"Crass" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... point of view is however a good deal less than just. It is quite true that as worked by William the Norman and several of his successors the system became only too often an instrument of gross injustice and crass despotism; but at its best, and in its origin, it was based on the twin foundations of protection on the one hand and duty on the other. I will venture to quote a high authority in this connexion, namely ...
— The War and Unity - Being Lectures Delivered At The Local Lectures Summer - Meeting Of The University Of Cambridge, 1918 • Various
... The crass obtuseness of most of the nobility made it a relief to return to the usual habits of the Sorel household when the court had left Ulm. Friedmund, anxious to prove that his new honours were not to ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crass, intolerant prejudice. The whaling ship was careless of appearances, it is true, and had the air of an ocean vagabond; but there were other duties more important than holystoning decks, scraping spars, and trimming the ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... dunce is bad, but the conceit of the brisk and lively dunce is worse. The stolid dunce is comparatively quiet; his crass mind works slowly; his vacant face wears an aspect of repose; his talk is merely dull and twaddling. But the talk of the brisk dunce is ambitiously absurd: he lays down broad principles: he announces important discoveries ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... effusions of this kind, for they cannot be taken seriously. Still I cannot but wish that an angry English journalist with his clever and fiery pen, would fall upon Sombart's book and give its author a sample of English spirit. The work teems with unjust, incorrect opinions; is full of crass ignorance and grotesque exaggerations, which lead the unlearned astray, injure Germany's cause, and annoy those who know better—so far as ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... the cost of the war must be laid according to the capacity to bear it. It would be fatuous folly and crass selfishness to wish it laid or endeavor to have it laid otherwise. All I am advocating in effect is that in the public interest not too much be exacted at once, but that by dividing the burden over a reasonable number of years, capital ...
— War Taxation - Some Comments and Letters • Otto H. Kahn
... of his in the Zeit Geist; many women of intelligence refrain from going, he added, though many beautifully dressed women were still frequent attenders. There was no blinking the fact that the crass stupidity of the Church had made church-going unpopular—almost impossible—with intelligent men and women. The Church insulted the intelligence by trying to reconcile the teachings of Judaism with the teachings of Christianity, when the two were absolutely ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... prices; and under the influence of success he expanded like an opening floweret. When Epstein, the agent, wrote to say that the allegory had been purchased by a Glasgow plutocrat of the name of Bates for one hundred and sixty guineas, Sellers' views on Philistines and their crass materialism and lack of taste underwent a marked modification. He spoke with some friendliness of the ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... instrument and took his place on the platform. The storm was abating but there were still thunderings and occasional flashes of lightning concerning the crass ignorance and stupidity of the people of Orchard Glen ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... Macdonald or J. M. Barrie would have handled this! The humour of either would have danced round the crass obtuseness of the deputation and the mingled wrath and amusement of the minister. The story bristles with opportunity for the presentation of human contrast. The chances are all there, and a story-teller of anything like genuine faculty could not have failed to see and to utilise some ...
— My Contemporaries In Fiction • David Christie Murray
... show I wasn't proud; who should let me in but the 'dentical chap that come to ax me up. 'Well, Dan,' says he, 'you didn't let the grass grow undher your feet; the masther's waitin', so away in wid ye as fast as ye can.'—'An' which way will I go?' says I.—'Crass the yard,' says he, 'an' folley your nose up through the house, ever 'till you come to the dhrawin'-room door, an' then jist rap wid your knuckle, an' ye'll get lave to come in.' So away I wint acrass the yard, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various
... bad luck to yer ugly carcase! You're a nate-looking baste to interfere with a pair of illigant craythers! Be the crass! he's all shill, boys. Och, mother o' Moses! I can't find a ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... with somewhat of a manner, asking for an immediate cup of hot water, and to Lilly there was something esoteric even in that. The sturdy, fine machine of her own body had the crass ability to start off the day with bacon and eggs. She blushed for the healthiness of ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... wouldn't cross the wathers, did yez (a dig with his heels). I'm the bye that'll show yez, that, whin Patsey McQuirk's aboard (another dig), and say's crass, ye'll crass, so yez will (dig). Ye moight jist ez well done it first ez last, so yez moight (dig, dig), but ye'll understand it next time, so yez ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... to be false to myself, my simple self that was, And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this, Who yet has something in common with himself, ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... men of mickle heart and little speech, Slow, stubborn countrymen of heath and plain, Now have ye shown these insolent again That which to Caesar's legions ye could teach, That slow-provok'd is long-provok'd. May each Crass Caesar learn this of the Keltic grain, Until at last they reckon it in vain To browbeat us ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... The fact was evident—alas! only too evident—his father was incapable of command. James was simply astounded; he tried not to hear the cruel words that buzzed in his ears, but he could not help it—imbecility, crass idiocy, madness. It was worse than madness, the folly of it was almost criminal; he thought now that his ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham
... self-constructed theory which would not bear its own examination for a minute—as if a quack were to treat himself with his own bread-pills and feel better—Mark, having convinced himself that the reviewer was a crass fool whose praise and blame were to be read conversely, found the wound to his self-love begin to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the critics thus partially disarmed in advance. But Regeneration was no longer a burning matter; Medora's thoughts were on the great, new, different thing that Abner was now shaping. He had finally come to an apprehension of the city. In certain of its aspects it was as interestingly crass and crude as the country, and the deep roar of its wrongs and sufferings was becoming audible enough to his ears to exact some share of his attention. In The Fumes of the Foundry he was to show a bold advance into a new field. This book would depict ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... because the Italians are refusing to accept the Serbs, fearing the spread of cholera, and the Allies are thinking that the Greeks want to be endangered by cholera any more than the Italians?... The history of the Balkan politics of the Allies is the record of one crass mistake after another, and now, through pique over the failure of their every Balkan calculation, they try to unload on Greece the results of their own stupidity. We warned them that the Gallipoli expedition would be fruitless and that the Austro-Germans ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... appeared to me to thrive no better in the Mediterranean provinces than at Rome. Half citizen, half clown, the people representing it are plunged in a crass ignorance. Having just sufficient means to live without working, they lounge away their time in homes comfortless and half-furnished, the very walls of which seem to reek with ennui. Rumours of what is passing in Europe, which might possibly ...
