really be very pretty if she did not twist it back quite ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... this man who dares to lift his voice against the high and powerful in behalf of the poor and downtrodden?" ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman
... justice, and then our highest interests are placed at the mercy of a class of people who cannot be relied on when testifying under oath; or we deny the negro that right, and then he will not be in a position to properly defend his own interests, and will be a downtrodden, ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz
... sect ceases to be downtrodden it becomes a queen, and heresy, already mistress of three-fourths of the city, began to hold up its head with boldness in the streets. A householder called Guillaume Raymond opened his house to the Calvinist missionary, and allowed him to preach in it regularly to ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Life was too short for frivolity; no one could afford to compromise with evil. She became the friend of children; the champion of the unfortunate; she sided with the weak; she was their friend and comforter. Her life became a cry in favor of the oppressed, a defense of the downtrodden, an exaltation of self-devotion, a prayer for universal sympathy, liberty and light. She pleaded for the vicious, recognizing that all are sinners and that those who do unlawful acts are no more sinners in the eyes of God than we who ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... truly pray for all who are desolate and oppressed. If you try to tie him to any cause narrower than that Prayer Book definition, you will find you have shut out half his best work. If, in your sympathy for Mrs. Quilp, you call Dickens the champion of downtrodden woman, you will suddenly remember Mr. Wilfer, and find yourself unable to deny the existence of downtrodden man. If in your sympathy for Mr. Rouncewell you call Dickens the champion of a manly middle-class Liberalism ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton |
