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Inglorious   /ɪnglˈɔriəs/   Listen
Inglorious

adjective
1.
(used of conduct or character) deserving or bringing disgrace or shame.  Synonyms: black, disgraceful, ignominious, opprobrious, shameful.  "An ignominious retreat" , "Inglorious defeat" , "An opprobrious monument to human greed" , "A shameful display of cowardice"
2.
Not bringing honor and glory.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inglorious" Quotes from Famous Books



... to Mecca, for the same purpose that frankincense is carried to St. Peter's in Rome. Some wine merchants drop a few grains into claret, to flavor it. Who would think, then, that such fine ladies and gentlemen should regale themselves with an essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale! Yet so it is. By some, ambergris is supposed to be the cause, and by others the effect, of the dyspepsia in the whale. How to cure such a dyspepsia it were hard to say, unless by administering three or four boat loads of Brandreth's ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... and the sententious wisdom of the less imaginative Seneca. Nor, when I am reminded of my approaching dissolution by the symptoms which do mostly at the midnight hour press themselves upon me, is there a small and inglorious pleasure in the hope that I may meet hereafter, in those islands of the blest which they dimly dreamt of, but which are opened unto my vision, without a cloud, or mist, or shadow of uncertainty and doubt, with those bright spirits which we do now converse with so imperfectly; ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... none other than Loki, and Loki, realising the fierce wrath of Odin and of the other gods, fled before them, yet could not escape his doom. And grief unspeakable was that of gods and of men when they knew that in the chill realm of the inglorious dead Baldur must remain until the twilight of the gods had come, until old things had passed away, and ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang

... reflections, not always acute, but, as far as they reach, medicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life around him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much doubt there being many inglorious Miltons in our country churchyards; but I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who were inferior to the renowned one only in caring less ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... Charity received a typewritten document describing Cheever's itinerary for the day. The mute, inglorious Boswell took him up at the front steps, heeled him to his office, out to lunch, back to the office, ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes

... the ancien regime. The rains which made a receptive seed-bed for the writings of Paine also hampered the progress of Brunswick towards the Argonne, crowded his hospitals with invalids, and in part induced that inglorious retreat. As the storms lasted far into the autumn, disaffection ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... of this immediate period. Young Clemens went to Hannibal, and enlisting in a private company, composed mainly of old schoolmates, went soldiering for two rainy, inglorious weeks, by the end of which he had had enough of war, and furthermore had discovered that he was more of a Union abolitionist than a slave-holding secessionist, as he had at first supposed. Convictions were likely to be rather infirm during those early days of the war, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... more the foaming pewter up! Another board of oysters, ladye mine! To-night Lucullus with himself shall sup. These mute inglorious Miltons {177} are divine And as I here in slippered ease recline, Quaffing of Perkin's Entire my fill, I sigh not for the ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun

... (Dynast. p. 201,) and Abulfeda, (Annal. Moslem. p. 264,), and the criticisms of Pagi, (tom. iii. A.D. 944.) The prudent Franciscan refuses to determine whether the image of Edessa now reposes at Rome or Genoa; but its repose is inglorious, and this ancient object of worship is no longer ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon

... in formidable array in pursuit of two millions of slaves to dye their axes in unresisting blood, to return, not as victors over a heroic foe, but as drivers of men, herders of sheep and cattle, and laden with inglorious spoil. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller

... are over whose heads time drags heavily! They have nothing to do. The dull round of society is irksome. They have stood at the toilet till every thing there is fatiguing. They have talked over and over their little round of fashionable nonsense. They are weary of their monotonous, inactive, inglorious life. Thousands are the women in easy circumstances who feel thus. They would be glad to lift up their hands and do something, but the chains of custom and fashion are upon them. A false social position has made them timid and fearful. I know ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver

... boarders for seven years without getting some useful knowledge of the world, or without imparting useful knowledge; and there were men who, having paid their bills on demand, turned from her wiser if not better men. Because they had pursued the old but inglorious profession of hunting tame things, Mrs. Tyndall Tynan had exacted compensation in one way or another—by extras, by occasional and deliberate omission of table luxuries, and by making them pay for their own mending, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... suffered already when he was in love with Sabine: she had begun then to lose some of her illusions about her hero. That Christophe could love so commonplace a creature seemed to her inexplicable and inglorious. But at least that love was pure, and Sabine was not unworthy of it. And in the end death had passed over it and sanctified it.... But that at once Christophe should love another woman,—and such ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... Hark! the fool speaks oracles. You, soldiers, who are used to follow me, And front our charges, emulous to bear The shock of battle on your forward arms,— Why stand ye in amazement? Do your swords Stick to their scabbards with inglorious rust? Or has repose so weakened your big hearts, That you can dream with trumpets at your ears? Out with your steel! It shames me to behold Such tardy welcome to my war-worn blade! [Draws.] [The KNIGHTS and SOLDIERS draw.] Ho! draw our forces out! Strike camp, sound drums, And set ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker

... nothing. "Your attitude is very manly and sweet, dear," Mrs. McKaye continued, turning to her son, for her woman's intuition warned her that, if the discussion waxed warmer, The Laird would take a hand in it, and her side would go down to inglorious defeat, their arguments flattened by the weight of Scriptural quotations. She had a feeling that old Hector was preparing to remind them of Mary Magdalen and the scene in the temple. "I would much rather hear you speak a good word for ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne

... by the independence and consolidation of his dominions he rendered subservient to the restoration of religion, the enrichment of his subjects, and the embellishment of the ancient capitals of his kingdom; and, ill-satisfied with the inglorious ease which had contented his predecessors, he aspired to combine the renown of foreign conquests with the triumphs ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent

... among other interesting matter, I had the pleasure of reading an account of my own 'blindness,' taken from a French paper (the 'Presse'), and mentioned with humane regret. Well! and what more news is there to tell you? I have been out once, only once, and only for an inglorious glorious drive round the Piazza Gran Duca, past the Duomo, outside the walls, and in again at the Cascine. It was like the trail of a vision in the evening sun. I saw the Perseus in a sort of flash. The Duomo is more after the likeness of a Duomo than Pisa ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... ways of travelling which obtain among our locomotive nation, this said vehicle, the canal boat, is the most absolutely prosaic and inglorious. There is something picturesque, nay, almost sublime, in the lordly march of your well-built, high-bred steamboat. Go, take your stand on some overhanging bluff, where the blue Ohio winds its thread of silver, or the sturdy Mississippi tears its path through ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... with me That gallic garbage of philosophy,— That nauseous slaver of these frantic times, With which false liberty dilutes her crimes; If thou hast got within thy free-born breast One pulse that beats more proudly than the rest With honest scorn for that inglorious soul Which creeps and winds beneath a mob's control. Which courts the rabble's smile, the rabble's nod, And makes, like ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner

... little man crisply, leaning against the straight chair back, which rose higher than his fragile head. "I shall never be arrested. The game isn't good enough for any policeman of them all. To deal with a man like me you require sheer, naked, inglorious heroism." Again his lips closed with a self-confident snap. Ossipon repressed ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... way through. A fortnight after his departure, the Spaniards, under Gonsalvo of Cordova, landed in Calabria, as auxiliaries of the dethroned king. The throne was once more occupied by the fallen family, and Charles retained nothing of his easy and inglorious conquests when ...
— Lectures on Modern history • Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton

... But what mute inglorious Paderewski of the restricted circle he had moved in for the past months was capable of such parlor tricks as this? Then, suddenly, he saw. He saw, swaying back and forth against the dark background ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... Long-legged, the son of Harold the Fair-haired, in punishment for the aggressions of Orkney, had made an unexpected descent upon its coasts, and acquired possession of the Jarldom. In the autumn succeeding Halfdan was retorted upon, and, after an inglorious contest, betook himself to a place of concealment, from which he was the following morning unlodged, and instantly doomed to the Asae. Einar, the Jarl of Orkney, with his sword carved the captive's back into the form of an eagle, the spine ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... same thing the trouble with them both: they don't want to do any hard work, and they conceal their laziness under fine names,—culture, transcendentalism, and what not? 'Feeble and restless youths, born to inglorious days.'" ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various

... faith in a living creator and master of the world, it has also become impossible for those to whom the religious and ethical acquisitions of mankind are a sacred sanctuary to take any longer a reserved and expectant position. Silence now would be looked upon only as an inglorious retreat; and thus nothing remains but openly to face the question: What position must religion and morality take in reference to the ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid

... misfortune—and it is a great misfortune to a young lady of her way of thinking—to meet with no difficulties or adventures, nothing interesting upon her journey. She arrived, with inglorious safety, at Cardiffe. The inn at Cardiffe was kept by a landlady of the name of Hoel. "Not high-born Hoel. Alas!" said Angelina to herself, when the name was screamed in her hearing by a waiter, as she walked into the inn. "Vocal no more to high-born ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... case, it's celebrity against the respite, obscurity against Miss Goodwin. While the system is in operation you will be free but inglorious. You choose freedom? All right, then. Pass ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse

... anticipate what the author has to say except in respect of one particular matter to which it seems to me expedient that particular public attention should be directed, especially by English and Scotch readers. The study of Irish history throws an inglorious light on the character of many British statesmen, and one of the salient facts brought into prominence in this little volume is that, even since the conversion of Mr. Gladstone to Home Rule, more than one leader of each of ...
— Ireland and the Home Rule Movement • Michael F. J. McDonnell

... every wind, They'll ne'er mak' a tempest like that in my mind; Though loudest o' thunders on louder waves roar, That's naething like leaving my love on the shore. To leave thee behind me my heart is sair pained; By ease that's inglorious no fame can be gained; An' beauty an' love's the reward o' the brave, An' I must deserve ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... swaggering that had characterized the arrival of the "Laurel Brigade" in that section, baptized the action (known to us as Tom's Brook) the "Woodstock Races," and never tired of poking fun at General Rosser about his precipitate and inglorious flight. (When Rosser arrived from Richmond with his brigade he was proclaimed as the savior of the Valley, and his men came ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 4 • P. H. Sheridan