— The Roman Question • Edmond About
... moment that these problems are peculiar to Germany, but merely that, owing to the rapid progress, they are aggravated, and that to point out Germany as a model of successful achievement, along these and other lines, in order to bolster up political cure-alls at home, is a betrayal of crass ignorance of the general internal situation of the country, and once such prejudiced pleaders are found out, the rebound will go too far the other way. That were a pity, too, for we have ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... not overwell provided, for he had never been a thrifty man; and he found among the rattletrap furnishings of his neglected home one living chattel quite as worthless—a weird, lean goblin of a boy, his sole descendant, fatherless and motherless, playing lonely little games in corners, making crass drawings with a charred stick on the walls, and viewing the blossoming orchards of spring with a crazy delight in color. I fear there was not much affection between this ill-matched couple. For long years I saw in my grandfather only a coarse, violent old man, niggardly ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... this question becomes little more than a conflict between aesthetic preferences. Matter is gross, coarse, crass, muddy; spirit is pure, elevated, noble; and since it is more consonant with the dignity of the universe to give the primacy in it to what appears superior, spirit must be affirmed as the ruling principle. To treat abstract principles as finalities, ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James
... any serious check, and with the single important incident of taking Ghuzni by storm on the way. Our positions at and about Cabul were not seriously molested until late in 1841, when the paralysis of demoralisation struck our soldiers because of the crass follies of a wrong-headed civilian chief and the feebleness of a decrepit general. Nott throughout held Candahar firmly; the Khyber Pass remained open until faith was broken with the hillmen; Jellalabad held out until the "Retribution Column" camped under its walls. But for the awful ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... book which I remember reading there were sixteen different types of apperception discriminated from each other. There was associative apperception, subsumptive apperception, assimilative apperception, and others up to sixteen. It is needless to say that this is nothing but an exhibition of the crass artificiality which has always haunted psychology, and which perpetuates itself by lingering along, especially in these works which are advertised as 'written for the use of teachers.' The flowing life of the mind is sorted ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... and taking so dim an impression of the myriad sides of life that he is truly conscious of nothing but himself. It is only in the fastnesses of nature, forests, mountains, and the back of man's beyond, that a creature endowed with five senses can grow up into the perfection of this crass and earthy vanity. In towns or the busier country sides, he is roughly reminded of other men's existence; and if he learns no more, he learns at least to fear contempt. But Irvine had come scatheless through life, conscious only of himself, of his great strength ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... goaded to declare I felt sure that the men only behaved in that way from crass ignorance, and that if they knew how much my feelings were hurt, they would alter their manners directly. This opinion was received with such incredulity that I felt roused to declare I should try the experiment ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... How I thank thee, great Times, For teaching that phrase! 'Tis delicious! Fiction! The haunt of mad follies, crass crimes, Fads futile, and tastes meretricious. Oh, joy, to transport to that Limbo of Fools, Upon trial and honest conviction, The plagues of our Parties, our Churches, our Schools, Who ought to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... this hourly life-and-death excitement is a keen delight to most wild creatures, but must be peculiarly distracting to the comfort-loving temperament of others. The latter are alone suited to endure the crass habits and dull routine of domesticated life. Suppose that an animal which has been captured and half-tamed, received ill-usage from his captors, either as punishment or through mere brutality, and that he rushed indignantly ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... smiled. At the bottom of his heart he shared Patricia's regret that the Stapylton pedigree was unadorned by a potentate, because nobody can stay unimpressed by a popular superstition, however crass the thing may be. But for all this, an appraisal of himself and his own achievements profusely showed high lineage is not invariably a guarantee of excellence; and so ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... billet is the limit. I wouldn't trade places with him if he had fifty years of life before him. And yet his work stands out from the ruck of the contemporary versifiers as a balas ruby among carrots. And the reviews he gets! Damn them, all of them, the crass manikins!" ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... for granted that this illiterate black son of the south will know, as we do, all the troubles and standards of the labour market: will discern the reason, which to us is obvious, of his princely pay. But this is where our crass stupidity overtakes us. The native does not arrive at his conclusions through the same channel of thought as we do ourselves. How could he? And as we only use him to suit our own convenience, and remain reckless of the interpretation ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... hours of moral anguish man seeks a refuge either in love or in faith. Unhappily the family and friends of Francis were incapable of understanding him. As to religion, it was for him, as for the greater number of his contemporaries, that crass fetichism with Christian terminology which is far from having entirely disappeared. With certain men, in fact, piety consists in making one's self right with a king more powerful than any other, but also more severe ...
— Life of St. Francis of Assisi • Paul Sabatier
... Davies encountered unexpected opposition in gaining admittance. It seemed that no one had known who he was and, what was more, no one seemed to care after being informed. Such crass ignorance irritated Davies greatly, but he held his patience. The disregard shown him was only due to the prevailing excitement. If any one of them ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties, disappointments, ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... crossed himself, and again bowed. I was amazed to witness the crass ignorance and astounding superstition displayed by the Emperor of Russia, whom all Europe believed to be a progressive, wideawake monarch. That he possessed a spiritualistic kink, as did also his German wife, was quite apparent. Any bogus medium ...
