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Upstart   Listen
adjective
Upstart  adj.  Suddenly raised to prominence or consequence. "A race of upstart creatures."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Upstart" Quotes from Famous Books



... upstart; one that swears like a falconer, and will lie in the duke's ear day by day, like a maker of almanacs: and yet I knew him, since he came to th' court, smell worse of sweat than an under ...
— The White Devil • John Webster

... herself," said Dame Scratchard. "Why didn't she come to me before she set? She was always an upstart, self-conceited thing, but ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... as she regarded the letter with malice glittering in her heavy eyes. He was writing to her, then, the little upstart, that infernal ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart

... necessary now," continued M. Bertomy, becoming more excited and angry as he went on, "luxury must be had at any price. You must have the insolent opulence and display of an upstart, without being an upstart. You must support worthless women who wear satin slippers lined with swan's-down, like those I saw in your rooms, and keep servants in livery—and you steal! And bankers no longer trust their safe-keys ...
— File No. 113 • Emile Gaboriau

... writer of the times complains of the breaking up of old family establishments, all crowding to "upstart London." "Every one strives to be a Diogenes in his house, and an emperor in the streets; not caring if they sleep in a tub, so they may be hurried in a coach: giving that allowance to horses and mares that formerly maintained houses ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... asked, "And how wilt thou prove him?"; and the King answered, "I will send for him to the presence and entreat him with honour and give him a jewel which I have. An he know it and wot its price, he is a man of worth and wealth; but an he know it not, he is an impostor and an upstart and I will do him die by the foulest fashion of deaths." So he sent for Ma'aruf, who came and saluted him. The King returned his salam and seating him beside himself, said to him, "Art thou the merchant Ma'aruf?" and said he, "Yes." Quoth the King, "The merchants ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... fulminating energy, the mechanical polemics of an appropriation clause in a parliamentary bill assume a passionate and living air. He had warned his northern flock, 'should the disaster ever befall us, of vulgar and upstart politicians becoming lords of the ascendant, and an infidel or demi-infidel government wielding the destinies of this mighty empire, and should they be willing at the shrines of their own wretched partizanship to make sacrifice of those great and hallowed institutions which were ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... Selden, who, in one of his notes to the 'Polyolbion,' writes, 'The first inventor of them (I guess you dislike not the addition) was one Berthold Swartz.' Here he must mean by it, 'I take it for granted.' Robert Greene, in his 'Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' makes Cloth-breeches say, 'but I gesse your maistership never tried what true honor meant.' In this case the word seems to be used with a meaning precisely like that which we give it. Another peculiarity almost as prominent is the beginning sentences, especially ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... through the void immense To search, with wandering quest, a place foretold Should be—and, by concurring signs, ere now Created vast and round—a place of bliss In the purlieus of Heaven; and therein placed A race of upstart creatures, to supply Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, Lest Heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught Than this more secret, now designed, I ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton

... death from the after-effects of an old wound and sends for his kinsmen and other nobles of the Quarter. While delivering his message to them, Thorolf, his favorite (secretly the lover of the chieftain's wife, Helga), and long a thorn in the flesh of these proud men as an upstart, infuriates them anew by his insolent bearing. Obedient to the call of their chief, they assemble about him to determine on measures for the defence of the land, and to learn of the disposition of his dominions. The ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various

... Paul had behaved in a most exemplary manner, affording thereby the strongest proof that though he had risen he was no upstart. The numerous members of his family and the men who had married into it nearly all had to thank him for their advancement or actual support. Some were employed on his estate, others he had trained in his particular branch of agriculture, after which, and with ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau

... first editorial against ballot box stuffing. In it the editor of the World had pledged that paper never to give up the fight for the people until such crookedness was stamped out. Big Tim had laughed until his paunch shook at the confidence of this young upstart and in impudent defiance had sent him a check for fifty dollars for the ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine

... it, Cowperwood should never gain control of the gas situation. Better to take him at his suggestion, raise the money and buy him out, even at an exorbitant figure. Then the old gas companies could go along and do business in their old-fashioned way without being disturbed. This bucaneer! This upstart! What a shrewd, quick, forceful move he had made! It irritated Mr. ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... in the usages of England; and the fact that he was allowed to appropriate a place in the procession for his own "Master of the Horse," and that the holder of the honoured place was a youthful member of the upstart family of the Jermyns, was enough to stir up much heartburning amongst the older Royalist nobility, and to engage the attention and compel the anxiety even of Clarendon himself. The Chancellor had to ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik

... battle was considered the highest acomplishment, that the dread of a blot on the escutcheon, or a reversal of the shield of arms, restrained many a proud baron in his tyrannical proceedings to those beneath him, and tended to keep down the insolence of the upstart favourites of royalty. Heraldry tended to soften and polish the manners, and, by the introduction of the manufacture of silken housings tapestry, and carpeting, to increase the comforts and pleasures ...
— The Manual of Heraldry; Fifth Edition • Anonymous

... my instructions did not authorise my delaying to examine any part of this coast I could not penetrate into the many numerous and extensive openings that presented themselves in this space; particularly in the neighbourhoods of Cape Gloucester, Upstart, and Cleveland; where the intersected and broken appearances of the hills at the back are matters of interesting ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia] [Volume 2 of 2] • Phillip Parker King

... rebuffs were not lacking, she parried them easily, and even the refusal of the parish priest to accept her aid in his bazaar did not diminish the delight of her happy situation. She knew the meaning of his refusal: she, an upstart, having got within the gates of Castle Moyna by some servility, when her proper place was a shebeen in Cruarig, offered him charity from a low motive. She felt a rebuke from a priest as a courtier a blow from his king; but keeping her temper, she made many excuses for ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith

... Constantine, emperor of the East, and not all the tears and prayers of Bradamante and Rinaldo would move him one whit. By the help of her brother, Bradamante contrived once more to see Roger, who bade her take heart, as he would himself go to Constantinople and fight the upstart prince and dethrone his father, then he would seize the crown for himself, and Bradamante should be empress after all. At these words Bradamante plucked up her courage and they embraced ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... fellow-Collegian, Gregory Martin, who will do this work with more learning and abundance of detail than I could; nor from others whom I understand already to have that task in hand. More wicked and more abominable is the crime that I am now prosecuting, that there have been found upstart Doctors who have made a drunken onslaught on the handwriting that is of heaven; who have given judgment against it as being in many places defiled, defective, false, surreptitious; who have corrected some passages, tampered with others; torn out others; who have converted ...
— Ten Reasons Proposed to His Adversaries for Disputation in the Name • Edmund Campion

