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abase
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  • He was adoring, self-abasing, and grateful when she accepted him.†   (source)
  • She read in his face that it had been a place of abasement, of degradation and despair.   (source)
    abasement = treat as if of low worth
  • She's never been anybody's mistress before, she has never stooped so low, indulged in such abasement; if her husband discovers them, what will become of her?   (source)
    abasement = feeling of low worth
  • He is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party.   (source)
    abasement = treatment as if of low worth
  • His moral force was abased into more than childish weakness.   (source)
    abased = degraded (lessened or lowered)
  • Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin and half-maddened by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the prison-chamber.   (source)
  • She opened her mouth to shout at him, but before she could, he had become suddenly contrite because of the way he had spoken to her; and there was another of those little scenes which comforted and soothed her: he apologizing, abasing himself, and she forgiving him.†   (source)
  • 'It's only human,' you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure-as if 'to feel' were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were…†   (source)
  • Independence is the recognition of the fact that yours is the responsibility of judgment and nothing can help you escape it-that no substitute can do your thinking, as no pinch-hitter can live your lifethat the vilest form of self-abasement and self-destruction is the subordination of your mind to the mind of another, the acceptance of an authority over your brain, the acceptance of his assertions as facts, his say-so as truth, his edicts as middle-man between your consciousness and…†   (source)
  • His craving for forgiveness, and his abasement before her was the greatest satisfaction she knew, although she despised him for it.†   (source)
  • In any event, when he leaned over to turn out the light, and saw her little spiked shoes tumbled sideways on the skin of the leopard he had shot the year before, he repeated to himself again, but with a thrill of satisfaction in his abasement, "I had no right."†   (source)
  • She was abased now—woman as animal, though saved and uplifted by her power of immortality.†   (source)
  • Humiliated, and abased in her own sight, Carley fell prey to a fury of jealousy.†   (source)
  • She felt herself too much abased, and longed to change natures with some worm!†   (source)
  • He cowered in the shadow of the thought, abasing himself in the awe of God Who had made all things and all men.†   (source)
  • So abased, so monotonous is everything that meets the eye, that when the Ganges comes down it might be expected to wash the excrescence back into the soil.†   (source)
  • I stand abased in my own eyes.†   (source)
  • She abased herself completely.†   (source)
  • What were they now but cerements shaken from the body of death—the fear he had walked in night and day, the incertitude that had ringed him round, the shame that had abased him within and without— cerements, the linens of the grave?†   (source)
  • For the rest of the term he tormented Philip cruelly, and, though Philip tried to keep out of his way, the school was so small that it was impossible; he tried being friendly and jolly with him; he abased himself, so far as to buy him a knife; but though Singer took the knife he was not placated.†   (source)
  • Meek and abased by this consciousness of the one eternal omnipresent perfect reality his soul took up again her burden of pieties, masses and prayers and sacraments and mortifications, and only then for the first time since he had brooded on the great mystery of love did he feel within him a warm movement like that of some newly born life or virtue of the soul itself.†   (source)
  • He abased himself.†   (source)
  • Of the manner and extent to which he took our trumps into custody, and came out with mean little cards at the ends of hands, before which the glory of our Kings and Queens was utterly abased, I say nothing; nor, of the feeling that I had, respecting his looking upon us personally in the light of three very obvious and poor riddles that he had found out long ago.†   (source)
  • As they abased themselves before him, Mr. Micawber took a seat, and waved his hand in his most courtly manner.†   (source)
  • But when, as in the case of Nicholas the Czar, the ringed crown of geographical empire encircles an imperial brain; then, the plebeian herds crouch abased before the tremendous centralization.†   (source)
  • Civilized people, especially in our day, are neither elevated nor abased by the good or bad fortune of a captain.†   (source)
  • "And handsome, too, I fear," returned the meek and self-abased guide; "I might have said handsome at once, among her other qualities; for the young fa'n, just as it learns to bound, is not more pleasant to the eye of the hunter than Mabel is lovely in mine.†   (source)
  • That would have been a weak and ridiculous mistake, but I can respect a mistake, whereas I can't respect a wilful and deliberate abasing of those who should be nearest and dearest to us.†   (source)