— The Minister of Evil - The Secret History of Rasputin's Betrayal of Russia • William Le Queux
... plausible system of "sweet reasonableness" under the granite-like impact of a rock of reality which has knocked the bottom out of it and left it a derelict upon the waves? This collapse of an ordered and reasonable system under the impact of some atrocious projection of "crass casuality" is a proof that if a philosophy has not got in it some "iron" of its own, if it has not got in it something formidable and unfathomable, something that can destroy as well as create, it is not of much avail against the winds and ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... raised his hand. The murmur of voices dwindled away into silence. The sun came in through the spreading skylights, and Bennington stood in the center of the radiance. He was a man, every inch of him, and not a man among them could deny it. There are many things that are recognizable even to crass minds, and one of these is a man. Genius they look upon with contempt, but not strength and resolution; they can not comprehend what is not ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... to which they have been subjected has given them a contempt for learning, it would be difficult to determine. Probably both misconceptions are evenly distributed amongst the victims of the process. But the fact that this should be the case at all speaks eloquently for the crass ignorance which results from the confounding, on the part of so-called educationists, of mere fact-cramming and subject-compulsion with the proper development ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst
... says Nell; 'I know his speech; it's his wandherin' sowl that can't get rest, the crass o' ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume III. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... all the difficulties which they occasion, I should have to take twice the space. In short, everyone there is lamenting; and these people come in smiles, and even negotiating for the honors which belong to others, with crass insolence; and, worse yet, it seems to the governor that his own people alone deserve all there is, and the rest are of no account. To give color to their impudence, one of them has dared to write to your Majesty that there was not a person in all your kingdom who ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 • Emma Helen Blair
... of the egregious Deeford, was quite charming to watch and hear. Mr. CYRIL RAYMOND should, I am sure, mitigate the asinine priggishness of the young viscount's bearing in the First Act. His conversion from this to the merely crass stupidity of the second was too much for us to bear. Mr. VINCENT STERNROYD as Mr. Hugh Meyers looked quite as if he might have been able to put his hand on two million; Mr. HARBEN as Sir Michael ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, April 12, 1916 • Various
... bother little about themselves except as means to what they regard as the end and aim of life—to make the world each moment as different as possible from what it was the moment before, to transform the crass and sordid universe of things with the magic of ideas. Being intelligent, they prefer good to evil; but they have God's own horror of that which is neither good nor evil, and spew it ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... client of the firm of Palford & Grimby. There was a section of the offices at Lincoln's Inn devoted to documents representing a lifetime of attention to the affairs of the Temple Barholm estates. It was greatly to be hoped that the crass ignorance and commonness of this young outsider would not ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... intelligences in which he had placed her ten minutes ago, and to confuse her with the rank and file of parochial underlings and hangers-on—was death to the "influence." It was an insult to her glorious womanhood. Some people might even have objected that such crass ignorance of the world he renounced detracted from the merit of the renunciation. Her voice was very cold and distant as she answered him. "What do you suppose I could do? If you mean slumming, I've never been down a slum in my life." No, he didn't mean slumming exactly. ...
— Audrey Craven • May Sinclair
... the mail order instructions were concerned, they were crude and unscientific—merely a hodge-podge of pseudo-technical phraseology and crass ignorance—a meaningless jargon scarcely intelligible to the most highly educated, and practically impossible of interpretation by the average stammerer who was supposed to follow the course. Even after I had, by persistent effort, interpreted the ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... may be 'crash' for 'crass' from 'crassus', clumsy; or it may be 'curt,' defective, imperfect: anything would be better than Warburton's ''scus'd,' which honest Theobald, of course, adopts. By the by, it seems clear to me that this speech of Exeter's properly belongs to Canterbury, and was altered ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... length, feeling pretty sure that it would not fly away, she let it loose just before its usual feeding time, and then held out some fruit which she had got in readiness. The bird flew towards her; and from that day followed her about wherever she went. "Crass," (the name we gave to the curassow), soon became a great favourite, and made Quacko and Ara very jealous. The monkey would, now and then, steal down and slyly try to pluck the feathers out of Crass, which would ...
— The Wanderers - Adventures in the Wilds of Trinidad and Orinoco • W.H.G. Kingston
... and always the same—masterful, aggressive, unscrupulous, egotistic, at once good-natured and brutal, kind if you do not cross him, ruthless if you do, greedy, ambitious, self-reliant, active for the sake of activity, intelligent and unintellectual, quick-witted and crass, contemptuous of ideas but amorous of devices, valuing nothing but success, recognising nothing but the actual, Man in the concrete, undisturbed by spiritual life, the master of methods and slave of things, and therefore ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... boiling of a proper ham reaches the level of high art. Proper boiling makes any sound ham tolerable eating; conversely a crass and hasty cook can spoil utterly this crowning mercy of the smokehouse. Yet proper cooking is not a recondite process, nor one beyond the simplest intelligence. It means first and most, pains and patience, with somewhat of foresight, ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... said, "who wrecked my studio. Two stupid little boys; two little boys who have been taught their Catechism, and will one day aspire to the priesthood." And that it should be two stupid little boys who had broken his statue seemed significant. "Oh, the ignorance, the crass, the patent ignorance! I am going. This is no place for a sculptor to live in. It is no country for an educated man. It won't be fit for a man to live in for another hundred years. It is an unwashed country, that is what ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore
... mission? For the time it had failed. Saxe, as Stephen had said, had proved too much. He must make Saxe the scapegoat. The obvious lie damned him. It was crass stupidity to put into Hugues' mouth a lie which carried its own disproof with it. To force an accusation based upon the remainder of the story would be unpolitic. His best course would be to relieve the King of all his fears at Amboise. There was no plot, the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... come to Scotland to vindicate the honour of one of the neatest men she has ever produced. My business is to point out to you that the only way of escape out of the "crass materialism" in which we just now landed, is the adoption and strict working out of the very principles which the Archbishop holds up ...