... generous and those who were not so; posterity will judge, I do not dread its decision."—"This after-life belongs to you of right. Your name will never be repeated with admiration without recalling those inglorious warriors so basely leagued against a single man. But you are not near your end, you have yet a long career to run."—"No, Doctor! I cannot hold out long under this frightful climate."—"Your excellent constitution is proof against its pernicious ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... and more, Whilst ours is dwindling into nothingness? Who then that plots against a life so strong Shall quit him of the danger without harm? Take heed we do not add to our distress Should some one hear of this our colloquy. Small help and poor advantage 'twere for us To win brief praise and then inglorious die. Nay, death is not so hateful as when one Desiring death is balked of that desire. And I beseech thee, ere in utter ruin We perish and make desolate our race, Refrain thy rage. And I will guard for thee In silence these thy words unrealized; If thou wilt ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... since He was born into the world a poor, labouring man, poverty is noble and dignified, and toil is honourable. To the man who feels that "the king's daughter is all glorious within," no outward situation can seem inglorious or impure. ...
— Sermons Preached at Brighton - Third Series • Frederick W. Robertson

... charged the York volunteers, (a fine corps of cavalry,) killed a number and drove the rest out of the field. Washington is an elegant officer; his reputation is deservedly great. Many of our officers are mortally mortified at our late inglorious retreat. I say mortally, because I cannot doubt that some of us must fall, in endeavoring the next opportunity, to re-establish our reputation. Dear Reputation, what trouble do you not occasion, what danger do you not expose ...
— A sketch of the life and services of Otho Holland Williams • Osmond Tiffany

... Japat: the probationary period would expire with the sun on the following day, the anniversary of the death of Taswell Skaggs. The six months set aside by the testator as sufficient for all the requirements of Cupid were to come to an inglorious end at seven o'clock on March 29th. According to the will, if Agnes Ruthven and Robert Browne were not married to each other before the close of that day all of their rights in the estate were ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon

... "And thus didst thou win the esteem of thy kinsman. 'The stripling is loyal and trustworthy,' he has said to me; 'pity that such a heart should be pierced in an inglorious field. Would that I could find him, and strive to return to him something of what his father's care hath wrought for me.' Richard, trust me, it would be a real joy and lightening of his grief to have thee ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge

... the Anglo-Indian dominions. The question, too, was raised in France, how far it was for the advantage of that country to extirpate the naval power of Russia, which might be employed, possibly, in resisting the dominant navy of England. During the war, the French navy performed an inglorious part. It fought well when brought into action, but its operations were entirely subsidiary to those of England. France was jealous of this evident superiority, and from the fall of Sebastopol toiled incessantly to counteract and rival the naval power of England. Everything ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... seems to diminish their value in society—by taking from the importance of their art: but the truth is indisputable: and those Generals are as blind to their own interests as to the interests of their country, who, by submitting to inglorious treaties or by other misconduct, hazard the breaking down of those personal virtues in the men under their command—to which they themselves, as leaders, are mainly indebted for ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... wool-bearing flocks utter weakly bleatings, both their wool falls off spontaneously, and their bodies pine away. The horse, once of high mettle, and of great fame on the course, degenerates for the {purposes of} victory; and, forgetting his ancient honors, he groans at the manger, doomed to perish by an inglorious distemper. The boar remembers not to be angry, nor the hind to trust to her speed, nor the bears to rush upon the ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Vol. I, Books I-VII • Publius Ovidius Naso

... send them to Lundy was the same as sending them to America, so long as they were transported anywhere out of England. The termination of his villainous career in England was owing to a conspiracy to defraud an insurance company, a vulgar and inglorious crime without the element of danger and adventure which in some slight degree may be said to have invested the exploits of the other pirates who have ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... that, with dauntless breast, The little tyrant of his fields withstood, Some mute, inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... vain, for some day, and every day, along the line, there is a cry, "They fly! they fly!" and the whole army advances, and the flag is planted on an ancient fortress where it never waved before. And, even if you never see this, better than inglorious camp-following is it to go in with the wasting regiment; to carry the colors up the slope of the enemy's works, though the next moment you fall and find a grave at the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... earth. Is it not, indeed, possible that while a high order of genius is necessarily ambitious, the highest is invariably above that which is termed ambition? And may it not thus happen that many far greater than Milton, have contentedly remained "mute and inglorious?" I believe the world has never yet seen, and that, unless through some series of accidents goading the noblest order of mind into distasteful exertion, the world will never behold, that full extent of triumphant execution, in the richer productions ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... Devonshire, the wet garden of England. Its horticultural advantages seemed to weigh but lightly with her; she dwelt chiefly on the loneliness of the life she had been leading, and deplored bitterly the fact that its inglorious ease was spoiling her ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson

... (Farewell for ever). It was the last good-bye to Emperor, country, and all who were nearest and dearest to them of that heroic little band of Japanese infantry-men who preferred to die fighting gloriously, rather than win inglorious safety by surrender. The Russians had made an end of the affair by torpedoing the transport, and she must have sunk within a very ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood

... beaten to death by the party of Dioscorus, and who carried to St. Leo a faithful report of that Council's acts. At the same time the Lucanian Libius Severus succeeded to the throne. All that is known of him is that he was an inglorious creature of Ricimer, and prolonged a government without record until the autumn of 465, when his maker got tired of him. He disappeared, and Ricimer ruled alone for nearly two years. Yet he did not venture to end the empire with a stroke of violence, or change the title ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies

... and O'Neill was signed by the high contracting parties, and bears date April 30, 1562. The English historian indignantly remarks: 'A rebel subject treating as an equal with his sovereign for the terms on which he would remain in his allegiance was an inglorious spectacle; and the admission of Shane's pretensions to sovereignty was one more evidence to the small Ulster chiefs that no service was worse requited in Ireland than fidelity to the English crown. The Maguires, the O'Reillys, the O'Donels—all the clans who had stood by Sussex in the preceding ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin

... reach this earthly paradise, what is to be done? I have two projects. A publisher—the first wise man of his race—I will write an epitaph for him quite different from my universal epitaph—this shrewd and crafty person, determined to rescue at least one mute, inglorious Milton from neglect, has written to me. There! He has read my article on 'The Astronomical Theory with regard to the Early Religions'; he has perceived the profound wisdom, the research, the illuminating genius of that ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various

... to the paragraph which urged the utmost punishment that law could inflict upon the desperadoes. The outraged populace could be appeased with nothing save death in its most ignominious, inglorious form. The trials would be short, the punishment swift and sure. The people demanded the lives of ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon

... with a goat who walked demurely in at the open door—while their host and Benjy spread the table for dinner—and was soon engaged in conflict with the cold meat, to which he did much honour. The two old men's talk was of old comrades and their deeds, mute inglorious Miltons of the Vale, and of the doings thirty years back, which didn't interest him much, except when they spoke of the making of the canal; and then indeed he began to listen with all his ears, and learned, to his no small wonder, that ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... only the mere outer shell or skeleton of the animal that we preserve in our cabinets, leaving the actual flesh and muscles of the creature himself to wither unobserved upon its native shores. At the British Museum the desert snail might have snoozed away his inglorious existence unsuspected, but for a happy accident which attracted public attention to his remarkable case in a most extraordinary manner. On March 7, 1850, nearly four years later, it was casually observed that the card on which he reposed was slightly discoloured; and ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... anxiety of providing for the school amusements, and in particular its cricket, suffered not to sleep. We believe that the first piece of school property which arrived on the scene was the big roller from the cricket- field. Resolved to gather no moss in inglorious ease at home, it had mounted a North-Western truck, and travelled down to Bow Street station, where it was to disembark for action. It cost the Company's servants a long struggle to land it, but once again on terra firma it ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine

... desire is, void of care and strife, To lead a soft, secure, inglorious life. A country cottage near a crystal flood, A winding valley and a ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane

... heroic mother of these children, with a spirit worthy of the wife of her renowned husband, called the nobles to her aid. They rallied in great numbers, roused to indignation. The inglorious king, terrified by the storm he had raised, released Matthias, and fled from Buda to Vienna, pursued by the execrations and menaces ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott

... Kyoto, which resulted in the complete defeat of Akechi. He escaped, however, from this battle, but on his way to his own castle he was recognized by a peasant and wounded with a bamboo spear. Seeing now that all hope was gone, he committed hara-kiri, and thus ended his inglorious career. His head was exposed in front of Honnoji, the temple ...
— Japan • David Murray

... That dazzle in thy Eye, and swell thy Heart; That nerve thy Arm, and wing thy Feet to War With this impetuous Violence and Speed? Crest-fallen then, our native Empire lost, In captive Chains we drag a wretched Life, Or fly inglorious from the conquering Foe To barren Mountains from this fertile Land, There to repent our Folly when too late, In Anguish mourn, and ...
— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... food: And War, which for a moment was no more, Did glut himself again:—a meal was bought With blood, and each sate sullenly apart 40 Gorging himself in gloom: no Love was left; All earth was but one thought—and that was Death, Immediate and inglorious; and the pang Of famine fed upon all entrails—men Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh; The meagre by the meagre were devoured, Even dogs assailed their masters, all save one, And he was faithful to a corse, and kept The birds and beasts and ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron

... knew that, sooner or later, his left hand would be amputated and that his career would come to an inglorious end—indeed, the end had already come. The ordeal painfully shadowed upon his horizon was only the final seal. Fortunately there was money enough for everything—he would want pitifully little for the ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed

... unusual tactics" overcame the prejudices of his enemies and, for a long time, escaped punishment. But finally he was arrested and convicted and, notwithstanding his so-called Divine power, he came to an inglorious end by death on a cross. His friends, unable to prevent his cursed death, quickly formed a plot to perpetuate his doctrines. They carried out their plot by stealthily robbing Christ's body from the grave ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris

... altered the whole aspect of the bay, but in the long egg-shaped peninsula, on which stands to-day the Castel dell' Ovo, we can still see the outlines of the famous Lucullanum, in which the last Roman Emperor of Rome ended his inglorious days. His conqueror generously allowed him a pension of L3,600 per annum, but for how long this pension continued to be a charge on the revenues of the new kingdom we are unable to say. There is one doubtful ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... of the court-house was such that the future defender of the Constitution subsided, and neither rose nor spoke again until after Mrs. Greenough had vacated her chair for another witness—having ample time to reflect upon the inglorious history of the man who had a stone thrown on his head ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various