  • Such is the case now, after so many ancient prejudices have been overthrown; and it was far more so in ante-Revolutionary days, when the aristocracy could venture to be proud, and the low were content to be abased.†   (source)
  • How inscrutable are the ways of providence—for what great and mysterious purpose has it pleased heaven to abase the man once so elevated, and raise up him who was so abased?†   (source)
  • Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act!†   (source)
  • Throughout their revels he kept close to his adored mistress, who was at the banquet with him and was more charming and fascinating to him than ever—he did not leave her side, abasing himself in his homage before her.†   (source)
  • If, then, to meanest mariners, and renegades and castaways, I shall hereafter ascribe high qualities, though dark; weave round them tragic graces; if even the most mournful, perchance the most abased, among them all, shall at times lift himself to the exalted mounts; if I shall touch that workman's arm with some ethereal light; if I shall spread a rainbow over his disastrous set of sun; then against all mortal critics bear me out in it, thou Just Spirit of Equality, which hast spread…†   (source)
  • Notwithstanding the exclamations of regret and resentment, which followed so abasing a declaration, the chief took his seat, as if determined to speak no more.†   (source)
  • She could never have explained the chain of thought that made her smile; but the last link in it was that her husband, in exalting his brother and abasing himself, was not quite sincere.†   (source)
  • 'The nephew, being, as the lucid Madame Flintwinch has remarked, a poor devil who has had everything but his orphan life frightened and famished out of him—the nephew abases his head, and makes response: "My uncle, it is to you to command.†   (source)
  • It re-discovers in what remains that which has been, good, evil, the true, the blood-stain of the palace, the ink-blot of the cavern, the drop of sweat from the brothel, trials undergone, temptations welcomed, orgies cast forth, the turn which characters have taken as they became abased, the trace of prostitution in souls of which their grossness rendered them capable, and on the vesture of the porters of Rome the mark of Messalina's elbowing.†   (source)
  • Abased, humbled to the dust as I then was, it is probable that I should have resented this galling language by immediate personal violence, had not my whole attention been at the moment arrested by a fact of the most startling character.†   (source)
  • The boy himself was next laid at the feet of her supposed rival, and well might the self-abased wife of the Teton believe that the burden of her sacrifice was now full.†   (source)
  • GLOSSARY Abashed, abased, lowered, Abate, depress, calm, Abought, paid for, Abraid, started, Accompted, counted, Accorded, agreed, Accordment, agreement, Acquit, repay, Actually, actively, Adoubted, afraid, Advision, vision, Afeard, afraid, Afterdeal, disadvantage, Againsay, retract, Aknown, known, Aligement, alleviation, Allegeance, alleviation, Allow, approve, Almeries, chests, Alther, gen. pl., of all, Amounted, mounted, Anealed, anointed, Anguishly, in pain, Anon, at once, Apair,…†   (source)
  • Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud and abase him.†   (source)
  • There wasn't just threatening and scolding this time but absolute abasement.†   (source)
  • …perfectly normal human instinct which you Anglo-Saxons insist upon calling lust and in whose service you revert in sabbaticals to the primordial caverns, the fall from what you call grace fogged and clouded by Heaven-defying words of extenuation and explanation, the return to grace heralded by Heaven-placating cries of satiated abasement and flagellation, in neither of which—the defiance or the placation—can Heaven find interest or even, after the first two or three times, diversion.†   (source)
  • In front of the screen door he took off his hat, dropped it into the dust, and ground it with his heel in self-abasement.†   (source)
  • Why did her whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort?†   (source)
  • Sometimes his words were blurred, muffled, sometimes they came far too clearly to her ears, harsh, bitter words of confession and abasement, speaking of things she had never heard even a woman mention, secret things that brought the hot blood of modesty to her cheeks and made her grateful for his bowed head.†   (source)
  • When he got out, when his spirit wrung with abasement and regret and passionate for hiding scuttled past the cold face of the woman behind the cigar case, he believed that he knew he would and could never see her again.†   (source)
  • He was in an agony of repentance and guilty abasement: he framed a long plea for pardon and included it in his prayers at night, for he still prayed, not from devout belief, but from the superstition of habit and number, muttering a set formula over sixteen times, while he held his breath.†   (source)
  • When the Herod figure (the extreme symbol of the misgoverning, tenacious ego) has brought mankind to the nadir of spiritual abasement, the occult forces of the cycle begin of themselves to move.†   (source)