— Lectures and Essays • Thomas Henry Huxley
... the state in its experience had found religion so necessary that she had built up a formal system of it and made it a part of herself. As it was the duty of the citizen to support the state in every part of her activity, it was clearly his duty to support the state religion. Hence there arose that crass contradiction, which existed in Rome to a large degree as long as these particular systems of philosophy prevailed, between the duty which a man, as a thinking man, owed to himself, and the duty which he, as a good citizen, owed ...
— The Religion of Numa - And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome • Jesse Benedict Carter
... rack And let him suffer publicly. 'Twill pack The show with prurient pryers, and draw out The ready shillings from the rabble rout Of well-dressed quidnuncs, frivolous and fickle Who'll pay for aught that their dull sense will tickle. Look on, crass crowd; your money freely give To see Sensation's victims die to live; For Science knows, and says beneath her breath, That this "Fast Life" ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... which he had gone. On the moor, or by the burn side, there was peace and brightness; but wherever he met with man he found something to sadden him. Did they rest in a monastery, there was often irregularity, seldom devotion, always crass ignorance. The manse was often a scene of such dissolute life that Malcolm shunned to bring his sister into the sight of it; the peel tower was the dwelling of savagery; the farm homestead either rude and lawless or in constant ...
— The Caged Lion • Charlotte M. Yonge
... original work as "a dirty, slipshod girl, in black cotton stockings, who might have passed for the neglected daughter of a superannuated dustman in very reduced circumstances." No one had ever realised the crass stupidity of that remarkable young person—dense and impenetrable as a London fog—until her first introduction in these Readings, with "Please, Mister Sawyer, Missis Raddle wants to speak to you!"—the dull, dead-level of her voice ending in the last monosyllable with a series ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... last. He will take this half of a broken sixpence back: it was given in happier times. If ever he should marry, he will know that one far away prays for his happiness. And if—if these unwomanly tears—And suddenly the crass idiot discovers that she is laughing at him, and that she has secured him and bound him as completely as a fly fifty times wound round by a spider. The crash of applause that accompanied the lowering of the curtain stunned Macleod, who had not quite come back from dreamland. And then, amidst ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... MIFFLIN—You are all crass materialists. I tell you, books are the depositories of the human spirit, which is the only thing in this world that endures. What was it ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... sudden change from devotion to crass indifference. On entering her room she flew to the glass, almost expecting to learn that some extraordinary change had come over her pretty countenance, rendering her intolerable for evermore. But it was, if anything, fresher than usual, on account of the exercise. 'Well!' she said retrospectively. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... (which is a dreadful admission), can follow its meaning. For to that unceasing question Why? the tiny voice within us answers with imperturbable irrelevance, "I want," "I do," "I think," and occasionally "I love." Very crass little statements, and not at all satisfactory to persons like Levine, Andre, and Tolstoi, who, for the most part, know them only second-hand; but wonderfully satisfying, thank goodness, to the great majority which hears them for ever humming and ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... People, whom the crafty class Has huddled into graves from sight and sound Of what God hands you, and, with pence, or pound, Lids down your wild dead stare,—wake! why so crass? See in the Celts spring-burst from underground, The Human ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... were very small and bright, as the eyes of the obese often are, or as they seem by contrast with a large crass face. Langholm fancied he perceived a glimmer of his own enlightenment, and instinctively ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... my father, "isn't this a hard case," says he, "that ould villain, lettin' on to be my friend, and to go asleep this way, an' us both in the very room with a sperit," says he. "The crass o' Christ about us!" says he; and with that he was goin' to shake Lawrence to waken him, but he just remimbered if he roused him, that he'd surely go off to his bed, an' lave him complately alone, an' that id be ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... heavy, plenary, deep, high; signal, at its height, in the zenith. world-wide, widespread, far-famed, extensive; wholesale; many &c. 102. goodly, noble, precious, mighty; sad, grave, heavy, serious; far gone, arrant, downright; utter, uttermost; crass, gross, arch, profound, intense, consummate; rank, uninitiated, red-hot, desperate; glaring, flagrant, stark staring; thorough-paced, thoroughgoing; roaring, thumping; extraordinary.; important &c. 642; unsurpassed &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... the point: This honest fellow had long been in the custom of setting himself to sleep with tales, and so had his father before him; but these were irresponsible inventions, told for the teller's pleasure, with no eye to the crass public or the thwart reviewer: tales where a thread might be dropped, or one adventure quitted for another, on fancy's least suggestion. So that the little people who manage man's internal theatre had not as yet received a very rigorous training; and played upon their stage like children who ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mother, tipped by his father, hail-fellow-well-met with Pate Wylie—Lord, but young Gourlay was the fine fellow! Symptoms of swell-head set in with alarming rapidity. He had a wild tendency to splurge. And, that he might show in a single afternoon all the crass stupidity of which he was capable, he immediately allowed himself a veiled insult towards the daughters of the ex-Provost. They were really nice girls, in spite of their parentage, and as they came down the street ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... the same work to-morrow; combating the irritating misrepresentations, exposing suppressors, discovering the truth under a mountain of crass stupidity and wilful deceit. Next day he will be again at work; and the same process will go on the following week. In the month there are perhaps about five days—exclusive of Sundays—upon which he does not sit. But those days are not holidays. They are spent in patiently reading ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... crass horror, reeled back. The bits of cardboard tumbled from his fear-loosened grip and strewed the ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... of the limbs not less absolutely than those of the intestines, it, nine times out of ten, neither knows nor suspects that any such organs or mechanism exist. If the functions above attributed to the human frame could be shown really to belong to it, pure, not to say crass, materialism, would require no further proof. Those particular functions undoubtedly take place without the cognisance of that particular sensitive soul which we call ourself, so that if no other sensitive ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... civilisation itself. But in this spirit of reasonable submission to a state of things which appeared fundamentally unreasonable, in this conviction that the bad could not be bettered by reforms of detail, there was more danger to society than in the crass indifference of the selfish and the unreflecting. When the natural leaders of society avow that they despair of the future, fatalism spreads like a contagious blight among the rank and file, until even discontent is numbed into silence. Nor does the evil end here. The idealists pay ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis
... moment in this young king! How hearty is he become to the cause of God and the work of reformation. How readily doth he swallow down these bitter pills, which are prepared for and urged upon him, as necessary to effect that desperate care under which his affairs lie! But who sees not the crass hypocrisy of this whole transaction, and the sandy and rotten foundation of all the resolutions flowing hereupon?"—See Parliamentary ...