... to answer your letter critically, but, on re-reading, find I am forced to speak if for no other reason than your epithet "parvenu." The word has no reproach. It was ever thus that the old and perishing recognised the vigorous and new. Parvenu, upstart—the term is replete with significance and health. I doubt not Elijah himself was dubbed parvenu when he fluttered with his golden harp into that bright-browed throng, pride-swollen for that they had fought with Michael when Lucifer was ...
— The Kempton-Wace Letters • Jack London

... highest statesmanship; and had it been followed, the history of the Stuart dynasty would have been different, and the Crown and the Parliament would have wrought together for the good and the honor of the nation, at least through a generation to come. But the upstart Buckingham was supreme. He had studied Bacon's strength and weakness, had laid him under great obligations, had at the same time attached him by the strongest tie of friendship to his person, and impressed upon his consciousness the fact ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... he could bring down a really clinking team to put our eleven through their paces, if the match were played on Thursday. Saturday, on account of big club fixtures, was almost impossible. Corker consented to the eleven playing the upstart code for this occasion only, but for the school generally the old game was ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson

... him hopes of obtaining a decided advantage. Alexander, his father's adversary, had been murdered in A.D. 235 by Maximin, who from the condition of a Thracian peasant had risen into the higher ranks of the army. The upstart had ruled like the savage that he was, and after three years of misery the whole Roman world had risen against him. Two emperors had been proclaimed in Africa. On their fall two others had been elected by the senate; a third, a mere boy, had been added at the demand of the Roman populace. All ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various

... scandalous to see This unknown upstart master of the house— This vagabond, who hadn't, when he came, Shoes to his feet, or clothing worth six farthings, And who so far forgets his place, as now To censure everything, and rule ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... And that supremacy of power, you claim, Extends but to the natives, not to us: Dare you, who in the British seas strike sail, Nay more, whose lives and freedom are our alms, Presume to sit and judge your benefactors? Your base new upstart commonwealth should blush, To doom the subjects of an English king, The meanest of whose merchants would disdain The narrow life, and the domestic baseness, Of one of those you call ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden

... men are to be found who worship the Earth as a great deity, calling her by her own name and serving her with suitable rites. In the Prometheus of Aeschylus the hero addresses his appeal as follows to the beings he regards as gods of old race who will sympathise with him against the upstart Zeus:— ...
— History of Religion - A Sketch of Primitive Religious Beliefs and Practices, and of the Origin and Character of the Great Systems • Allan Menzies

... the girl on the pillow was perfect in form and feature. Regular, delicate, refined, and lovely! Gila knew it would be counted rarely beautiful, and she was furious! How had that upstart of a college boy dared to send her here to see a beauty! What ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz

... behoves every lover of literature to declare himself, and to furnish his quota of facts or arguments corrective of this upstart paradox. It is under the influence of that sentiment that I submit, for consideration in the proper quarter, some short extracts ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 67, February 8, 1851 • Various

... must sit in that miserable office and let your family starve. Why don't you denounce this upstart barber?—tell people that he hasn't a diploma—that he doesn't know anything—that he couldn't reduce that hernia and had to call ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... Saffron rises bare from the earth, and is, therefore, called "Upstart" and "Naked Lady." This plant owes its botanical name Colchicum, to Colchis, in Natalia, which abounded in poisonous vegetables, and gave rise to the fiction about the enchantress Medea. She renewed the vitality of her aged father, AEneas, by drawing blood out of his veins ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie

... was thinking of anything rather than of such sentiments—for, like many genteel persons who have existed at various times, she set her face against death altogether, and objected to the mention of any such low and levelling upstart—had borrowed a house in Brook Street, Grosvenor Square, from a stately relative (one of the Feenix brood), who was out of town, and who did not object to lending it, in the handsomest manner, for nuptial purposes, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens

... education gave a claim to the title of gentleman. To those who derived no pretension to it from either of those sources, he never showed a want of attention, unless they exhibited any traits of vulgar assurance, or upstart insolence; to those he unsparingly dealt the full measure of contemptuous observance. To the incorrect in morals or professional conduct, he was irreconcileably ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 573, October 27, 1832 • Various

... Anna, to me, as the mother of Ivan, chosen as emperor by Anna, to me alone belongs the regency, and by Heaven I will reconquer that of which I have been nefariously robbed! I will punish this insolent upstart whose shameful tyranny we have endured long enough, and I hope you, my friends, will stand by me and obey the ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... "King-maker's" county, and how oddly it has inherited or picked up his power will be noted by those familiar with the political and parliamentary history of England within the last forty years; but, though now an ultra-Radical constituency, it is no historical upstart, but can trace its name in Domesday Book, where it appears as Bermengeham, and can find its record as an English Damascus in the fifteenth century, before which it had been already famous for leather-tanning. The death, a year ago, of one of the most gifted though ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various

... His colour is solidly and profoundly harmonious, without any false luxury and with no need of glitter. His magnificence is that of ancient hereditary fortunes. It has tranquillity, equality, and intimacy. We find no violent reds, greens, nor blues, no upstart glitter, no brilliant gew-gaws. All is restrained and subdued, but with a warm tone like that of old gold, or with a grey tone like the dead sheen of family silver. Gaudy and loud things will do for upstarts, but Don Diego ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... upstart gents The wust o' low bred snobs, Wi' contrite 'art I hollers out "My heye, wot ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... enshrined her mystic Osiris, or in which Hindostan still bows down to her seven-headed idols. His favorite gods are those of the elder generation, the sons of heaven and earth, compared with whom Jupiter himself was a stripling and an upstart, the gigantic Titans, and the inexorable Furies. Foremost among his creations of this class stands Prometheus, half fiend, half redeemer, the friend of man, the sullen and implacable enemy of heaven. Prometheus bears undoubtedly a considerable resemblance to the Satan of Milton. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord

... laughter again, a mirth which it is needless to say was echoed and reechoed till it seemed it could not cease. Only a few ventured to mutter under breath: "The Hellene will have a subsatrapy in the East before the season is over and a treasure of five thousand talents! Mithra wither the upstart!" ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... standing erect in his parti-colored pulpit with a sounding-board over his head; but he is a gay deceiver, a wolf in sheep's clothing, literally a "brother to dragons," an arrant upstart, an ingrate, a murderer of innocent benefactors! "Female botanizing classes pounce upon it as they would upon a pious young clergyman," complains Mr. Ellwanger. A poor relation of the stately calla lily one knows Jack ...
— Wild Flowers Worth Knowing • Neltje Blanchan et al

... Stonehouse reflected rapidly and contemptuously, must have been bribed to have turned out such perfection at such short notice. Too much perfection and too new. An upstart young rake. No, not quite that, either. Pain had lent an elusive beauty to the plain and freckled face, and happiness had made it lovable. It was obvious that he was trying to suppress his pride and astonishment at himself and not succeeding. The corners of ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie

... standing by prodigious energy into the position of a conquering state; prospered rapidly by the opposition which we met; overthrew even our European competitors, of whom the deadliest were the French; pursued a difficult war with an able Mahometan upstart, Hyder Ali—a treacherous and cruel prince; next with his son, Tippoo Sahib, a still more ferocious scoundrel, who, in his second war with us, was settled effectually by one thrust of a bayonet in the hands of an English ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... face; To Grandeur with his wise grimace; To upstart Wealth's averted eye; To supple Office, low and high; To crowded halls, to court and street; To frozen hearts and hasting feet; To those who go, and those who come; Good-bye, ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... wanted a parcel from Mohill, why couldn't you let Brady bring it, who is in it constantly, instead of that upstart policeman, who'd think it more condescension to bring that from Mohill, than I would to be carrying a sack ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope

... not see much of the upstart town, for the horrible clouds of thick, dung-impregnated dust would not allow us to keep our eyes open. But we perceived that almost every trace of what was once little better than a second rate fortress and a village was obliterated; the old inhabitants ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... sturdy beggar, a common rogue and vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and conscious of his collar he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognize the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no care but to support it solemnly. Are we to condemn or praise this ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson

... men have seen their father put no restraint upon his passions. Why should they put restraint on theirs? How can he command them when he has not commanded himself? And yet self- restraint is what they, above all men, need. Upstart princes—the sons of a shepherd boy—intoxicated with honours to which they were not born; they need the severest discipline; they break out into the most frantic licence. What is there that they may not do, and dare not do? Nothing is sacred in their eyes. ...
— David • Charles Kingsley

... of gray-headed gentlemen took trouble to point out to him his utter failure; but a brigadier, who was not a member of that committee, and who was considered something of an upstart, asked that he might be appointed to a troop of irregular cavalry that had recently been raised. With glee—with a sigh of relief so heartfelt and unanimous that it could be heard across the street—the committee ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy

... they called her the washerwoman's daughter, and would not associate with her, which made her very uncomfortable; and she used to tell me on the Sundays when we walked out how she had been treated during the week. But it was all for her advantage, and tended to correct the false pride and upstart ideas which in time must have been engendered by my mother's folly. Neither, after a few weeks, was my sister unhappy. She was too meek in disposition to reply, so that she disarmed those who would assail her; and being, as she was, of the lowest rank ...
— Poor Jack • Frederick Marryat

... Napoleon; and, in reading his nephew's rapturous encomiums of him, one goes back to the days when we ourselves were as loud and mad in his dispraise. Who does not remember his own personal hatred and horror, twenty-five years ago, for the man whom we used to call the "bloody Corsican upstart and assassin?" What stories did we not believe of him?—what murders, rapes, robberies, not lay to his charge?—we who were living within a few miles of his territory, and might, by books and newspapers, be made as well acquainted with his merits ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray

... in splendid hotels. In Venice the palace they occupied was six times as big as the whole Marshalsea. Mr. Dorrit, when he remembered Arthur Clennam at all, spoke of him as an upstart who had intruded his presence upon them in their poverty, and quickly forgot all his kindness and his efforts to help and ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives

... wanted, for he had a plan for revenging himself on his upstart nephew. He drove on till he got to a place where there was a muddy and miry puddle beside the road. Then by a dexterous manoeuver, for he understood driving thoroughly, he managed to overturn the wagon, and Nicholas was thrown headlong into the puddle. Dick ...
— Frank and Fearless - or The Fortunes of Jasper Kent • Horatio Alger Jr.

... count. You would hardly have recited your touching history before it would go forth to the world, and be deemed unlikely and unnatural. You would be no longer a lost child found, but you would be looked upon as an upstart, who had sprung up like a mushroom in the night. You might excite a little curiosity, but it is not every one who likes to be made the centre of observation and the subject ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... white stone, four hundred feet high, to be erected by an architect named Sostrasius, son of Dixiphanes, at the entrance to the port of Alexandria, which was a bran-new busy city in those days, a mere mushroom growth in that old, old Egypt, where the upstart Ptolomies were reigning on the throne of ...
— Illustrated Science for Boys and Girls • Anonymous

... He compared Zedekiah, his upstart courtiers and the remnant in Jerusalem to the basket of bad figs. The princes, elders, mechanics and artisans, whom Nebuchadrezzar had carried away, he compared to the basket of good figs. There was no message of hope in the "bad figs" ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... developments of it as tariffs for protection. The immediate result was a broadside from this gentleman's paper, and this I answered in an article which was extensively copied throughout the State. At this he evidently determined to crush this intruder upon his domain. That an "upstart''—a "mere school-teacher''— should presume to reply to a man like himself, who had sat at the feet of Henry Clay, and was old enough to be my father, was monstrous presumption; but that a professor in the State university of a commonwealth largely Republican ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... Martin's roughness, but when the ex-mechanic discovered that he was making more money than was Carl, and asked Carl, in her presence, if he'd like a loan, then she hated Martin, and would give no reason. She became unable to see him as anything but a boor, an upstart servant, whose friendship with Carl indicated that her husband, too, was an "outsider." Believing that she was superbly holding herself in, she asked Carl if there was not some way of tactfully suggesting to Martin that he come to the flat only once in two weeks, instead of two or three times ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis

... our gradual loss of faith, had so dazed us that the old Christian England haunted us like a ghost in whom we could not quite believe. An aristocrat like Palmerston, loving freedom and hating the upstart despotism, must have looked on at its cold brutality not without that ugly question which Hamlet asked himself—am I ...
— The Crimes of England • G.K. Chesterton

... you what I please, you dirty upstart, to put yourself on a level with ladies like us! We always said you ...
— Sparrows - The Story of an Unprotected Girl • Horace W. C. Newte

... ultimate question of allegiance. Of the pamphleteers and preachers who now denounced the Association as a revolutionary measure, Samuel Seabury perceived the issue most clearly and stated it most effectively: "If I must be enslaved, let it be by a King at least, and not by a parcel of upstart, lawless committeemen." Whether to submit to the king or to the committee—this was, indeed, the fundamental question during those crucial months from November, 1774, to July, 1776. For extremists on either side, the question presented no difficulty; for conservatives ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker

... and that which his scarlet would blush at, to have his authority of forty years standing, wrought out of hard rock, Greek and Latin, with no small expense of time and candle, and confirmed by general tradition and a reverend beard, in an instant overturned by an upstart novelist? Can any one expect that he should be made to confess, that what he taught his scholars thirty years ago was all error and mistake; and that he sold them hard words and ignorance at a very dear rate. What probabilities, I say, are sufficient ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... will not learn, Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;— Shall not carved tables serve my turn, But all must be of buhl? Give grasping pomp its double share,— I ask but one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various

... him justice, he was in one thing a true nobleman, for he was above all pride; as are most men of rank, who know what their own rank means. It is only the upstart, unaccustomed to his new eminence, who stands on his dignity, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley

... the law, able quickly to turn the tables upon their catch questions. But then it can't be the real article of learning, because He hasn't been in our established schools. He has no sheepskin in a dead language with our learned doctors' names learnedly inscribed. How indeed! An upstart!! ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon

... wonderment how the apples get inside the dumplings. How can a critic criticise a creator? The man who looks on writing things about the man who does things. But he criticises and artists owe him much. Neither in "ink-horn terms" nor in an "upstart Asiatic style" need the critic voice his opinions. He must be an artist in temperament and he must have a credo. He need not be a painter to write of painting, for his primary appeal is to the public. He is the middle-man, the interpreter, the vulgariser. The ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker

... silver and ivory and diamonds throw light on your own. And among other things you discover you are not nearly so dependent on the numerous men in livery, the spaces and enrichments, for your pride and comfort, as these upstart people. ...
— New Worlds For Old - A Plain Account of Modern Socialism • Herbert George Wells

... aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French revolution of July, 1830, and in the English reform agitation, these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political contest was altogether out of question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period(a) ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx

... hardly less anxious than Mr. Adams to conclude a treaty. Yet he, too, had his grave difficulties to encounter. Spanish arrogance had not declined with the decline of Spanish strength, and the concessions demanded from that ancient monarchy by the upstart republic seemed at once exasperating and humiliating. The career of Jackson in Florida, while it exposed the weakness of Spain, also sorely wounded her pride. Nor could the grandees, three thousand miles ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... His successors followed his example in this respect, but this military resource was only an ineffectual protection against the dangers which beset them. The kings were literally at the mercy of their guard, and their reign was entirely dependent on its loyalty or caprice: any unscrupulous upstart might succeed in suborning his comrades, and the stroke of a dagger might at any moment send the sovereign to join his ancestors, while the successful rebel reigned in his stead.* The Egyptian troops had no sooner set out on their homeward march, than the two kingdoms began to display their respective ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero

... all abashed, said that he meant not Sophocles, but Euripides. Whereupon Porson drew from another pocket a copy of Euripides and challenged the upstart to find the quotation in question. Full of confusion, the fellow thrust his head out of the window of the coach ...
— The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac • Eugene Field

... exclamation. "Worse than I had supposed. Absolutely insufferable! Knightley!—I could not have believed it. Knightley!—never seen him in her life before, and call him Knightley!—and discover that he is a gentleman! A little upstart, vulgar being, with her Mr. E., and her caro sposo, and her resources, and all her airs of pert pretension and underbred finery. Actually to discover that Mr. Knightley is a gentleman! I doubt whether he will return the compliment, and discover her to be a lady. I could not have believed ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... bar was off the door, and, as I came to it, a fellow with a ream on his back laboured out. I had expected naught but the desolation and silence which I last remembered in the place, and it staggered me to find all going on as before. No doubt here was some upstart printer, standing in my late master's shoes and ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... astonishment at his son's audacity seemed to have bereft Ralph Mainwaring of the power of speech, but now he demanded in thunderous tones, while his face grew purple with rage, "What do you mean, sir, by daring to address such language to me? You impudent upstart! let me tell you that you had best attend to your ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... Jackson Park, there had been a scene. The old gun maker had blustered and roared and forbidden, pounding on his desk with his fist. When Sam remained cool and unimpressed, he had stormed out of the room slamming the door and shouting, "Upstart! Damned upstart!" and Sam had gone smiling back to his desk, mildly disappointed. "I told Sue he would say 'Ingrate,'" he thought, "I am losing my skill at guessing just what he ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... wonder that you are impertinenced by Richcourt;(705) there is nothing so catching as the insolence of a great proud woman(706) by a little upstart minister: the reflection of the sun from brass makes the latter the more troublesome ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole

... Jack abominated this Tubbs. He said he was vulgar, an upstart—Devil take him, he's been in a whaler. But like many men, who have been where you haven't been; or seen what you haven't seen; Tubbs, on account of his whaling experiences, absolutely affected to look down upon ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville

... spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity, which prevents that upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering to and disgracing those who are the first acquirers of any distinction. By this means our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... aunt will care to see you," said Mrs. Tracy, who was becoming more and more provoked with the "upstart boy," as she mentally ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger

... for him: seven days from Sicily to Rome, three hours from Rome to Interamna![151] Entered by night, did he? so he did before! No one went to meet him? neither did anyone on the other occasion, exactly when it should have been done! In short, I bring our young upstart to his bearings, not only by a set and serious speech, but also by repartees of this sort. Accordingly, I have come now to rally him and jest with him in quite a familiar manner. For instance, when we were escorting a candidate, he asked me "whether I had been accustomed to secure Sicilians ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero

... in the train of Jan Klerkon. Sigurd grew ill at ease seeing the vast crowd of islanders that had now gathered there, but he spoke boldly, and told them all that they were a pack of rebels, and that King Valdemar would speedily prove to them that he would not brook the interference of this upstart sea rover. At that Rand drew his sword and called to his men to stand by their rights and drive these intruders from their shores. There was a brief fight, in which I know not how many men were slain or wounded, ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... enough to be had without ruining a poor wench that my mother loved, and who really was a very good girl: and of this you may be ashamed. As to the other, I dare say you don't think of it; but if you should, you would be utterly inexcusable. Consider, brother, that ours is no upstart family; but is as ancient as the best in the kingdom! and, for several hundreds of years, it has never been known, that the heirs of it have disgraced themselves by unequal matches: And you know you have been sought to by some of the best families in the nation, for your alliance. It might ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson

... and after us the deluge." I have no doubt that to some persons it appears an extravagant joke for women to aspire to political equality with the negro. King George thought it a very good joke when his upstart colonists steeped their tea in the salt water of Boston harbor, but the laugh was on their side in the long run. History has no precedents for the elevation of woman to a civic status, but we are making precedents ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... and 19th centuries were the golden age of Dalmatian rule, and when their dynasty was finally overthrown, it was not by a new upstart race of dogs, but by a new upstart production of that blind and ugly mother of strong and ...
— Balloons • Elizabeth Bibesco

... respect for authority, that prevents us, who are the rabble, from rising up and pulling down you who are gentlemen from your places, and saying "We will be gentlemen in our turn"? Now, Sir, that respect for authority is much more easily granted to a man whose father has had it, than to an upstart[451], and so Society is more easily supported.' BOSWELL. 'Perhaps, Sir, it might be done by the respect belonging to office, as among the Romans, where the dress, the toga, inspired reverence.' JOHNSON. 'Why, we know very little about the Romans. But, surely, it is much easier to respect a man ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... Ben-hadad exacted all he possessed his wealth, his wives, his children he acceded to his demands regarding everything except the Torah; that he refused peremptorily to surrender. (34) In the war that followed between himself and the Syrians, he was so indignant at the presumptuousness of the Aramean upstart that he himself saddled his warhorse for the battle. His zeal was rewarded by God; he gained a brilliant victory in a battle in which no less than a hundred thousand of the Syrians were slain, as the prophet Micaiah had foretold ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG

... calls him," Jane explained. "He's so conservative about the law that he calls Blackstone an upstart and a faker, but the things he'd do, when it comes, down to cases—on good old common law principles, of course, would make the average Progressive's hair curl. Why, when people were getting excited over Roosevelt's recall of judicial decisions—remember?—Rodney ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster

... clear and ready answer to these charges; or by hopeless Hell I will—." "I have led hither," said he, "many a soul since Satan was in the Garden of Eden, and I ought to understand my business, better than this upstart accuser." "Blood of infernal firebrands," cried Lucifer, "did I not bid thee answer clearly and readily?" "By your leave," said the demon, "I have preached a hundred times, and have denounced many of the various ways that lead to ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... our common language, common descent, Saxon ancestors, and Saxon English, and all that sort of thing, you know, operate against it; whereas, sorry I am to say, each new arrival brings us some fresh instance of the atrocities of the myrmidons of this upstart Emperor of the French; a man, sir, whose deeds, sir, have never been paralleled since the day of Nero, Caligula, and all the other tyrants of antiquity. If you will favour me, Captain Wallingford, with a few of the particulars of this last atrocity of Bonaparte, I promise ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper

... mien is dignified, his gait is slow; If upstart strangers try to catch his eye He kicks the dust behind with scornful toe, Averts his lifted ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 7, 1914 • Various

... of him that his rank as a nobleman was almost sufficient in itself, without any special soundness of understanding or calmness of temperament, to prevent him from throwing himself headlong either into an absolutist reaction which was identified with the ascendency of upstart favourites, and contemners of the old nobility, or into a popular revolution which soon disclosed its tendency to come into collision with the privileged order, and which ended its parricidal career by leaving England, during some of the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... front of her offending, she begged the Countess to explain that she was a woman of peace, that war was abhorrent to her and all of her persuasion, and finally she quite won the Austrian's heart by telling him that she had no admiration for that upstart Bonaparte family (Miss Cassandra is nothing if not aristocratic); that for her part she liked old-established dynasties, like the Hapsburgs, and had always considered the marriage of the daughter of a long line of kings with the self-made Emperor a great come down ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

... I like to hear you talk like that. You're a glorious fellow, George, and Sybilla will help you; for, listen"—she came close and hissed the words in a venomous whisper—"I hate Sir Everard Kingsland and all his race, and I hate his upstart wife, with her high and mighty airs, and I would see them both dead at my feet with ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... money fur you to sling it to the dogs, I ain't no bank, and if I was I ain't no ijut. But you jest let me hear of you even going nigh that circus lot and all the lammings you has ever got, rolled into one, won't be a measly little sarcumstance to what you WILL get. They ain't no leather-faced young upstart with weepin'-willow hail going to throw up to me how I brung him up. That's gratitood fur you, that is!" says Hank. "If it hadn't of been fur me giving you a home when I found you first, where would ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis

... pretending to be anxious about religion when they knew that they felt no anxiety. They were anxious, in their way. They heard a startling free announcement of forgiveness by a man. To them it appeared license given to sin. If this new teacher, this upstart—in their own language, "this fellow—of whom every man knew whence he was," were to go about the length and breadth of the land, telling sinners to be at peace; telling them to forget the past, and to work ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... twice a day, at dawn and at night, as the train tore a noisy tunnel in the quiet air, like the plebeian upstart it was, he sprinkled every grave, rising sometimes from a bed of pain, at other times defying wind and rain and hail. And for a while he believed that his holy device had deepened the sleep of his ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton

... first an attack was only made against the noblesse, yet latterly, every rich and powerful family was included among the proscribed, and all the commercial houses of the first respectability were annihilated. These have never been replaced, and the upstart race of petty traders have not yet obtained the confidence of foreigners. The trade of France is therefore very confined; and even were opportunities now afforded of establishing a trade with foreign nations, it would be long before France could benefit ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... man of moderate fortune—so the Mains, sir, has been uninhabited for a good many years." But he had been speaking to one who knew far more about the Mains than he could do—and who was not sorry that the Old Place was allowed to stand, undisturbed by any rich upstart, in the venerable silence of its own decay. And this is the moss-house that we helped to build with our own hands, at least to hang the lichen tapestry, and stud the cornice with shells! We were one of the paviers ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... increasing sale of his Magazine would have been sufficient to make Constable hate with a perfect hatred. To see not only his old "Scots Magazine" eclipsed, but the authority of the Edinburgh Review itself bearded on its own soil by this juvenile upstart, was to him gall and wormwood; and, moreover, he himself had come in for his share in some of those grotesque jeux d'esprit by which, at this period, Blackwood's young Tory wags delighted to assail their elders and betters of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... Bazarov paid him any attention; the boys on the farm simply ran after the 'doctor' like puppies. The old man Prokofitch was the only one who did not like him; he handed him the dishes at table with a surly face, called him a 'butcher' and 'an upstart,' and declared that with his great whiskers he looked like a pig in a stye. Prokofitch in his own way was quite as much of an aristocrat ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev

... emperor at the foot of the palace staircase, where only an hour ago he had assured his courtiers he would not receive the upstart Napoleon as an equal and shake hands with him; but as Napoleon now saluted him with a kind nod, and gave him his hand, the elector bowed so deeply and respectfully that it almost looked as if he wished to kiss the small, white, imperial hand which he had seized so joyfully ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach

... linguistic poverty. If we lack the ability to bend words to our use, it is from laziness, not from scruple. We desire to speak competently, but without affectation. We know that if our diction rises to this dual standard, it silently distinguishes us from the sluggard, the weakling, and the upstart. For such diction is not to be had on sudden notice, like a tailor-made suit. Nor can it, like such a suit, deceive anybody as to our true status. A man's utterance reveals what he is. It is the measure of his inward attainment. The assertion has been made that ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... out violently. Was not this swollen-headed upstart trying to intimidate him by threats? But his strong instinct for prudence persuaded him to conceal his resentment. "Why the devil should ...
— The Conflict • David Graham Phillips

... naturally the clergy hold on to their prerogative as banishers of epidemics. Who knows what day the Lord may see fit to rebuke the upstart teachers of impious and atheistical inoculation, and scourge the people back into His fold as in the good old days of Moses and Aaron? Viscount Amberley, in his immensely learned and half-suppressed work, "The Analysis of Religious ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair

... stage, especially the one to whom you were talking. I will do him the justice to say he is a handsome wretch, but like all those foreign adventurers he has a dissipated air. As for the other, he is simply commonplace and vulgar, with little upstart radical notions." ...
— A Romantic Young Lady • Robert Grant

... vain that Latimer denounced the prevailing greed, and bade the Protestant lords choose "either restitution or else damnation." Their sole aim seemed to be that of building up their own fortunes at the cost of the State. All pretence of winning popular sympathy was gone, and the rule of the upstart nobles who formed the Council of Regency became simply a rule of terror. "The greater part of the people," one of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, "is not in favour of defending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries; on that side are the greater part of the nobles, who absent themselves ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... ignorant upstarts, while the O'Shaughnessys have been living on this ground for the last three centuries. They ought to be proud to serve me! This is what comes of educating people beyond their station. Any upstart of a tradesman thinks himself good enough to trouble an O'Shaughnessy about a trumpery twenty or thirty pounds. I'll show them their mistake! You can tell them that I'll not be bullied, and indeed they might as well save their trouble, for, ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... herd-boy mean by talking such English to the ladies, and such vulgar Scotch to him? Although now a magistrand—that is, one about to take his degree of Master of Arts—Donal was still to Fergus the cleaner-out of his father's byres—an upstart, whose former position was his real one—towards him at least, who knew him. And did the fellow challenge him to a discussion? Or did he presume on the familiarity of their boyhood, and wish to sport his acquaintance with the popular preacher? On either supposition, ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... we were steering towards Mount Upstart, and at noon passed within two miles of its extremity. Behind the Mount, which rises with remarkable abruptness from the low land in its rear, are two prominent hills; the highest of which, Mount Abbott, ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... "Miserable upstart!" cried the man, now so thoroughly angry that he let go Anne's hand, "I have a good mind to give you what you deserve. As for you, undutiful, wretched girl," he added, his voice rising to an emotional tremolo, "you shall ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower

... be made, and our daughters are to marry Tom, Dick, and Harry?" But Amelia took the matter sorely to heart; she kept her love, yet fell into a consumption, and so wasted away; or, as one of the neighbors said, "she was executed on the scaffold of an upstart's vulgarity." Nathan loved no woman in like manner afterwards, but after her death went to India, and remained years long. When he returned and established his business in Boston, he looked after her relations, who had fallen into ...
— Two Christmas Celebrations • Theodore Parker

... remarked, "when I took Mary Gray into my house, and into my heart. Matilda Drummond even said—and I have never forgotten it to her—that if she was my nephew, Jarvis, she'd have my condition of mind inquired into. Yet see how it has turned out! Is she spoilt? Is she an upstart? Is she set above her family? She's over there this minute with that poor little drab stepmother of hers. She worships her father. The joys and sorrows of the poor little household are as much to her to-day as the day she ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan

... were urgently needed. Above all, reason was called to decide upon questions before which man's reason stands impotent; and imagination and emotion, those great auxiliaries to all deep religious feeling, were bid to stand rebuked in her presence, as hinderers of the rational faculty, and upstart pretenders to rights which were not theirs. 'Enthusiasm' was frowned down, and no small part of the light and fire ...
— The English Church in the Eighteenth Century • Charles J. Abbey and John H. Overton

... A mighty spirit fills my nose, My inward feelings all revolt. A creature such as thou! a dolt! Pipi, a squirrel able nuts to crack! I bristle up my shaggy back Unused a slave to be. I'm laughed at by each trim and upstart tree To scorn. The ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe

... into the darkness with an abundance of expressive gestures, and from time to time, as they paced the vast, deserted square, majestically surrounded by its tightly-closed silent palaces, he looked up toward the bronze man on the column, as if calling to witness that great upstart, whose presence in the heart of Paris justifies the most extravagant ambitions and renders all ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet

... vagabond; but with his rise into society he laid aside these inconsistent pleasures. He stole no more, he hunted no more cats; and, conscious of his collar, he ignored his old companions. Yet the canine upper class was never brought to recognise the upstart, and from that hour, except for human countenance, he was alone. Friendless, shorn of his sports and the habits of a lifetime, he still lived in a glory of happiness, content with his acquired respectability, and with no care ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson

... of the fact that little Green's account of the brief meeting on the stairs presented it in the light of the castigation he had administered to "that confounded upstart from nobody knows where," Strange noticed that it made the clerks in the office, most of whom had been his superiors as Green had been, less inclined to bark at his heels. He got respect from them, even if he could not win popularity—and from popularity, ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King

... first that raised the ephors to that height of power, lived a great many years after their institution. So long, therefore, he continued, as they contained themselves within their own proper sphere, it had been better to bear with them than to make a disturbance. But that an upstart, introduced power should so far subvert the ancient form of government as to banish some kings, murder others, without hearing their defense, and threaten those who desired to see the best and most divine constitution restored in Sparta, was not to be borne. Therefore, if it had been ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough

... upstart ministers as well as City-turned gentlemen, I will remember Moliere's M. Jourdain, and feed full the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... received into her bosom a German adventurer, who, for a brief space, played on this narrow stage the part of her crowned king. That there is but a short interval between the sublime and the ridiculous, was exemplified in the career of these upstart monarchs. Both sought an asylum in England. The one pined in an island-prison, the other in ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester

... He saw the Baron de Chipotier, the Comte de Boisflottant, and the son of Pillardin, the lucky millionaire, successively come into the regiment, and these sprigs of lofty lineage, full of brilliancy and loquacity, naturally eclipsed the modest qualities of the obscure upstart soldier. Spending their life in cafes, overwhelmed with debt, loved by the women, they laughed among themselves at all the minutiae of the service, which they treated as beneath their notice, ridiculed their superiors, and especially the serious-minded ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France

... the stronger of the two, however, and probably in addition possessed a more evil temper than his rival. Biting, screaming, kicking, he circled about his enemy, his savage heart bent on the destruction of the upstart who had dared to invade his domains. As Mr. Melton and the boys dashed up, the black horse whirled like lightning and planted both hind hoofs with deadly effect. The bay horse staggered, but his spirit was still unconquered, and, recovering ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield

... Away the evil weeds which will not flower. A thousand years and more! and gallant men There fix'd her seat in beauty and in power; The breed of patriot hearts has fail'd since then! And, in their stead, upstart and haughty now, A race, which ne'er to her in reverence bends, Her husband, father thou! Like care from thee and counsel she attends, As o'er his other works the Sire ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... sous, statesmen in a fair way to fortune; and he distributed to this little crowd, just as he would throw food into a kennel, the discounts and clippings of his ventures, taking malicious pleasure, the insolent delight of a fortunate upstart, in feigning at the moment when loans were issued, sickness that had no existence, in order to have the right of keeping his chamber, of hearing persons of exalted names ringing at his door and dancing attendance upon ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... scarcely speak. To be called "Woman" by an upstart—for Prince Askurry had married Princess Sultanam for her ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel

... a man of brilliancy and culture, and she was nothing but a Petticoat Lane girl, after all. Its coarseness, its vulgarity underlay all her veneer. They had got into her book; everybody said so. Raphael said so. How dared she write disdainfully of Raphael's people? She an upstart, an outsider? She went to the library, lit the gas, got down a volume of Graetz's history of the Jews, which she had latterly taken to reading, and turned over its wonderful pages. Then she wandered restlessly back to the great dim drawing-room and played amateurish fantasias on the melancholy ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... him talking? What did Toddling Johnny's son know about business? What was the world coming to? To hear him setting up his face there, and asking the best merchant in the town whether business was brisk! It was high time to put him in his place, the conceited upstart, shoving ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... was left was very Witty, but had but just Beauty enough to keep her from being Ugly, and consequently one that suffer'd most by this new Interloper; which rendered her so Malicious, that she had rather the whole House shou'd be blown up, than that Upstart shoul'd run away with all the Trading: And therefore she Writes the following ...
— The London-Bawd: With Her Character and Life - Discovering the Various and Subtle Intrigues of Lewd Women • Anonymous

... at the Capital, but at last the place grew too hot to hold him-mainly on his father's account. The conviction that George had largely contributed to the disaffection of Egypt for the Byzantine Empire and had played into the hands of the irresistible and detested upstart Arabs, had found increasing acceptance in the highest circles, especially since Cyrus—the deposed and now deceased Patriarch of Alexandria—had retired to Constantinople. Orion's capture was in fact already decided on, when the Senator Justinus and some other friends had hinted ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of conversation passed in the Luxembourg Garden; and the three or four of us by whom she was accompanied glared threateningly at our mental image of that not-impossible upstart whom she might some day meet and love. We were sure, of course, that he would be a beast; we hated him not merely because he would have cut us out with her, but because he would be so distinctly our inferior, so hopelessly ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland

... occupation of Ying, and witnessed Wu's sudden collapse in the following year. Yueh's attack at this critical juncture, when her rival was embarrassed on every side, seems to have convinced him that this upstart kingdom was the great enemy against whom every effort would henceforth have to be directed. Sun Wu was thus a well-seasoned warrior when he sat down to write his famous book, which according to my reckoning must have ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu

... 'A meddlesome, upstart, Jacobinical fellow, gentlemen', continued Mr. Dempster. 'I was determined to be rid of him. What does he mean by thrusting himself into our company? A man with about as much principle as he has property, which, to my knowledge, is considerably less than ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot

... "The Americas were upstart continents, werent they? I am not speaking sarcastically, my point is not a chauvinistic one, not even hemispherically prideful. And the Old World the womb of culture? But how much culture has that womb borne since the Americas disappeared? Without a doubt there are exactly the same ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore

... choose to go to my room?" he answered, impudently, to our utmost amazement. "You may prefer an outside upstart over your son, if you like, but you can't always make your son a prisoner by ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens

... wife were desirous to be served, or waited on, by persons above them by ancestry and honour, they should pay liberally for such sacrifices. She was not therefore idle, but wishing to profit herself by the pride of upstart vanity, she had at first merely reconnoitred the ground, or made distant overtures to those families of the ancient French nobility who had been ruined by the Revolution, and whose minds she expected ...
— Memoirs of the Court of St. Cloud, Complete - Being Secret Letters from a Gentleman at Paris to a Nobleman in London • Lewis Goldsmith

... would be able to push his foot through the strongest part of their walls, without any great exertion of his muscles. All these absurdities arise from the general tide of luxury, which hath overspread the nation, and swept away all, even the very dregs of the people. Every upstart of fortune, harnessed in the trappings of the mode, presents himself at Bath, as in the very focus of observation — Clerks and factors from the East Indies, loaded with the spoil of plundered provinces; planters, negro-drivers, and hucksters from our American ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett

... upstart," he cried, shaking his fist at Calvin as the car turned around, "I'll be down in ten minutes and see to you!" The provost marshal turned his white steed and began gathering up his procession and his prisoners. But the spell was broken. The mind of the crowd took in an idea. ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... believed the time had come to insist firmly upon his rights which were being seriously threatened by this sleek brown upstart. He possessed a weapon against which the fox would be helpless and in this extremity he prepared to use it. Still, the skunk was a gentleman and scorned to attack ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer

... whose arguments marred more than they helped the interests of their employers. When, therefore, he either put them down, or was droned into a short nap, while the industrious advocate was earning his unnecessary fee, it was a specimen of "the arrogance of an upstart wholly unacquainted with Chancery Law," or "of an eccentricity bordering on insanity, and wholly unfitting its exhibitor for the high and responsible situation he held." Posterity will do justice to Lord Brougham in this respect. It will be felt to ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various

... lot I gladly share, And breathe a purer, freer air; No more by wealthy upstart spurn'd, The bread is sweet by labour earn'd; Indulgent heaven has bless'd the soil, And plenty ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie

... not having a single inducement to stay longer in this place, weighed anchor in the morning of the 31st and put to sea. In the prosecution of the voyage, when the Endeavour was close under Cape Upstart, the variation of the needle, at sunset, on the 4th of June, was 9 east, and at sunrise the next day, it was no more that 5 35'. Hence the lieutenant concluded, that it had been influenced by iron ore, or by some other magnetical matter contained under the surface ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis

... knowledge that she was seeking him in her extremity, such a mighty wave of anger swept the Cardinal that he appeared twice his real size. Like a flaming brand of vengeance he struck that Limberlost upstart, and sent him rolling to earth, a mass of battered feathers. With beak and claw he made his attack, and when he so utterly demolished his rival that he hopped away trembling, with dishevelled plumage stained with his own blood, the Cardinal remembered his little love and hastened ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter

... against the players, alleging that they have all been beholden to him, yet have now forsaken him; and from thence inferring that the three worthies whom he is exhorting will fare no better at their hands. After which he goes on thus: "Yes, trust them not; for there is an upstart crow beautified with our feathers, that, with his 'tiger's heart wrapt in a player's hide,' supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank-verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Fac-totum, is in his own conceit the only ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson

... amid the peals of laughter that followed. Nobody suspected Carl of an intentional joke; and the round-eyed innocent surprise with which he regarded the merriment added hugely to the humor of it. Everybody laughed except Lysander, who only grimaced a little to disguise his chagrin. This upstart officer was greatly disliked for his conceited ways, and it was not long before the "Dutch boy's compliments" became the joke of the camp, and wherever Lysander appeared some whisper was sure to be heard concerning either the "pig mouth," or "pig ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge

... to patronize the upstart who had ventured so boldly into the territory of the great trust, but one glance at the clear-cut resolute face of the young man ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... not a proper place in which to insert the baseness with which he abused the delicacy and weakness of females. Fathers of families * * * *. Every man was intimidated. Every feeling man wept, because all were the victims of the caprice of this insolent upstart, who made an ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... of the Council. This caused the unfortunate discovery that she had played the waiting-maid in the town of which he was Mayor to rankle in his mind yet more poisonously. He had learnt by personal inquiry at the time that it was to Donald Farfrae—that treacherous upstart—that she had thus humiliated herself. And though Mrs. Stannidge seemed to attach no great importance to the incident—the cheerful souls at the Three Mariners having exhausted its aspects long ago—such was Henchard's haughty spirit that the simple thrifty deed was regarded as ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy

... own!—And what return do I get for it? A new-comer only needs to wave a red flag before them, and all alike rush blindly to him. A pupil of Liszt?—bah! Who was Liszt? A barrel-organ of execution; a perverter of taste; a worthy ally of that upstart who ruined melody, harmony, and form. Don't talk to ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... you, I should like to know, you little upstart?" cried Blackall, eyeing the new-comer with great disdain. "Get out of my way, or I will kick ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston

... of the latter, he mentioned the case of a young upstart squire named d'Urberville, living some forty miles off, in the ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy

... place come to?' she screamed, 'if the master is to be bullied before us all. Is there no one here who will take this impudent upstart and ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins



Words linked to "Upstart" :   parvenu, wise guy, arriviste, weisenheimer, wisenheimer, climber, junior, disagreeable person, parvenue, social climber, kip, pretentious, nouveau-riche, unpleasant person, gymnastic exercise, wiseacre, smart aleck



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