  • …where she had derived breath and pride: that true pride, not that false kind which transforms what it does not at the moment understand into scorn and outrage and so vents itself in pique and lacerations, but true pride which can say to itself without abasement I love, I will accept no substitute; something has happened between him and my father; if my father was right, I will never see him again, if wrong he will come or send for me; if happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.†   (source)
  • Besides, there was the environment, narrowed down to a single street and place now that he had lost all other property, the thickened and caked machine-halted silence from everywhere lying over this particular sparseness and desolation, plus the abasement from dollars to nickels.†   (source)
  • At first, when the demagoguery, the abasement, the small lying had its reverberation in other small lies and ultimate threats in the form of requests and suggestions among the hierarchate of the Church and he received the call to Jefferson, he forgot how he had got it for the time.†   (source)
  • She brushed it aside with that passionate and leashed humorlessness, almost inattention, talking as though to herself of men, names, to see, to grovel to or threaten, outlining to him a campaign of abasement and plotting.†   (source)
  • He did not understand in the least why abasement left him, but it was so.†   (source)
  • She could not modulate out the key of self-abasement in which she had started.†   (source)
  • Carol's brows lifted in the astonishment of emotion, in a glory of abasement.†   (source)
  • The full meaning lifted Hare out of his self-abasement; once more he felt himself a man.†   (source)
  • THE MOTHER seems crushed and terrified as if by an intolerable weight of shame and abasement.†   (source)
  • He hated the sight of Lawson, because he recalled those days of utter abasement.†   (source)
  • So Carley interpreted that slight gesture, and writhed in her abasement.†   (source)
  • And thus the abasement had been exaltation, and the loss gain.†   (source)
  • All is over for me," she replied with shame and self-abasement.†   (source)
  • Vronsky felt his elevation and his own abasement, his truth and his own falsehood.†   (source)
  • Oh, there's a great deal of humiliation and self-abasement about it, but it all comes from pride….†   (source)
  • 'I wouldn't abase myself by descending to hold no conversation with him,' replied the Dodger.†   (source)
  • But the former under-stood in dismay that Anne was actually enjoying her valley of humiliation—was reveling in the thoroughness of her abasement.†   (source)
  • White Fang crawled slowly, cringing and grovelling in the abjectness of his abasement and submission.†   (source)
  • Such an act of confession might arouse disgust and entailed much self-abasement; all the same, it established, if only for a moment, intimate contact with the desired object, dragging her into one's confidence, into the element of one's passion, and although it meant that everything was over, such eternal loss was not too much to pay for desperate bliss—for confession was a form of violence, all the more enjoyable for the disgust it encountered.†   (source)
  • If anything was needed to put the last touch to her self-abasement it was the sense of the way her old life was opening its ruts again to receive her.†   (source)
  • And at the utter abasement the soul he despised suddenly leaped and quivered with the thought of Ray Longstreth.†   (source)
  • I felt that I doubtless needn't press too hard, in such company, on the place of a servant in the scale; but there was nothing to prevent an acceptance of my companion's own measure of my predecessor's abasement.†   (source)
  • He had concealed nothing, and even, in his self-abasement, he had striven to make himself more despicable than he had really been.†   (source)
  • I have no sense of proportion, I know; my words and gestures do not express my ideas—they are a humiliation and abasement of the ideas, and therefore, I have no right—and I am too sensitive.†   (source)
  • But they were generally accompanied by a sense of compunction and self-abasement of which Newland Archer felt no trace.†   (source)
  • Not improbably, Madeline revolved in mind, this letter was one reason for Stewart's headstrong, long-continued abasement.†   (source)
  • She flamed with anger and abasement, and the sickening need of having to conciliate where she longed to humble.†   (source)
  • He had soon given in to them and allowed them to sweep across and abase his intellect, wondering always where they came from, from what den of monstrous images, and always weak and humble towards others, restless and sickened of himself when they had swept over him.†   (source)
  • The queen pressed her brother and the Emperor of Austria to appear to be wounded, as they really were, by the policy of Richelieu—the eternal object of which was the abasement of the house of Austria—to declare war against France, and as a condition of peace, to insist upon the dismissal of the cardinal; but as to love, there was not a single word about it in all the letter.†   (source)
  • The Indian, in whose manner the depression of self-abasement was most powerfully exhibited, listened to the offers of the Judge with an interest that increased with each syllable.†   (source)
  • "Unfortunate!" echoed the little man, sideling nigher to his companion, and producing his tablets with an air in which exultation struggled, strangely, with an affectation of self-abasement.†   (source)