— The History of England from the First Invasion by the Romans - to the Accession of King George the Fifth - Volume 8 • John Lingard and Hilaire Belloc
... vehemently as he imagined the majority of men were engaged in humbugging him. If his standard of truth was higher than that of the many, it was lower than that of the few. There is a kingdom where the crass division into sheep and goats is merely clumsy and inopportune. In the slow meanderings of this Memoir we too often catch a glimpse of Butler measuring giants with the impertinent foot-rule of his common sense. One does not like him the less for it, but it is, in spite of all the ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... too bad," said Linda reflectively; "because Eileen is sensitive and constant contact with crass vulgarity certainly would wear ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... and saw a vision—of the future—with those two in the midst of it. His brightening glance went belatedly to Hugh, and verily there was more of Hugh also than he had ever seen before, but the crass significance of his smile was quite lost on ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... painter, disdained the ideal and the ideal style of art, and kept generally to crass reality, often in its grossest forms; a man of a violent temper, which hastened his end; a painting by him of "Christ and the Disciples at Emmaus" is in ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... softly, "how bitter we were against the others—even at first against one another? You had been betrayed by that unimportant woman and the whole sex was hateful to you. I had just come from seeing the tragedy caused by a man's crass selfishness. I, too, was wearing the fetters. To me the whole of your sex seemed abominable.... You see," she went on, "my marriage was a terrible disappointment. I fancied that I was marrying a great man, a genius, an inspired statesman, ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... Liberals,—the whole Conservative party would have been called upon to disavow at the hustings the conclusion to which Mr. Daubeny hinted in East Barsetshire that he had arrived. The East Barsetshire men themselves,—so said the Liberals,—had been too crass to catch the meaning hidden under his ambiguous words; but those words, when read by the light of astute criticism, were found to contain an opinion that Church and State should be dissevered. "By G——! he's going to take the bread ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... he said, that for many days he felt no repentance of the act nor was in the least lonely. There was an infinite relief merely in getting clean away from the huge world of men, with all its exactions and temptations and the myriad rebukes and rebuffs of its crass propriety and thrift. He had endured solitude enough in it; the secret loneliness of a spiritual bankruptcy. Here was life begun over, with none to make new debts to except nature and himself, and no besetments but his own circumvented propensities. What humble, happy masterhood! ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... sweetheart. He was of middle height, with black hair, and swarthy, not unlike in this respect to her own family; but totally different in disposition, a striking contrast to the gentle and yielding character of the Eskimo, but the girl in crass ignorance was quite unaware of the difference. To her he was an ardent lover, brave, fearless, strong, and with worldly goods to provide her with ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... would listen to four lines over the telephone and therefrom make a half-column of American newspaper humour or American newspaper tears, came in roaring pacifically and marshaling little Bud, that day in the seventh heaven of his first "beat." Then followed Crass, the feature man, whose interviews were known to the new men as literature, although he was not above publicly admitting that he was not a reporter, but a special writer. Mr. Crass read nothing in the paper that he had not written, ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... mental torpidity, founded upon physical indolence, renders immediate action and all manner of exertion distasteful: his conscious weakness shows itself in overweening arrogance and intolerance. His crass and self- satisfied ignorance makes him glorify the most ignoble superstitions, while acts of revolting savagery are the natural results of a malignant fanaticism and a furious hatred of every creed beyond the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... compliments, that they could not provide me with what I wanted, but that their Champagne-cup was excellent. I gave the fellow a look, and departed. Perhaps this is only another example of the asinine and anserous dunderheadedness of these crass provincials. Kindly reply, by wire, about all the ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... said the master, looking ludicrously piebald after his ink bath, 'before resuming duties I wish to draw your attention to the crass foolishness of which our young friends Haddon and McKnight are guilty. You perceive that their action is ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... undesirable coxcombs, who have not been bred by the High Church movement, but have taken refuge in its cracks, as they would have done forty years ago in those of the Evangelical,—youths who hide their crass ignorance and dulness under the cloak of Church infallibility, and having neither wit, manners, learning, humanity, or any other dignity whereon to stand, talk loud, pour pis aller, about the dignity of the priesthood. Such men Frank ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... sweet little teacher, and so hungry for any sort of good tidings was the starved little pupil, that Timothy "got religion" then and there, as simply and naturally as a child takes its mother's milk. He was probably in a state of crass ignorance regarding the Thirty-nine Articles; but it was the "engrafted word," of which the Bible speaks, that had blossomed in Timothy's heart; the living seed had always been there, waiting for some beneficent fostering influence; for he was what dear Charles Lamb would have called ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... of Rousseau, not even the harmonious development of all the faculties, the one-sided, somewhat restricted, or undeveloped, view of Pestalozzi and others of his followers, surely not individual efficiency for personal gain, the selfish view of crass materialism, but social efficiency is the present-day motive in education. And the definition of education takes on a different color. Not merely the development of inner life but in conjunction with that or in addition ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... Among the many Russian portraits in the Paris Exposition, 1900, two, the work of this pupil of Michel de Zichys, stood out in splendid contrast with the crass realism or the weak idealism of the greater number. One was a half-length portrait of the laughing Mme. Paquin; full of life and movement were the pose of the figure, the fall of the draperies, and the tilt of the expressive fan. The other was the spirited portrait of Baron von Friedericks, ...
