"Groveling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rigidly honest, yet absolutely unscrupulous; faithful to the last letter of his given word, yet so treacherous where his sly mind could nose out a way to evade the spirit of his agreements that his name was a synonym for unfaithfulness. An assiduous and groveling snob, yet so militantly democratic that, unless his interest compelled, he would not employ any member of the "best families" in any important capacity. He seemed a bundle of contradictions. In fact he was profoundly consistent. ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... mind and heart are injured,—the one but half trained; the other corrupted. Mental and moral training are divorced; hence one-sided, and the very end of education defeated. The child has no incentive to a virtuous and a noble life, and sinks down to the groveling drudgery of money-making. It is educated for nature, but not for God,—for this, but not ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... Chalybean temper'd steel, and frock of mail, Adamantean proof; But safest he who stood aloof, When insupportably his foot advanced Spurned them to death by troops. The bold Priamides Fled from his lion ramp; old warriors turn'd Their plated backs under his heel, Or, groveling, soil'd their crested helmets in ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... rate, Margaret had reasoned it out that she must get the advantage in the impending initial grapple and tussle of their individualities, or choose between slavery and divorce. With him handicapped by awe of her, by almost groveling respect for her ideas and feelings in all man and woman matters, domestic and social, it seemed to her that she could be worsted only by a miracle of stupidity on ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... After the Tuscan Mariners transform'd Coasting the Tyrrhene shore, as the winds listed, On Circes Hand fell (who knows not Circe 50 The daughter of the Sun? Whose charmed Cup Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a groveling Swine) This Nymph that gaz'd upon his clustring locks, With Ivy berries wreath'd, and his blithe youth, Had by him, ere he parted thence, a Son Much like his Father, but his Mother more, Whom therfore ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... troubled, haunted. "I scarcely know. He has no love for women, only because he has no capacity for any love save self-love. But when I think of him in this connection I seem to see Moyen, grown to monster proportions, sitting on a mighty throne, with nude women groveling at his feet, bathed in tears, their long hair in mantles of sorrow, hiding their shamed faces! That sounds wild, doesn't it? But it's the picture I get of Moyen when I think of Moyen and of women. Many women will love him, and have, perhaps. But while he has taken many, though I am only ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... accept. He was, I knew, an Evelyn in soul: but I too panted to be something. I could not endure to rob him of the labour of a life, and walk at large oppressed by the consciousness of impotence: of a depressed and sunken spirit; of which groveling meanness would be the chief feature. Such at least were my sensations: and they were ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... after spending some days with him alone, I have imagined myself the most stupid creature in the world, till the abilities of some casual visitor convinced me that I had some dormant animation, and sentiments above the dust in which I had been groveling. The very countenance of my husband changed; his complexion became sallow, and all the charms of youth ...
— Posthumous Works - of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman • Mary Wollstonecraft
... eloquence.[246] Yet in spite of all these most strenuously exerted, measures have been sometimes adopted which we believed to be dangerous and injurious to us, and threatening to be fatal. What would be our situation, if, instead of these, we were only represented by ignorant and groveling men, incapable of raising their views beyond a job or petty office, and incapable of commanding bearing or consideration? May I be permitted to advert—by no means invidiously—to the late contest carried on by South Carolina against Federal authority, and ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... see this once proud and selfish man fairly groveling before the daughter of the man he had helped injure in the old times, was not a pleasant sight. Helen cut the interview ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... almost balanced over the eaves, and threatening to fall at the touch of the first wind-storm that swept over. Half of the vines that clambered about the portico were dead, and the rest, untrained, twined themselves in wild disorder, or fell groveling to the earth. One of the pillars of the portico was broken, as were, also, two of the steps that went up to it. The windows of the house were closed, but the door stood open, and, as the stage went past, my eyes rested, for a moment, upon an old man seated in the hall. He was not near ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... waiting for Brice to finish speaking, the butler broke again into that monkey-like chatter of appeal and fright. Gavin silenced him with a threatening gesture, and renewed his own harangue. But, after perhaps a minute of it, he saw the uselessness of trying to put manhood or pluck into the groveling little Oriental. And ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... it will be conceded that the progress of civilization, all that lifts humanity above a groveling, sensual, depraved state, is marked by the position, intelligence, and culture of women. Perhaps you think that American women have no rightful claim to present; but American women and mothers do claim that they should have the power to protect their children, not only at ...
— Debate On Woman Suffrage In The Senate Of The United States, - 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, And January 25, 1887 • Henry W. Blair, J.E. Brown, J.N. Dolph, G.G. Vest, Geo. F. Hoar.
... Basil, much miffed, "is a man of hereditary ijees, Colonel Reybold. He is now in pursuit of the—ahem!—the Kinvas-back on his ancestral waters. If he should hear that you suggest a pacific life and the groveling associations of the capital for him, he might call ...