... The terrible anxiety that pervaded so many families; the dreadful sacrifice of lives on so many battlefields; and the enormously increased taxation, which caused so many families to stint themselves to even the barest necessaries of life;—such was the inglorious side of war. ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth

... incident conveys! How many thousand instances there are in which inglorious defeat ends the career of the timid and desponding, when the same tenacity of purpose would crown ...
— How to Get on in the World - A Ladder to Practical Success • Major A.R. Calhoon

... virtuous, and for that reason were often employed by the Romans when they could persuade them to accept of great employs, for their fault was not any want of ability or honesty, but their general desire of leading a private life of ease, and free from trouble, although inglorious. For when immortality is not owned, there can be no ambition ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts

... speaking since first I came to the Pacific; and still, few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on—ill or well, is a trifle; so as it goes. I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. At least I have not failed, but I would have preferred a place of trumpetings and the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... girls were there in England today, well-educated, skilled in the masonry of society—to all outward seeming perfectly contented, awaiting their final summons to the marriage-market—the culmination of their brief, inglorious careers. Yet if one could penetrate beneath the apparent calm, one might find boiling in THEIR blood and beating in THEIR brains the same revolt that had driven Ethel to the verge of the Dead Sea of lost hopes and vain ambitions—the ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... sure my boy does not want to settle down here to a life of inglorious ease," remarked the captain in a tone of mingled assertion and enquiry. "I rejoice in the firm conviction that his great desire is to serve God and his country to the best ...
— Elsie at the World's Fair • Martha Finley

... but time for these few unkempt lines, wherein to bid you for a while farewell. My good friend, Colonel Boyce, has favoured me with an occasion to go see something of the warring world beyond the sea. And I, since the inglorious leisure of the hearth irks my blood, heartily company with him. It needs not that you indulge in tears, save such as must fall for my absence. I seek honour. So, with a son's kiss, I leave ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his fields withstood; Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell guiltless of his ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various

... was irregular, and without much effect; that of the British was more fatal. Eight of the patriots were killed, and ten wounded, and the whole put to flight. The victors formed on the common, fired a volley, and gave three cheers for one of the most inglorious and disastrous triumphs ever achieved ...
— The Life of George Washington, Volume I • Washington Irving

... a matter so essential to the well-being of society as the prosperity of a newly-instituted government, a citizen of so much consequence as yourself to its success has no option but to lend his services if called for. Permit me to say it would be inglorious, in such a situation, not to hazard the glory, however great, which he ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... that while I still bear on The conquering Tartar ensigns through the world, And beat the Persians back on every field, I seek one man, one man, and one alone— Rustum, my father; who I hoped should greet, Should one day greet, upon some well-fought field, His not unworthy, not inglorious son. So I long hoped, but him I never find. Come then, hear now, and grant me what I ask. Let the two armies rest to-day; but I Will challenge forth the bravest Persian lords To meet me man to man; if I prevail, Rustum will surely hear it; if I fall— ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester

... it could not pass the harbor batteries and assist the fort. Its only service was to take off the garrison which by the terms of surrender was allowed to withdraw. On the fourteenth, Sumter was evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... that she saw, and from all the conversation she could hear, she found hints for action and subjects for thought. To see Francis in the British Parliament was a worthy ambition, and to give up such a probable career for an inglorious and obscure life with herself was not to be thought of. His wistful looks and earnest tones were to be treasured up in her heart for ever; but her own love for him was not of that imperious and unreasonable nature that she could not ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... whom three died; that of the American vessel, one killed and two wounded. The inequality in armament detracts inevitably from glory in achievement; but the credit of readiness and efficiency is established for Lawrence and his crew by prompt action and decisive results. So, also, defeat is not inglorious under such odds; but it remains to the discredit of the British commander that his ship did no more execution, when well within the most effective range of her guns. In commenting upon this engagement, after noticing ...
— Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812 - Volume 2 • Alfred Thayer Mahan

... had crossed the Channel carrying Sir John French's little army to the Continent, while the boasted German fleet, impotent to menace the safety of our transports, lay helpless—bottled up, to quote Mr. Asquith's phrase, "in the inglorious seclusion of their ...
— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... have nasty sort of fighting here, amongst creeks and bushes, and lose men without show." "Yankee never shows himself, he keeps in the thickest wood, fires and runs off."—"These five thousand in the open field might be attacked, but behind works it would be throwing away lives." He calls it "an inglorious warfare,"—says one of the leaders is "a little deficient in gumption,—but—still my opinion is, that if we tuck up our sleeves and lay our ears back we might thrash them; that is, if we caught them out of their trees, so as to slap at them ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... be tested at many levels. We intend to have at all times the capacity to resist non-nuclear or limited attacks—as a complement to our nuclear capacity, not as a substitute. We have rejected any all-or-nothing posture which would leave no choice but inglorious ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... was something high. It was a wild stock of pride, on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues. He valued ancient nobility; and he was not disinclined to augment it with new honors. He valued the old nobility and the new, not as an excuse for inglorious sloth, but as an incitement to virtuous activity. He considered it as a sort of cure for selfishness and a narrow mind,—conceiving that a man born in an elevated place in himself was nothing, but everything ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... live and till you die. Immediately then think it right to live as a full-grown man, and one who is making proficiency, and let everything which appears to you to be the best be to you a law which must not be transgressed. And if anything laborious or pleasant or glorious or inglorious be presented to you, remember that now is the contest, now are the Olympic games, and they cannot be deferred; and that it depends on one defeat and one giving way that progress is either lost or maintained. Socrates in this way became perfect, in all things improving himself, attending ...
— A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus With the Encheiridion • Epictetus