— Women in the fine arts, from the Seventh Century B.C. to the Twentieth Century A.D. • Clara Erskine Clement
... instincts, and what with the county Members, the Bishops, the Peers, all the hereditary force of the country, they still rule the roast. And there's a certain disease—to make a very poor joke, call it 'Pendycitis' with which most of these people are infected. They're 'crass.' They do things, but they do them the wrong way! They muddle through with the greatest possible amount of unnecessary labour and suffering! It's part of the hereditary principle. I haven't had to do with them thirty five ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... merely good reading, but is a mental clarifier and tonic. We are much better critics of other writers through his criticisms on his selected subjects. After every reading of 'Obiter Dicta' we feel ashamed of crass and petty prejudice, in the face of his lessons in disregarding surface mannerisms for the sake of vital qualities. Only in one case does he lose his impartiality: he so objects to treating Emerson with fairness that he even goes out of his way to berate ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the burden of meeting the cost of the war must be laid according to capacity to bear it. It would be crass selfishness to wish it laid otherwise and fatuous folly to endeavor ...
— Government Ownership of Railroads, and War Taxation • Otto H. Kahn
... the most select fashionable restaurants. Indeed, the shareholders of fashionable restaurants would look very blue without the said harlots. (Only they aren't called harlots.) But if you desire to read a masterpiece of social fiction, some mirror of crass stupidity in a circulating library will try to save ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... while after all he was breathing the air of art, that lukewarm, sweet air of an eternal spring, pregnant with fragrance, in which a mysterious procreative rapture seethes and germinates and sprouts. So the only result was that Tonio, without support between these crass extremes, tossed back and forth between icy intellectuality and consuming sensual fire, led an exhausting life amid torments of conscience, an exquisite, debauched, extraordinary life, which he, Tonio Kroeger, abhorred in his heart. What vagaries, ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... you—who was ta father to you, my poy. She would rather not pe knowing, for ta man might pe a Cam'ell poth. And if she couldn't pe lofing you no more, my son, she would pe tie pefore her time, and her tays would pe long in ta land under ta crass, my son." ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... this pleasant sport was one Comber, a large, pale-faced boy, some years older than his place in the school justified, but of a crass stupidity, a greedy stomach and a vicious cruelty. Peter had already met him in football and had annoyed him by collaring him violently on one occasion, it being the boy's habit, owing to his size and reputation, to ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... deserted her and her children, and was living with a concubine all that time! Why should a person attempt to write biography when the simplest facts have no meaning to him? This book is littered with as crass stupidities as that one—deductions by the page which bear no discoverable kinship ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... Antonia; "these briars abominable? Oh, what crass ignorance one comes across in this benighted land. My name is Antonia Bernard Temple, and I am an art student. I claim nothing higher. I shall be an art student as ...
— Red Rose and Tiger Lily - or, In a Wider World • L. T. Meade
... prisoners to be judged. All in the inclosed space stood and moved a mass of careless men, the lawyers, hangers-on, and all who fatten upon crime—careless, laughing, nudging, talking openly to the women of the street. A crass scene, a scene of bitter cynicism, of flashy froth, degrading and cheap. Not here to-night the majesty of the law; here only a well-oiled machine ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... should abandon that work. He tried to muster up a resentful feeling against Sophie Carr for the emotional havoc she had wrought, and the best he could do was a despairing pang of loneliness. He wanted her. Above all he wanted her. And she was a rank infidel—a crass materialist—an intellectual Circe. Why, in the name of God, he asked himself passionately, must he lose his heart so fully to a woman with whom he could have nothing more in common save the common factor that she was a woman and ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Bob Crass—the painters' foreman—blew a blast upon a whistle and all hands assembled in the kitchen, where Bert the apprentice had already prepared the tea, which was ready in the large galvanized iron pail that he had placed in the middle of the floor. By the side of the pail were a ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... signed it was but a scrap of paper, of no more binding force than others that had gone their way to dusty death in the diplomatic waste baskets. To observe the obligation it imposed was hypocrisy. To fight in order to compel Germany to observe it was crass militarism. Plainly, Mr. Shaw is a little difficult. The Government under which he lives is either too bellicose or not bellicose enough; too ready to help France if France is attacked or not ready enough to bully Germany, and especially it is all wrong about Belgium and its treaty, since ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... just? Is this even moral? Female labor can be exploited in shop and factory; feminine virtue can be made the object of commerce, and yet woman is not allowed to defend directly the interests of her sex, owing to one of those aberrations of the moral sense that spring from the crass egoism and ...