  • "Of course," he muttered to himself a minute later with a feeling of self-abasement, "of course, all these infamies can never be wiped out or smoothed over…. and so it's useless even to think of it, and I must go to them in silence and do my duty…. in silence, too…. and not ask forgiveness, and say nothing…. for all is lost now!"†   (source)
  • In his rivalry he might have been supposed actuated solely by a whimsical desire to thwart, astonish, or mortify myself; although there were times when I could not help observing, with a feeling made up of wonder, abasement, and pique, that he mingled with his injuries, his insults, or his contradictions, a certain most inappropriate, and assuredly most unwelcome affectionateness of manner.†   (source)
  • Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.†   (source)
  • In this mortifying abasement, the colonists, though innocent of her imbecility, and too humble to be the agents of her blunders, were but the natural participators.†   (source)
  • Hurry, in the main, was a good-hearted as well as good-natured fellow; and the self-abasement of his companion completely got the better of the passing feeling of personal vanity.†   (source)
  • Meg pardoned him, and Mrs. March's grave face relaxed, in spite of her efforts to keep sober, when she heard him declare that he would atone for his sins by all sorts of penances, and abase himself like a worm before the injured damsel.†   (source)
  • He had been prepared for a scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man, whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of a judge.†   (source)
  • At first, she felt offended; then she saw the injustice of making the self-abasement and modesty of the hunter a charge against him, and this novel difficulty gave a piquancy to the state of affairs that rather increased her interest in the young man.†   (source)
  • We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters.†   (source)
  • But, not withstanding the divine fixed his eyes intently on the Indian when he invited his congregation to advance to the table, the shame of last night's abasement was yet too keen in the old chief to suffer him to move.†   (source)
  • How inscrutable are the ways of providence—for what great and mysterious purpose has it pleased heaven to abase the man once so elevated, and raise up him who was so abased?†   (source)
  • The nuns even prefer, out of humility, this last expression, which contains an idea of torture and abasement.†   (source)
  • But were the coming narrative to reveal in any instance, the complete abasement of poor Starbuck's fortitude, scarce might I have the heart to write it; for it is a thing most sorrowful, nay shocking, to expose the fall of valour in the soul.†   (source)
  • "For what end," thought she, giving vent to that feeling of hostility which is the only real abasement of the poor in presence of the rich,—"for what good end, in the wisdom of Providence, does that woman live?†   (source)
  • I was not so vexed at losing Agnes as I might have been, since it gave me an opportunity of making myself known to Traddles on the stairs, who greeted me with great fervour; while Uriah writhed with such obtrusive satisfaction and self-abasement, that I could gladly have pitched him over the banisters.†   (source)
  • The frightful leveller from below, shame, had passed over these brows; at that degree of abasement, the last transformations were suffered by all in their extremest depths, and ignorance, converted into dulness, was the equal of intelligence converted into despair.†   (source)
  • 5 I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.†   (source)
  • But base Mony, may easily be enhanced, or abased.†   (source)
  • Him thoughte that his heart would all to-break, When he saw them so piteous and so mate* *abased That whilom weren of so great estate.†   (source)
  • * <42> *abased into slavery* Thus may ye see, that wisdom nor richess, Beauty, nor sleight, nor strength, nor hardiness Ne may with Venus holde champartie*, *divided possession <43> For as her liste the world may she gie*.†   (source)
  • A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a solicitous aversion: a proximate erection.†   (source)
  • Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the satellite of their planet.†   (source)
  • 5 I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other.†   (source)
  • 40:11 Cast abroad the rage of thy wrath: and behold every one that is proud, and abase him.†   (source)
  • Anselmo praised this second sonnet too, as he had praised the first; and so he went on adding link after link to the chain with which he was binding himself and making his dishonour secure; for when Lothario was doing most to dishonour him he told him he was most honoured; and thus each step that Camilla descended towards the depths of her abasement, she mounted, in his opinion, towards the summit of virtue and fair fame.†   (source)
  • A sweeter and a lovelier gentleman,— Fram'd in the prodigality of nature, Young, valiant, wise, and, no doubt, right royal,— The spacious world cannot again afford: And will she yet abase her eyes on me, That cropp'd the golden prime of this sweet prince, And made her widow to a woeful bed?†   (source)
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