... formed to unite our sympathies—formed to breathe a new spirit into this hackneyed and gross world—formed for the mighty ends which my soul, sweeping down the gloom of time, foresees with a prophet's vision. With a resolution equal to thine own, I defy thy threats of an inglorious suicide. I hail thee as my own! Queen of climes undarkened by the eagle's wing, unravaged by his beak, I bow before thee in homage and in awe—but I claim thee in worship and in love! Together will we cross the ocean—together will ...
— The Last Days of Pompeii • Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

... and drinking; On war be ye all thinking, To serve the king who've bound ye For roof and raiment found ye; Reflect there's prize and booty For all who do their duty; Away with fear inglorious, If ye would ...
— Targum • George Borrow

... participation in the pitiable scenes enacted along the shores of Minas and Chignecto Bays. The Massachusetts Archives contain no pay-rolls of this expedition, and no papers of Captain Abijah Willard are known to exist throwing any light upon its history. That the service was not only inglorious in part, and ungrateful to the truly brave, but attended with much hardship, is attested by the following documents copied from Massachusetts Archives, lv, 62 and 63. They are there in the ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various

... picturesque times when King John founded a castle there, to the prouder times when Sir Francis Bacon represented it in Parliament; or again to the brave days when it resisted Prince Rupert for three weeks, and the inglorious epoch when the new city (it was then only some four or five hundred years old) began to flourish on the trade in slaves with the colonies of the Spanish Main, and on the conjoint and congenial traffic in rum, sugar, ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells

... at 7 a.m. on August 31st, and after trekking some miles arrived at a large coal-mine, which seemed to be in very good order. This country had been the scene of a goodish bit of fighting. Not far off the ill-fated Jameson raid had come to its inglorious conclusion; a little further on the Gordons had suffered severely during the advance on Johannesburg; and here the Pochefstroom column was to ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... civil servants, moving in that circle which seems to itself the pivot of the nation and is in truth only a clique like another; and Fleeming was to her the nameless assistant of a nameless firm of engineers, doing his inglorious business, as she now saw for herself, among unsavoury surroundings. But when their walk brought them within view of the river, she beheld a sight to her of the most novel beauty: four great, sea-going ships dressed out with flags. 'How lovely!' she cried. 'What is it ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson

... retreated without firing a shot. It is not surprising that the Chinese were inflated with pride and confidence by the pusillanimous conduct of the English officer, or that they should erect a pagoda at Canton in honor of the defeat of the English fleet. After these inglorious incidents Admiral Drury evacuated Macao and sailed for India, leaving the English merchants to extricate themselves as well as they could from the embarrassing situation in which his hasty and blundering action had placed them. If the officials ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... wonder, was it who could fling off such an apt impromptu, and how many more mute inglorious writers have we not who might do anything they chose if they would only choose to do anything at all? Some one else had written on an ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler

... done, they could not come over the bar to injure him: if they landed their men, yet still his force was superior to that of the enemy, and he might at least have risked a battle on such grounds, before he made an inglorious retreat. The Indians were averse from leaving the field, without scalps, plunder, or glory. It is true, the Spanish ships of war might have prevented Colonel Daniel from getting into the harbour with the supply of military stores, yet the coast was large, and afforded many more places ...
— An Historical Account Of The Rise And Progress Of The Colonies Of South Carolina And Georgia, Volume 1 • Alexander Hewatt

... figures of Dante, Francis of Assisi, and Thomas a Kempis. A Kempis shows religion fled from the active world with its strifes and temptations, sedulously cultivating a pure, devout, unworldly virtue; feeding on the contemplation of heavenly splendors and infernal horrors; self-centred and inglorious. The opposite type is Frances, a joyful prophet of glad tidings to the poor; ardent, sympathetic, heroic; touched with the beauty of nature and the appeal of the animal creation; exalting simplicity and poverty like an ancient philosopher; ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... equal pain and commiseration, that young teachers, after having once finished their preliminary studies and obtained a situation, are thereupon apparently quite content, making no further effort at improvement, but settling down for life in an inglorious mediocrity. The best teachers in this school are expected to be better teachers next year than they are now,—with ampler stores of knowledge, and a happier faculty for communicating it. This, then, is our ...
— In the School-Room - Chapters in the Philosophy of Education • John S. Hart

... of God shall rule. The past of the nation lies with the sunken Cumberland in the waters of Hampton Roads; its future floats about in a new-fangled Monitor, that may combat and defeat the navies of the world or go to the bottom with one inglorious plunge.[5] And this general transition brings us back to the negro, whose apotheosis is after all only a part of the inevitable, and may be only the flash before ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford

... possession of the conversation, indulged all who chose to listen with details of his own wild and inglorious warfare, while Dame Elspeth's curch bristled with horror, and Tibb Tacket, rejoiced to find herself once more in the company of a jackman, listened to his tales, like Desdemona to Othello's, with undisguised delight. Meantime the two young Glendinnings were each wrapped ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... made to do when their needs are fully met, they will probably in any event yield a fair supply of delicious fruit. Secure this as soon as possible. At the same time remember that a plant of a good variety is a genius capable of wonderful development. In ordinary circumstances it is like the "mute, inglorious" poets whose enforced limitations were lamented by the poet Gray; but when its innate powers and gifts are fully nourished it expands into surprising proportions, sends up hundreds of flowers, which are followed by ruby gems of fruit ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe

... concerned, it was an inglorious close. By a single stroke of the pen Henry gave up nearly two hundred places that had been captured by the French from their enemies during the last thirty years. In return he received Ham, St. Quentin, and three other strongholds held by Philip ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... rose-strewn, for thee and thy happiness still would I give it. Far afield, in the din and rush of maddening battle, Others have laid down their lives, nor wavered nor paused in the giving. What matters way or place—the cyprus, the lily, the laurel, Gibbet or open field, the sword or inglorious torture, When 'tis the hearth and the country that call for ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... the rest of the ships, Sir Hovenden Walker and Brigadier Hill,[22] the commander of the forces, decided to abandon the expedition. The Sapphire was despatched to Boston to recall the land force; and on the shores of Lake Champlain these inglorious orders overtook the sturdy Nicholson, who regretfully led his column back ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan

... leave the camp and conclude a truce. But nevertheless he did not till after a lapse of seven years give up his hope of remounting the throne of Sweden, making a final peace with Margaret, and henceforward living in Gadebush, Mecklenburg, where in 1412 he closed his inglorious life. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various

... nothing to it,—except, There has come what had to come. To me remains only to possess myself in patience. If all alliances, resources, and negotiations fail, and all conjunctures go against me, I prefer to perish with honor, rather than lead an inglorious life deprived of all dignity. My ambition whispers me that I have done more than another to the building up of my House, and have played a distinguished part among the crowned heads of Europe. To maintain myself there, has become as it were a personal duty; which I will fulfil at the expense of ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... place thereof, a clean, straight, hard hit, which took effect with a spank like the explosion of a percussion-cap, knocking the slayer of beeves down a sand-bank,—followed, alas! by the too impetuous youth, so that both rolled down together, and the conflict terminated in one of those inglorious and inevitable Yankee clinches, followed by a general melee, which make our native fistic encounters so different from such admirably-ordered contests as that which I once saw at an English fair, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... Pyrrhic victory, Parthian dart, and Homeric laughter; quos deus vult and nil de mortuis; Sturm und Drang; masterly inactivity, unctuous rectitude, mute inglorious Miltons, and damned good-natured friends; the sword of Damocles, the thin edge of the wedge, the long arm of coincidence, and the soul of goodness in things evil; Hobson's choice, Frankenstein's monster, Macaulay's schoolboy, Lord ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm

... these kings showed a firm resolve to shun the two rocks on which the monarchy had been so nearly wrecked. No policy was too inglorious that enabled them to avoid the need of war. The inheritance of a warlike policy, the consciousness of great military abilities, the cry of his own people for a renewal of the struggle, failed to ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green

... a dismal failure, Unblessing and unblest, That seeks 'mid ease inglorious For pleasure or ...
— Iola Leroy - Shadows Uplifted • Frances E.W. Harper

... France lay encamped with one of his armies near a place reputed unhealthy, when one of his officers requested a furlough. The reason being asked, and given, that the place was unhealthy, and the applicant feared to die an inglorious death from fever: Napoleon replied, in his accustomed laconic style, "Go to your post; men ...
— A New Guide for Emigrants to the West • J. M. Peck

... calls Cyllenius, and the god attends, By whom his menacing command he sends: "Go, mount the western winds, and cleave the sky; Then, with a swift descent, to Carthage fly: There find the Trojan chief, who wastes his days In slothful not and inglorious ease, Nor minds the future city, giv'n by fate. To him this message from my mouth relate: 'Not so fair Venus hop'd, when twice she won Thy life with pray'rs, nor promis'd such a son. Hers was a hero, destin'd to command A martial race, and rule ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... at one time actually raised the siege (Jer. xxxvii. 5). We do not know what followed. Whether Apries, on finding that the whole Chaldaean force had broken up from before Jerusalem and was marching against himself, took fright at the danger which he had affronted, and made a sudden inglorious retreat; or whether he boldly met the Babylonian host and contended with them in a pitched battle, wherein he was worsted, and from which he was forced to fly into his own land, is uncertain. Josephus positively declares that he took the ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson

... nothing. The life at Sellanraa was having its effect on him again; it was an inglorious, commonplace life, but quiet and dulling to the sense, a dreamy life; there was nothing for him to show off about, a looking-glass was a thing he had no use for. His town life had wrought a schism in himself, and made him finer than the others, made him weaker; he began ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun

... When, after an assiduous and inglorious apprenticeship, you can wheel a galloping horse round in his own length, without paraboling over his head, or turning him upside down—when you can take him safely across any leap he is able to clear—when ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... honour, chivalrous abhorrence of guile, the soul to endure, as well as the temper to inflict; these were the qualities most prized by men, who, born and bred to lives of constant warfare, held danger light, and looked upon peace as inglorious. And then their religious faith! It might be gloomy, it might be wild, it might be altogether misplaced or misdirected,—but it was at least sincere; for it exerted an influence over their most wayward humours; it urged them both to do and to suffer as none but ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig

... taste did invite, And uniform order still courted the sight. No degenerate weeds the rich ground did produce, But all things afforded both beauty and use: Till from dunghill transplanted, while yet but a seed, A nettle rear'd up his inglorious head. The gard'ner would wisely have rooted him up, To stop the increase of a barbarous crop; But the master forbid him, and after the fashion Of foolish good nature, and blind moderation, Forbore him through pity, and chose as much rather, To ask him some questions ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift

... to hope and he would probably have continued to do so had Fate been so unjust as to consign him to an Inferno. He was one of those in whom goodness is a natural instinct, and whose existence, even in a more or less inglorious obscurity, leavens the entire lump of humanity. Mr. Mullen, who regarded him with the active suspicion with which he viewed all living examples of Christian charity, spoke of him condescendingly as a "man of impracticable ideas"—a phrase which introduced his index prohibitory of ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... preferred toil, danger, the endurance of every hardship, and privation of every comfort, in defence of a holy cause, to inglorious ease, and the allurements of rank, affluence, and unrestrained youth, at the most splendid and fascinating ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... Espinosa and Pizarro held a council of war, and came to the inglorious resolve to steal away under the protection of darkness, leaving Uracca in undisputed possession of the field. This decision excited the indignation of De Soto. He considered it a disgrace to the Spanish arms, and declared that it would ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... prophetically hear his far-off footfall, so there came suddenly to Winter's ears the sound, from some neighbouring garden, of Spring approaching as she walked on daisies. And Spring approaching looked at huddled inglorious Winter. ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... This inglorious and unlooked-for flight was brought about by emissaries from Arnold, who spread the report among St. Leger's Indians, that the Americans were coming with forces as numerous as leaves on the trees. Arnold, whom no one will accuse of want of courage, ...
— Burgoyne's Invasion of 1777 - With an outline sketch of the American Invasion of Canada, 1775-76. • Samuel Adams Drake

... which the war was undertaken to have proposed or submitted to any conditions which France, exulting over her recent successes, could have been expected to approve; and the result of such a negotiation at such a moment must have been, in any event, fruitless and inglorious. The decision of Parliament was unequivocal and decisive. The Duke of Bedford's motion was lost on the question of adjournment, and Mr. Fox's thrown out by a majority of 210 against 57 votes. The influence of the Opposition was overthrown. ...
— Memoirs of the Court and Cabinets of George the Third, Volume 2 (of 2) - From the Original Family Documents • The Duke of Buckingham

... dedicated man. He accepts risks with a laugh, and toil with, perhaps, a grumble, but he does not flinch. Obscure and inglorious perils are his, and hardships that only himself can gauge. Be sure that they are not unrecorded. They shine, and their splendour is hidden, like those lanterns that were hidden under the coats of the lantern-bearers. But there is, very surely, some screen, sensitive to its rays, ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... Friends, counsellors and leaders of the Greeks! 20 In dire perplexity Saturnian Jove Involves me, cruel; he assured me erst, And solemnly, that I should not return Till I had wasted wall-encircled Troy; But now (ah fraudulent and foul reverse!) 25 Commands me back inglorious to the shores Of distant Argos, with diminish'd troops. So stands the purpose of almighty Jove, Who many a citadel hath laid in dust, And shall hereafter, matchless in his power. 30 Haste therefore. My ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... 30, 31, "But of him are ye in Christ," therefore let him that glorieth, "glory in the Lord." Truly, a soul possessed with the meditation of this royal descent from God, could not possibly glory in those inglorious baser things, in which men glory, and could not contain or restrain gloriation and boasting in him. The glory of many is their shame, because it is their sin, of which they should be ashamed. But suppose that in which men glory be not shame ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... business. It is, perhaps, the most tragic of all perversions. But, evidently, the evil is not to be abated by jeremiads, nor by lectures to young women, no, nor even by brilliant editorials. So long as women believe that inglorious ease is better than work, so long as they are taught that they are born to be the gentle dependents of a stronger being, so long as courage and capacity are held to be "strong-minded," so long as the range of employments for women is narrow, and the standard ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... Skinner replied stiffly, "not to take that pessimistic view of myself. If you refer to the inglorious rout we suffered yesterday in our skirmish with Captain Matt Peasley, permit me to remind you, in all respect, that you handled that entire ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne



Words linked to "Inglorious" :   opprobrious, dishonorable, glorious, dishonourable, ignominious, unknown, disgraceful, obscure, unsung



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