— The Woman and the Right to Vote • Rafael Palma
... snags his hock upon a point of flint and placidly grazes while he bleeds to death, so might Tusk have slept into eternity, were it not for that mysterious spark of something which the most crass of men possess to mark them human. Thus it was that later in the night he awoke with a feeling of terrible fear, of the presence of some awful catastrophe; and sat up, looking about him through the dark, shivering. He did ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... prejudiced priest, rigid in a pious convention, who could neither bend nor break. The sin of an infidel breaker of the law, that was one thing; the crime of a son of the Church, which a human soul came to relate in its agony, that was another. He had a crass sense of justice, but there was in him a deeper thing still: the revelation of the human soul, the responsibility of speaking to the heart which has dropped the folds of secrecy, exposing the skeleton of truth, grim and staring, to the eye of a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hand the crust of Chaos thirl'd, And forced from his black breast the bursting world, High swell'd the huge existence crude and crass, A formless dark impermeated mass; No light nor heat nor cold nor moist nor dry, But all concocting in their causes lie. Millions of periods, such as these her spheres Learn since to measure and to ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... negation; so they begin to deny truths that have long been admitted—the vital power, for example, the sympathetic nervous system, generatio equivoca, Bichat's distinction between the working of the passions and the working of intelligence; or else they want us to return to crass atomism, and the like. Hence it frequently happens that the course ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... characteristic of the majority of human beings. It is a fair guess that in the end it will be called the artistic mistake of a novelist of genius. Its harsh reception by critics in England and America was referred to by the author privately as an example of the "crass Philistinism" of criticism in those lands: Mr. Hardy felt that on the continent alone was the book understood, appreciated. I imagine, however, that whatever the limitations of the Anglo-Saxon view, it comes ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... of the deposit, and exploited its treasures by quarrying from the other side of the hill. But their crass ignorance of modern science led to their undoing. The accumulation of liberated carbonic acid gas in the workings killed them in scores. They probably fought this unseen demon with the tenacity of ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... me to be relieved of my crass ignorance concerning round-ups, really to have a definite conception of the term instead of the sea of vagueness and conjecture into which I was plunged by the usual description—"Oh, just a whole lot of cattle driven to one place, and those that need it are cut out and frescoed." ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... a great mistake. Such crass and breathless promptness takes away a great deal of the pleasure ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... pained, Mr. Philander, that you should have evinced such a paucity of manly courage in the presence of one of the lower orders, and by your crass timidity have caused me to exert myself to such an unaccustomed degree in order that I might resume my discourse. As I was saying, Mr. Philander, when ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... word was colorlessly spoken; but everyone felt that a crass misunderstanding of the possibilities of conduct in the case of a person like Mrs. Manderson had ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... believe most firmly that President Wilson gave the criminal such chances of reform as no court of law in the world would grant. But, at last, his patience was exhausted. Whether the enslavers of Germany thought, in that crass ignorance of other men's minds they have so often displayed, that America meant to keep out of the war at all costs, or were merely careless of consequences so long as the immediate end was attained, is now immaterial. ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... business. She had a divine meddlesomeness. She was inquisitive after the fashion of a sympathetic arch-angel. It appalled her to see people wrecking their lives by indecision, vacillation, incapacity, by poor judgment and crass stupidity. Her homely wisdom, the fruit of observant years, her native common sense, her strength and discernment were all at the service of the first comer. Responsibility, the bugbear of mankind, was as ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... no fertile field for crass, popular propaganda. On the one hand the Allies urging China to join with them. On the other hand America, their friend. This great country sways back and forth between them, very ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... the virtues of a curate-and-tea-party novel that people are abashed into high resolutions. It may be because their hearts are crass, but to stir them properly they must have men entering into glory with sonic pomp and circumstance. And that is why these stories of our sea-captains, printed, so to speak, in capitals, and full of bracing moral influence, are more valuable to England than ...
— The Pocket R.L.S. - Being Favourite Passages from the Works of Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... oblige—have pushed the conversion of public law to private gain farther and more openly here than elsewhere. The outcome has been divers measures in restraint of trade or in furtherance of profitable abuses, of such a crass and flagrant character that if once the popular apprehension is touched by matter-of-fact reflection on the actualities of this businesslike policy the whole structure should reasonably be expected to crumble. If the present conjuncture of circumstances should, ...
— An Inquiry Into The Nature Of Peace And The Terms Of Its Perpetuation • Thorstein Veblen
... little cockpit. Another woman passenger was already in place opposite; and the aspect of this lady made an additional element in his uneasiness. She, too, was gotten up bravely according to her lights. She seemed something under forty, tall and angular; her hair, a crass yellow, was tied with a large girlish bow of black ribbon behind; and in her cheeks she had crudely striven to recall the hues of youth. Around her long neck another black ribbon accentuated the scrawny lines it was designed to hide; and on top of all she wore a ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... brilliant idea of confronting the youngster with conditions which he lacked experience to cope with. They set him to deal with circumstances which had long ago proved too difficult for themselves, and awaited confidently the outcome—the crass mistake, or oversight, or mere misfortune that, with the aid of a possible court martial, would reduce him to a proper ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... correspondent of the New York Tribune, which represents Jupiter Tonans in the Western World. He may be unable to write with independent tone—few Anglo-Americans can afford to confront the crass and compound ignorance of a "free and independent majority"—but even he is not called upon solemnly to state an untruth. Before using Mr. Smalley's article as a circular, my representative made a point of applying to him for permission, as he indeed was ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... feigning noble sentiments before others man comes, finally, to deceive himself, believing himself a being whose happiness consists in the renunciation of self and all that is earthly, and in the thought of his moral excellence.—The crass assumptions in Mandeville's reasoning are evident at a glance. After analyzing virtue into the suppression of desire, after labeling the impulse after moral approbation vanity, lawful self-love egoism, and rational acquisitiveness avarice, ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... to go further, and show the crass idiocy and impertinence of those whose dicta are ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... not happened to be an exceedingly obstinate man, he might have been defeated by the crass Toryism of Mr. Chawner. But Mr. Povey was obstinate, and he had resources of ingenuity which Mr. Chawner little suspected. The great, tramping march of progress was not to be impeded by Mr. Chawner. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... treaty of "peace", negotiated with the Cherokees at the close of 1759, was worse than a crime: it was a crass and hideous blunder. His domineering attitude and tyrannical treatment of these Indians had aroused the bitterest animosity. Yet he did not realize that it was no longer safe to trust their word. No sooner did the governor withdraw his army from the borders than the cunning Cherokees, whose ...