— Short Story Classics (American) Vol. 2 • Various
... forests of Brahmin and fakir, the jousting list, the audience halls and the petits cabinets of kings of France, sound over the trackless and storm-beaten ocean—will echo, in short, wherever warm blood has jumped in the veins of honest men and wherever vice has sooner or later been stretched groveling in the dust at the feet ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison
... another word, and say, Policy must begin with the admission, that self-love is the mightiest mover of human conduct; and not a self-love enlightened, deep, calculating, directed to the sources of fullest contentment; but following the groveling estimate, that riches, power, office, ease, being the object of envy or admiration, are the ...
— The Growth of Thought - As Affecting the Progress of Society • William Withington
... no less than the hall and the porter's lodge. There was a face in every shop that reflected her shame and commented on her sins. At every step she had to purchase silence by groveling humility. The dealers she had not been able to repay had her in their clutches. If she said that anything was too dear, she was reminded in a bantering way that they were her masters, and that she must pay the price unless she chose to be ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... became dangerous. She counted them up—a girl music pupil, then an art student, then the wife of a banker at whose house Harold played socially. There followed strange, sullen moods on the part of Rita, visits home, groveling repentances on the part of Harold, tears, violent, passionate reunions, and then the same thing over again. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... conceived by the imagination of the rustic. Here she accumulated a thousand various gratifications; here she wantoned in all the secret and licentious desires of her heart. But her castle was not merely a scene of thoughtless pleasure. Within its circle she held crouds of degenerate shepherds, groveling through the omnipotence of her incantations in every brutal form. Even the spectres and the elves that disobeyed her authority, she held in the severest durance. She compressed their tender forms in the ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... Febrers had never mingled with these people. When his ancestors were in Algiers with the Emperor, Catalina's forefathers were probably shut up in the ward of Calatrava, making objects of silver, trembling at the thought that peasant-farmers might descend upon Palma under pretext of war, groveling, white with terror, before the Great Inquisitor, undoubtedly some Febrer, to ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... thrown down," replied Rebecca, shuddering; "the soldiers lie groveling under them like crushed reptiles; the besieged have the better." "Saint George strike for us!" said the knight; "do the false yeomen give way?" "No," exclaimed Rebecca, "they bear themselves right yeomanly; the Black Knight approaches the postern ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... to me, in the name of our love, in the name of our happiness! It will be sufficient, should it ever become absolutely necessary, that she knows that they are in your possession; at that moment you will see her trembling and groveling at your feet, for all her machinations then are foiled. But do not use them excepting as a last resort, and ...
— The Stepmother, A Drama in Five Acts • Honore De Balzac
... looking up at the woman. 'You! Yes, you man-wrecking pirate, go down on your knees and whine for it, beg for it, pray with clasped hands for it, and you shall take as much as you can grasp. Do that, d'you hear? I want to see you on your knees for once and groveling for a handful of sovereigns. Go on; get down ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... is an expression worth an empire, and is always used with peculiar emphasis and enthusiasm. For a favourite topic of these epistles is the groveling spirit and sordid temper of the parents, who will be sure to find no quarter at the hands of their daughters, should they presume to be so unreasonable as to direct their course of reading, interfere in their choice of friends, or interrupt their very important correspondence. But as ...
— Essays on Various Subjects - Principally Designed for Young Ladies • Hannah More
... part to the accomplishment of a glorious and happy destiny. He fell himself suddenly animated by this determination to gain a noble prize by noble exertions, for nothing is more certain than that none but groveling, abject beings, to whom nature has denied the ordinary faculties of mind, can remain insensible to the excitement of glory, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... have they? (Without conviction.) Dear me, what nasty creatures! I'll give them away! I'll sell them!!—I'll kill them!!! (But the cat and dog, groveling in exaggerated humility, crawl up ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette
... the horse trough, knocked there from its mother's arms by the butt end of a bayonet, its red curls quite sticky in a circle of its little blood. A half-crazed mother with a singed eyebrow, blatting over it and groveling on her breasts toward the stiffening figure for the warmth they could not give; the father, a black-haired child in his arms, tearing her by force out of the zone of buckshot, plunging back into it himself to cover up decently, with his coat, ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... be done," said the gendarme, with a smart salute. He grabbed the groveling butcher and hoisted him from his wallow. "Come along with me, Marot! I have long had my eye on thee! And is there a charge ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... did not hate; he did not hope; he did not worship. He separated himself from his fellow-men and from his God. There was nothing earnest, enthusiastic, heroic, in his nature, and as little that was mean, groveling, or ignoble. He was passionless, wholly destitute of emotion. Everything that required the exercise of fancy, imagination, faith, or affection, was distasteful to Cavendish. He had a clear head for thinking, a pair of eyes for observing, hands for experimenting ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various |