— The Conquest of the Old Southwest • Archibald Henderson
... astoundingly confident in the prowess of his arms. From the reckless, magnificent manner in which the dervishes comported themselves in the earlier stages of the fight that ensued, I incline to the belief that the Khalifa and his men, true to their crass, credulous notions, were overweeningly confident in themselves. A fatal fault, they underrated their opponents. His Emirs, Jehadieh, and Baggara had so often proved themselves invincible in their combats against natives of the Soudan, that they ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... or commission, the idea was universal. Pride of service and pride of self entered into its composition in about equal proportions; hence the sailing-master who neglected to salute the flag, or who through ignorance, crass stupidity, or malice aforethought flew prohibited colours, was no more liable to be taught an exemplary lesson than the bum-boatman who sauced the officer of the watch when detected in the act of smuggling spirits or women into one of His ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... go up to his station, Saying abroad in the bush you’ll find yourself at home. I liked his proposal, and ’out hesitation Signed my name wid a X that spelt Paddy Malone. Oh, Paddy Malone, you’re no scholard, Ohone! Sure, I made a cris-crass that spelt Paddy Malone. ...
— The Old Bush Songs • A. B. Paterson
... with a slight half-embarrassed smile. The vicar of Nottingham was always in trouble. The narrative he was pouring out took shape in Langham's sarcastic sense as a sort of classical epic, with the High Churchman as a new champion of Christendom, harassed on all sides by pagan parishioners, crass churchwardens, and treacherous bishops. Catherine's fine face grew more and more set, nay disdainful. Mr. Newcome was quite blind to it. Women never entered into his calculations except as sisters or as penitents. At a certain diocesan ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... loss to the Empire in men, money, and in prestige. If our commanders blunder, who is to blame but the criminally negligent officials who have supplied them with false or foolish data to work upon? The Empire has been betrayed, either wilfully or through crass idleness upon the part of men who have dipped deeply into the Empire's coffers, and the nation should demand their impeachment, apart from their position, place, or power, and punishment of the most drastic kind should follow speedily in the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... suddenly fallen on him. He fought it away and rose with great difficulty and in some alarm lest he should not reach the road. On he lurched, clinging to the bushes as he swayed, trying not to laugh, for he had an idea that he was very crass and silly. He saw the road, only a rod away, and suddenly reflected that he was not presentable. Though staying till night would delay the completion of his task, there was no help for it, and he was content, and laughed because he was. And he knew that he really needed rest; for suppose ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... to be much depressed by this counsel's opinion; and had, indeed, several minutes of delightful meditation on the crass complacency of a clever man when taken off his ground. It was deplorable, he said to himself, that men should be so content with their limitations. But it was always the way, he reflected. To be a specialist in one point involved the pruning of all ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... spaces of her mind there grew, to save her, a sense of her crass fatuity. She was quickly in a carriage, eager to avoid any acquaintance, glad the driver was no village familiar who might amiably seek to regale her with gossip. They went swiftly up the western road through ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... "why the procession of foreign visitors who go to Yasnaya Polyana, who lavish adulation and hysterical praises upon that crass socialist and mischief-maker of his day, never think to look around them and use their reasoning powers. Would it not be the logical thing for Yasnaya Polyana to be the model village of Russia? Something cleaner than Edam or Marken? A little of his magnificent ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... However, I walked to, and reassured him, and told him who I was and where I had come from. Of course he was an Irishman, and he said, "Is it South Austhralia yez come from? Shure I came from there meself. Did yez crass any say? I don't know, sure I came by Albany; I never came the way you've come at all. Shure, I wilcome yez, in the name of the whole colony. I saw something about yez in the paper not long ago. Can I do anything for yez? This is not my place, but ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... Balmoral on Friday the 20th inst. at half-past two in the afternoon, Her MAJESTY reaching Windsor at nine o'clock on Saturday morning. It is twenty-five minutes to three when the Royal train will start, and Windsor will not be reached till five minutes after the hour mentioned by RYMUND. It is crass inaccuracies like these that lower the weekly press in the ...
— Punch, Or the London Charivari, Volume 101, November 21, 1891 • Various
... refuse a splendid chance of securing his own future, and one which would most probably never occur again. To a good business woman, who did not naturally share in the boundless optimistic views of M. de Balzac for the future, the crass folly of yielding to the wishes of a boy who could not possibly know what was best for him, was glaringly apparent. However, being a practical woman, when she had done her duty in making the household—except ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... held the fort that Braddock had intended to capture, fired their cannon in rejoicing at a victory that forever killed the prestige of British arms in the New World. For hitherto the British soldier had been thought invincible, and this exhibition of crass stupidity and bungling gave the colonials a different opinion of British arms. The British were brave it is true, but they could not adjust themselves to meet the enemy on their own ground,—and in all history the Briton has shown himself clumsy ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards |
