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Ostracism   /ˈɔstrəsˌɪzəm/   Listen
Ostracism

noun
1.
The state of being banished or ostracized (excluded from society by general consent).  Synonyms: banishment, Coventry.
2.
The act of excluding someone from society by general consent.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Ostracism" Quotes from Famous Books



... hard on them"; but the wearing of mourning garments is sustained by the definitely expressed sentiment of every woman in the street. The mother would have to bear social blame, a certain social ostracism, if she failed to comply with that requirement. It is not comfortable to outrage the conventions of those among whom we live, and, if our social life be a narrow one, it is still more difficult. The visitor may choke a little when she sees ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams

... quietness, and let all else go as it would. But Mrs. Wade's warning had impressed him deeply. It went with his secret inclination; for, at this stage of the combat, to lose all his aims would be a bitter disappointment. Rethought of the lifelong ostracism, and feared ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... It may be so. But may it not also spring from an ineradicable sense of a common humanity, still leaving social ties to even social aliens, and, in the presence of an imperishable fraternal unity, forbidding to the individual of the moment the proud right of spiritual ostracism?..." ...
— A Lie Never Justifiable • H. Clay Trumbull

... do) is usually singularly devoid of any appreciation of truth. Die Aktion (1915) goes on steadily with its appreciation of French artists, as if no war were in progress. There may be some affectation in this attitude, but it is to be preferred, I think, to the complete ostracism of work of the enemy called for by a noisy but, I believe, small section on this side. Die Weissen Blaetter appeared in January, 1915, with the ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... from Guayaquil on the 31st of August had been received by Paez, who circulated it in Venezuela, and organized demonstrations asking for the separation of Venezuela from Colombia. As the union of Colombia had been Bolivar's greatest conception, he was attacked, and in Valencia his ostracism was demanded. Paez was asked to prevent his entering Venezuelan territory. Wherever Paez exercised any influence, Bolivar's authority was denounced, and Paez was asked to assume the highest authority of the country. Bolivar was insulted by the press of his own nation, which called him ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... She could remember more than twenty years ago when she had made her own runaway match, the tortures of inquisition through which she had been put by her husband's relatives, and the complete ostracism with which the ...
— The Beggar Man • Ruby Mildred Ayres

... what he was without regard to race, creed, or color. He held that a negro of good manners and education ought to be treated as a white man would be treated. He felt keenly the sting of ostracism and he believed that if the Southern whites would think as he did on this matter; they might the quicker solve the Negro Question and establish human if not friendly ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer

... pleasure which Skippy derived from his periodic application of ostracism was in the immediate success it achieved on his roommate's impressionable temperament. At present, being in an exceedingly grouchy mood, he drew forth a pad and pencil and tendered them with a plain intimation that only thus would he ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson

... surprise of Elizabeth, Mary Wilson was its strongest advocate. Landis now also favored such a course, and consequently Min Kean. In her heart, Elizabeth disapproved, but she was not able to speak as the others had done. She could only sit silent. Popular opinion was in favor of the ostracism. Then another question was brought up. Landis, again, was the one to ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird

... thing in the universe, to receive benefits and render none." Like his distinguished father, he was tolerant in dealing with men who differed from him, but he never shrank from the expression of an opinion because it would bring sacrifice or ostracism. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... twenty, sometimes as many as one hundred and fifty of them, receiving presents from the bride's parents and immediately thereafter bidding good-by to her, going home never to see their "wife" again. The parents have now done their duty; they have escaped religious and social ostracism at the expense, it is true, of their daughters, who remain at home to make themselves useful. These poor girls can never marry again, and whether or not they become moral outcasts, their life is ruined; but that, to a Hindoo, is a trifling matter; girls, in his opinion, ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... longer time was demanded for Creation than any which could possibly be deduced from the Old Testament genealogies and chronicles, orthodox indignation burst forth violently; eminent dignitaries of the Church attacked him without mercy and for a time he was under social ostracism. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White

... manners," which are as stringently binding as any law enacted by a legislature. And there are penalties for violation of this code, that are surely imposed upon the luckless offender, ranging all the way from a snub, a sound or gesture of disapproval, to social ostracism. ...
— The Art of Stage Dancing - The Story of a Beautiful and Profitable Profession • Ned Wayburn

... not suddenly change his whole way of life, and, "like a swimmer into cleanness leaping," put out of sight behind him the things that had pleased him once. Right and wrong are merely relative terms. What was considered right in the days of Caesar spells social ostracism to-day. And there are a few who prefer to see life as the Romans saw it, and to follow the ideals of power and physical beauty. For such life is not easy. Yet we are not so much better than "when Caesar Augustus was Egypt's Lord!" The question of what is really right and what is really ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh

... Athenian vessels, cf. GREEK HISTORY, sect. Authorities). During the next twenty years the Philo-laconian policy of Cimon (q.v.) secured Aegina, as a member of the Spartan league, from attack. The change in Athenian foreign policy, which was consequent upon the ostracism of Cimon in 461, led to what is sometimes called the First Peloponnesian War, in which the brunt of the fighting fell upon Corinth and Aegina. The latter state was forced to surrender to Athens after a siege, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... incurred by her love for Stephen Gard, far from weakening her love only made it the stronger. As that love came more and more between her and her old surroundings, and exacted from her sacrifice after sacrifice, the more she clung to it, and looked to it, and let the past go. The partial ostracism brought upon her by Gard's outspoken declaration of their mutual feeling—even this final offering of her dearly-loved brother—these only bound her heart ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... his ostracism, speaking of himself ever after as "a political corpse." Thenceforward he gave his whole energy to literary work, to occasional reviews, mainly to his "Invasion of the Crimea." In the "Edinburgh" I think he never wrote, cordially disliking its then editor. A fine notice ...
— Biographical Study of A. W. Kinglake • Rev. W. Tuckwell

... The ostracism, employed in Athens against persons of the greatest merit; theft connived at, as it appears, by Lycurgus in Sparta; an equality of goods established in the same city, by the authority of the state, and things of a like nature, may admit ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin

... world's ways, and fraught with even graver consequences was the world's discovery that its ways were not Mozart's. Finding all attempts to turn him from his ways fruitless, the world fought him with contempt, ostracism, and starvation for weapons; and he lacked strength for the struggle. There had been a time when he could retire within himself and live in an ideal world of Don Giovannis and Figaros. But now body as well as spirit was over-wearied; spirit and body were not only tired but diseased; and when ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman

... appearance of the fourth and last dialogue of the Pursuits of Literature. Had a thunderbolt fallen upon him, he could not have been more astonished than he was by the onslaught of Mr. Matthias, which led to his ostracism from fashionable society. ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow

... devoted men and women who have been carrying on the blessed work of emancipation. They show how not less than 3,000 women have given of their best talent and strength to this Christ-like service. They speak of the perils by shotgun and by fire; of imprisonment, ostracism, and scorn; of persecution, that it was believed the progress of the age had made impossible in these later days, but which the State of Florida has been able to revive. But these chapters tell also how the truth has been setting many ...
— American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 9, September, 1896 • Various

... caste, and in the very chill of the gravest calamities she worried her strength away over little grievances lying outside the walls of her home and the real affections of her life. And perhaps with perfect truth she asserted that SHE had done nothing to deserve this social ostracism. Others had made her miserable, but she could thank the saints none ...
— Remember the Alamo • Amelia E. Barr

... the bounds of a reserve but little in keeping with the evident warmth of their friendships. At these times Lucien discreetly took his leave, a feeling of curiosity mingling with the sense of something like pain at the ostracism to which he was subjected by these strangers, who all addressed each other by their Christian names. Each one of them, like d'Arthez, bore the stamp of genius upon ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac

... of his nature is especially entrusted. My whole experience has gone to teach me, with ever-increasing force, that the proposition that purity is vitally necessary for the woman, but of comparatively small account for the man, is absolutely false. Granted that, owing to social ostracism, the outward degradation of impurity to the woman is far greater, I contend that a deeper inner debasement is its sure fruition in the man. Cruelty and lies are its certain accompaniment. As Burns, with a poet's insight, ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... her—must be—in a world, where every detail of such a thing was or would be known—to go through life branded and crushed by it. If the man who was to be her husband could only face it thus (by a stern ostracism of the dead, by silencing all mention of them between himself and her), her cheeks could never cease to ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... even Xantippe had her side of the story to tell; and with all possible admiration for that man Socrates, of such godlike wisdom and such great heart, it must be remembered that Socrates had many habits which would not only cause ostracism from society to-day, but would have tried the temper of even such a wife as the meek Griselda of ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... office, he said to her, with deep feeling: "I suppose you realize the consequences, Mrs. Gwyn? It means ostracism for you. You will not have a friend in this town,—not a person who will speak to you, aside from the storekeepers who value your custom and"—he bowed deeply—"your ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... catastrophe would draw him closer to her; hoped the coolness of friends and acquaintances would make him more dependent on her love and sympathy. It acted in the opposite direction. The public seldom wants two scapegoats. Madame's ostracism satisfied its idea of justice. Every one knew Archie was very much under her control. Every one could see that he suffered dreadfully after Sophy's death. Every one came promptly to the opinion that Madame only was to blame in the matter. "The poor husband" shared the popular ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... and he had only the chances of war to fear. The son had no such compensations. Brought over in order to help his father, he could conceive no way of rendering his father help, but he was clear that his father had got to help him. To him, the Legation was social ostracism, terrible beyond anything he had known. Entire solitude in the great society of London was doubly desperate because his duties as private secretary required him to know everybody and go with his father and mother everywhere they ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams

... easily understood that, under such circumstances, Unionists of the consistent, uncompromising kind do not play an enviable part. It is a sad fact that the victory of the national arms has, to a great extent, resulted in something like a political ostracism of the most loyal men in that part of the country. More than once have I heard some of them complain of having been taunted by late rebels with their ill fortune; and it is, indeed, melancholy for them ...
— Report on the Condition of the South • Carl Schurz

... in the latter direction resulted in pecuniary loss, social ostracism and worse; for upon one occasion he was set upon and nearly killed by a pair of thugs. But Dana was not a man to be swerved from his purpose by considerations of policy or of personal safety. He met his problems as they came to him, took the course which he believed ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana

... on the part of government officials, it is not surprising that private citizens began to take their local affairs into their own hands. A regular system of espionage and ostracism was established all over the South. Everybody who was known or suspected of being opposed to slavery and disunion was not only closely watched, but was denied admission to homes in which he had always ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon

... triumph of local feudalism over imperial rule. While Henry IV, under the ban of excommunication, found a last refuge in Liege, his son gave the ducal dignity to Godfrey of Louvain. Thus the house of Regner Long Neck, after two centuries of ostracism, came into ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... ineradicable hatred of the Jew, partly dependent, as G. F. Abbott well shows,[16] not only upon Christian faith, but upon the Christian frame of mind and feeling—a hatred to which the Nationalism of the nineteenth century furnished a reasonable fuel, which found a social expression in ostracism and rioting[17] and a political expression in the formation of the Christian Socialist Party in Germany (1878), and similar parties in Austria and Hungary (1882-99), seeking the suppression of equal rights for Jews, the Dreyfus affair in France (1895), and ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various

... whatever name it was known, Laura's ostracism was complete. She had been sampled, tested, put on one side. And not the softest-hearted could find an excuse ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson

... arrived, they were told, to their astonishment, that no women were to be admitted to the Convention as delegates. They had faced mobs and ostracism; they had given money and earnest labor, but they were to be ignored. William Lloyd Garrison, hurt at such injustice, refused to take part in the Convention, and sat in the gallery with the women. Although Mrs. Mott ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... lecture on George IV. excited, not, indeed, the same amount of newspaper-abuse as he had received from Canada, but a very angry feeling in the English aristocracy, some members of which attempted to punish him by a social ostracism. When I visited him in London, in July, 1856, he related this to me, with great good-humor. "There, for instance," said he, "is Lord ——" (a prominent English statesman) "who has dropped me from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various

... Tarbell displayed the tendency of the trusts, President Hadley, of Yale, had suggested that social ostracism, or social stigma, might be made an efficient tool for reform. Other writers used the tool. Lincoln Steffens, in a series of articles on "The Shame of the Cities," exposed the connection between graft and politics. Thomas Lawson, with spectacular exaggeration, laid the troubles ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... goes beyond a verbal demand or insult to the man or his family and involves any use of physical force is included in the meaning of the term, and the action ranges from small injuries to the clubbings which maim and kill. Moreover, social ostracism is to be rated as tantamount to force as a means of preventing a free movement ...
— Essentials of Economic Theory - As Applied to Modern Problems of Industry and Public Policy • John Bates Clark

... be, Professor Bernhardi, is carved out of a single block and the minor personalities are each and every one salient. I can't altogether believe in the thesis. Any one who has lived in Vienna must know that, except in certain restricted circles, there is no Judenhetz, no social ostracism for Hebrews. At the eleven-o'clock high mass in St. Stefan's Cathedral, the numbers of Oriental faces that one sees would be surprising if we did not hear of so many conversions. It is considered rather fashionable in Vienna to join the Christian fold. And on the score ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker

... those held by the majority of Socialists, whilst several Catholics, who disapproved of the terms on which the Congo was offered to the nation, did not hesitate to say so. None of these expressions of opinion involved ostracism from the party, and, although party discipline is strict, there is but little doubt that this freedom of movement in respect to non-party questions will continue to grow. The annexation of the Congo was voted in due course, but the original draft ...
— Proportional Representation - A Study in Methods of Election • John H. Humphreys

... affair might have lasted but for the fact that a husband, or somebody, unexpectedly turned up—a husky little man with a cast in one eye, who looked uxorious to an alarming degree. He carried her off in the nick of time to save Mr. Eames from social ostracism, mental dotage, and financial ruin. Her mere appearance had made him the laughing-stock of the place; her appetite had led him into outlays altogether incompatible with his income, chiefly in the matter of pastries, macaroons, fondants, ices, caramels, chocolates, jam tartlets and, ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas

... ostracism, and one can almost imagine that it was devised by the man's friends—a sort of heroic treatment prescribed by a great spiritual physician. Personality repels as well as attracts: the people grow tired of hearing Aristides called the Just—he is exiled. For ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... itself a volume of testimony. It shows that the Negro is still regarded as a sort of social and political pariah, whom no white person may teach without incurring social ostracism and being degraded to the level of the social outcast he or she would elevate in the scale of being. Is it surprising that the Negro is dissatisfied with his condition and desires to emigrate to some country where his children may hope for ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various

... are considered of a more inferior order than the men of the family and are treated with little respect, being virtually slaves. The higher class lead secluded lives, but do not escape the inflexible law that demands the marriage of a girl by the age of fourteen, or the ostracism thrust upon the child widow, who, on returning to a home of which she was once an honored member, finds herself virtually an outcast. Her pretty clothes are taken from her, and she is required to do the menial work of the family; this is the Indian ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck

... as a hero in permitting himself to be pilloried as a libertine, it was preferable of course not to have incurred ostracism thereby. His common-sense conceded this; and yet, to Colonel Musgrave, it could not but be evident that Destiny was hardly rising to the possibilities ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell

... old forms of religious persecution. In both, a man may profess and proclaim any kind of religion or of no religion. But in both, the advance guard of the Christian Church, which seeks to apply Christ's teachings more rigidly to individual and social life, has to face obloquy, ostracism, misrepresentation, from the world and the fossil church, for not serving their gods, nor worshipping the golden image which they have set up. Martyrs will be needed and persecutors will exist till ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... pitch of absurdity. The facts are: B. & E. were the publishers of Household Words. They objected to Dickens explaining in H.W. He insisted. They said that in that case they must take H.W. out of his hands. Dickens, like a lion threatened with ostracism by a louse in his tail, published his explanation, which stands to this day, and informed his readers that they were to ask in future, not for Household Words, but for All the Year Round. Household Words, left Dickensless, gasped for a few weeks and died. All the Year ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward

... the town classed Madame Graslin among the devotes, the ultras. To the different animosities Veronique had innocently acquired, the virulence of party feeling now added its periodical exasperation. But as this ostracism took nothing really from her, she quietly left society and lived in books which offered her such infinite resources. She meditated on what she read, she compared systems, she widened immeasurably the horizons of her intellect and the extent of her education; ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac

... and finding its auxiliaries in modern science and modern literature; with these educational essentials the Negro problem for the South will be solved without recourse to violent measures of any kind, whether migration, or disfranchisement, or ostracism." In December, 1893, Walter H. Page, writing in the Forum of lynching under the title, "The Last Hold of the Southern Bully," said that "the great danger is not in the first violation of law, nor in the crime itself, but ...
— A Social History of the American Negro • Benjamin Brawley

... of Philosophical Transactions there is no speculation upon this extraordinary subject. Ostracism. The fate of this datum is a good instance of damnation, not by denial, and not by explaining away, but by simple disregard. The fall is listed by Chladni, and is mentioned in other catalogues, but, from the absence of all inquiry, and of all but formal mention, we see that it has been ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort

... some relief in our change of living. If nothing else, I was escaping from the organized ostracism that had been our increasing portion in the university town ever since the enmity of the nascent Oligarchy had been incurred. And the change was to me likewise adventure, and the greatest of all, for it was ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... Association of the State. This action of his is a straw which shows which way the wind of religious thought blows among the intelligent colored people of the South. The weather-vane points toward Congregationalism. An aged pastor, who had endured ostracism and violence in New York State in the early times, on account of his anti-slavery opinions, was present during the meetings of the Association, and added greatly to their interest. It was a thrilling sight ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 2, February 1888 • Various

... conquered, or adjusted in every human being. It essays to bar all progress; Ignorance and Superstition are its blinded handmaids. It exacts the fearful penalties of scornfully misunderstood efforts, if not ostracism and persecution, for the use of the diviner faculties. It is the spirit of unconquered ill. It is the genius of the utterly selfish will ...
— Insights and Heresies Pertaining to the Evolution of the Soul • Anna Bishop Scofield

... cautioned calmly. "Permit me to say you love the position he has given you. You love the pedestal on which you stand so insecurely. You would rather hear his curse than to see the hand of social ostracism raised against you. Wait! A word from me and not only David Cable, but the whole world would ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon

... furnishing security in their degradation for a final submission to whatever may be required of them; and last, a despised class, too poor to live without labor, and too proud to live by labor, assuming a position not accorded to them, and finally yielding to a social and political ostracism even more degrading, to a sensitive mind, than the servient condition they with so much effort seek ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell

... from the world, voluntary exile; aloofness. cell, hermitage; convent &c. 1000; sanctum sanctorum[Lat]. depopulation, desertion, desolation; wilderness &c. (unproductive) 169; howling wilderness; rotten borough, Old Sarum. exclusion, excommunication, banishment, exile, ostracism, proscription; cut, cut direct; dead cut. inhospitality[obs3], inhospitableness &c. adj.; dissociability[obs3]; domesticity, Darby and Joan. recluse, hermit, eremite, cenobite; anchoret[obs3], anchorite; Simon Stylites[obs3]; troglodyte, Timon of Athens[obs3], Santon[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... projected, the White South that then was, fought them with every weapon at its command. Ridicule, villification, ostracism, violence, arson, murder were all employed to hinder the progress of the work. Outsiders looked on and thought it strange that they should do this. But, just as a snake, though a venomous animal, by instinct knows its enemy and fights ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... German houses, and their methods were identical with those of the Banca Commerciale: long credits and easy modes of repayment offered to all those who agreed to deal with German firms, while discredit, ostracism, and ruin threatened the recalcitrant. And as Italian money and Italian institutions were employed as instruments of German interpenetration in foreign countries,[45] so Russian funds and banks were used as helps to German interpenetration ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon

... was the most impressive I ever attended. Aaron and I had spoken, Charles Remond followed, picturing the contumely and opprobrium everywhere heaped upon the black man and all identified with him, the ostracism from social circles, etc. At the climax he exclaimed: "I have a fond and loving mother, as true and noble a woman as God ever made; but whenever she thinks of her absent son, it is that he is an ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... the plane of culture the colored women and girls reach, the more sensitive they become, and the more keenly the effects of ostracism are felt. In wages it does not matter how capable she may be, she must not aspire. I have asked several persons, "What is the greatest need of the colored woman and girl?" and many have replied, "To be good servants." Assuming ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 1, January, 1889 • Various

... the buying of slaves for domestic, or field service, was legitimate, the man who pursued the traffic as a business, and purchased merely to sell again, was despised. He was termed a "nigger-buyer," and was a pariah in the lowest sense of ostracism. It was claimed that there was a distinction with a very great difference. Three or four servants for ordinary household duties were deemed sufficient. On a farm more hands were needed, and the plantations ...
— Historic Papers on the Causes of the Civil War • Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts

... which it will cease to exist; to lay down precise rules of right and wrong conduct; to discriminate infallibly between virtuous and vicious character; and all this with such certainty that they are prepared to visit all the rigors of the law, and all the ruinous penalties of social ostracism on people, however harmless their actions maybe who venture to laugh at their monstrous conceit or to pay their assumptions the extravagant compliment of criticizing them. As to children, who shall say what ...
— A Treatise on Parents and Children • George Bernard Shaw

... Stedman for a portrait, and the need of money grew imperative. He the more blamed Frances for having quarrelled with her aunt, told her it was for her money he had married her, that she had ruined his career, and that she was to blame for his ostracism—a condition that his own misconduct had brought upon him. Finally, after twelve months of this, one morning he left a note saying he no longer would allow her to be a drag upon him, and ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis

... Bernard Battle, and he remembered suddenly that he must have hated him always—that he had hated him long ago in his childhood when the weak-faced boy had headed a school faction against him. True, Dudley Webb had incited the attempt at social ostracism, but he bore no resentment against Dudley—on the contrary, he was convinced that he liked him in spite of all—in spite, even, of Eugenia. With the inflexible fairness that he never lost, he knew that, with Eugenia, Dudley had not wronged him. It had been a fight in open field, and Dudley had ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... embarrassments. If it were once known that he possessed it, would not even his friends avoid him? For how could any one, knowing his most secret thought was at the mercy of another, be happy in that other's presence? His power would lead to his social ostracism. Indeed, he could see that his gift might easily become a curse. He decided not to act hastily, that for the present he had best give no hint to others of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis

... legislator or the successful soldier might dare to encroach upon their liberties in the moment when the nation was intoxicated and dazzled with their genius, their prowess, and success; but a sudden revulsion of popular feeling, and an explosion of popular indignation, would overturn the one, and ostracism expel the other. Thus while inconstancy, and turbulence, and faction seem to have been inseparable from the democratic spirit, the Athenians were certainly constant in their love of liberty, faithful in their affection for their country,[33] and invariable in their sympathy ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... Republic, determines its national policy, disposes of its offices, and sways all to its absolute will." . . . . "In maintaining its power, the slave oligarchy has applied a new test for office"—. . . . "Is he faithful to slavery?" . . . . "With arrogant ostracism, it excludes from every national office all who can not respond to this test." Hon. L. D. Campbell, in a letter to the Cincinnati Convention of Colored Freemen, January 5, 1852, said: "I regard the present position of your race in this country as infinitely worse than ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... his habitually contemplating it and assimilating the scheme of life in which it belongs; but it does so also indirectly through popular insistence on conformity to the accepted scale of expenditure as a matter of propriety, under pain of disesteem and ostracism. To accept and practice the standard of living which is in vogue is both agreeable and expedient, commonly to the point of being indispensable to personal comfort and to success in life. The standard ...
— The Theory of the Leisure Class • Thorstein Veblen

... band of abolitionists—of men, in other words, who believed that the only solution of the slavery question was to put an end to that institution at once and forever. Of the persecutions which were visited on the abolitionists we have spoken when telling the story of Lucretia Mott. Social ostracism was ...
— American Men of Mind • Burton E. Stevenson

... It was ostracism and exile that gave Copernicus the leisure to pursue his studies in quiet, undiverted, undisturbed. He was relieved from financial pinch, having all he needed for his simple, homely wants. The mental distance that separated ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard

... citizenship to many foreigners and emancipated slaves ("freedmen") then living in Attica. This liberal measure swelled the number of citizens and helped to make the Athenians a more progressive people. Clisthenes, it is said, also established the curious arrangement known as ostracism. Every year, if necessary, the citizens were to meet in assembly and to vote against any persons whom they thought dangerous to the state. If as many as six thousand votes were cast, the man who received the highest number of votes had to go into honorable exile for ten years. [25] Though ostracism ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... in one's mind. Is there such a thing as social ostracism in the bird world? Might these hilltop eremites have committed some crime or some breach of decorum that effected their banishment from respectable avicular society? Or were they simply of a sullen or retiring disposition, choosing seclusion rather than the company of their ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... the New England conscience. For, of course, that frame of mind has been driven in on the English Catholics. The centuries that they have gone through—centuries of blind and malignant oppression, of ostracism from public employment, of being, as it were, a small beleagured garrison in a hostile country, and therefore having to act with great formality—all these things have combined to perform that conjuring trick. And I suppose that Papists in ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... Harold, in astonishment. Notwithstanding his regard for his friend, he had never doubted that there must have been some appalling piece of persecution to justify this determined ostracism. ...
— Stories by English Authors: Ireland • Various

... were deprived, not only of all rights to the land, but, as a corollary, of all social privileges whatsoever. "The law," said an Irish Lord Chancellor, "does not suppose any such person to exist as an Irish Roman Catholic." The instrument of ostracism was the famous Penal Code, begun in William's reign in direct and immediate defiance of a solemn pledge given in the Treaty of Limerick, guaranteeing liberty of conscience to the Catholics, and perfected ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers

... a separate form or part of the goddess, so that her land should only be tilled by the descendants of the cultivators who were in communion with her. The severe caste penalties attached to getting vermin in a wound, involving a long period of complete ostracism and the most elaborate ceremonies of purification, may perhaps be explained by the idea that the man so afflicted has in his body an alien and hostile life which is incompatible with his forming part of the common life of the caste or subcaste. The leading ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India—Volume I (of IV) • R.V. Russell

... as a possibility, had not entered the mind of either. They had lived a long time; they were practical people. They knew from the outset that somehow they must arrange to go on together. The alternative meant a mere pittance of alimony for her; meant for him social ostracism and the small income cut in half; meant ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips

... statesman, surnamed The Just; covered himself with glory at the battle of Marathon; was made archon next year, in the discharge of the duties of which office he received his surname; was banished by ostracism at the instance of his rival, Themistocles; recalled three years after the invasion of Xerxes, was reconciled to Themistocles, fought bravely at Salamis, and distinguished himself at Plataea; managed the finances of the State with ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... dainty flower-like sweetness of a Japanese maid, and practically the same code, had lived in his protection before this. After the nursing incident he had married her, with benefit of clergy, and the result had been hell, a living suicide, ostracism. A good officer, he still remained Deputy Commissioner, the highest official of the district, but the social excellence was wiped out—he was a pariah, an outcast. And the girl, who now could not remain just a native, could not attain to the ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... gentility and good-breeding went hand in hand with loyalty to everything England did, and that disaffection was but another name for vulgarity and ignorance. Despite this notion, I had still chosen disaffection, but I cannot say that I was altogether pleased with the ostracism from congenial companionship which this seemed to involve. Hence the charm of my discovery in Albany that the best and wisest of its citizens, the natural leaders of its social, commercial, and political life, were of my ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic

... ever. His rank forbade any intimacy with his miserable handful of men, who had already fallen into the monotony of routine, while every friendly overture he made towards the citizens of Flambeau was met with distrust and coldness, his stripes of office seeming to erect a barrier and induce an ostracism stronger and more complete than if they had been emblems of the penitentiary. He began to resent it keenly. Even Doret and the trader seemed to share the general feeling, hence the thought of the long, lonesome winter approaching reduced the Lieutenant to a state of black ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach

... But, father dear, the age is fast commercializing everything. I think our especial set is as yet comparatively free from contamination by the 'lately rich'; but even among us money has glossed many offenses that a generation ago would have meant social ostracism." ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in Society • Edith Van Dyne

... legislators have endeavoured to put restraints upon ambition, their methods were as violent, as in the end they were ineffectual: as violent indeed as any the most jealous despotism could invent. The ostracism could not very long save itself, and much less the state which it was meant to guard, from the attempts of ambition, one of the natural, inbred, incurable ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... $6,000 for its support. The Board then gave in and proceeded to organize the College, to the great concern of the members of the regular Medical Faculty, many of whom were threatened with professional ostracism, since they were expected to give several preliminary courses to the students in the new college. The venerable Dr. Sager, who was then Emeritus Professor, even thought it necessary to resign all connection with the University. ...
— The University of Michigan • Wilfred Shaw

... of the Southern States is, unhappily, not such as all true patriotic citizens would like to see. Social ostracism for opinion's sake, personal violence or threats toward persons entertaining political views opposed to those entertained by the majority of the old citizens, prevents immigration and the flow of much-needed capital into the States lately in rebellion. It will be a happy condition ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Ulysses S. Grant • James D. Richardson

... process of purification and we must continually try to touch the hearts of those who differ from us, their minds, and their emotions, but never their bodies. Discipline and restraint are the cardinal principles of our conduct and I warn you against any sort of tyrannical social ostracism. I was deeply grieved therefore to hear of the insult offered to a dead body in Delhi and feel that if it was the action of non-co-operators they have disgraced themselves and their creed. I repeat we cannot deliver our land ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi

... legitimate and otherwise, adopted by the League for the accomplishment of its ends, was that form of social ostracism now familiarly known as "boycotting." Captain Boycott was an Englishman, employed as agent of Lord Earne, and occupied a farm at Ballinrobe, near Lough Mask. Emboldened by the powerful protection of the League, Lord Earne's tenants had refused to pay the stipulated ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various

... very late at night,—one o'clock,—and Kate is not yet asleep, and the captain is still down-stairs, reading. He is not looking well at all, and Kate is sorely anxious about him. It was his evidence that brought years of ostracism and misery upon Lieutenant Hayne, and there are vague indications that in his own regiment the officers are beginning to believe that possibly he was not the guilty man. The cavalry officers, of course, say nothing to us on the subject, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King

... they wisely assume the respectable shelter of the wedding ring, and call themselves Mr and Mrs. Thus their little fledgling of free love is not required to battle against the overwhelming force of social ostracism. And moreover one has no means of knowing how long these unions stand the supreme test of time. The two notable modern instances of free love that naturally rise to the mind are George Eliot and Mary Godwin. But both the men with whom they mated ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby

... or later and that the marriage was very far from being a happy one. As a matter of fact, he learned later that the county, to a woman, had refused to accept Lady Wilding; that her ladyship, chafing under this ostracism, was for having a number of her old professional friends come down to visit her and make a time of it, and that, on Sir Henry's objecting, a violent quarrel had ensued, and the Rev. Ambrose Smeer had come down to the hall in the effort to make peace. And he learned something else that night which ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew

... Congress and the Executive, but never before characterized by the intensity, not infrequently malevolence, that had come to mark this and never before had a division between the Executive and the Congress reached a point at which a suggestion of his constitutional ostracism from office had been seriously ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... state of agitation and [foment?]. The air is laden with rumors of a [rising?] conflict between the North and the South, and any want of allegiance to Southern opinions is punished either as a crime if the offender is a man, or with social ostracism and insult if ...
— Minnie's Sacrifice • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... been already said and done? Has not 'the general voice of his countrymen' long ago pronounced upon the subject—sentence without trial, and condemnation without a charge? Have I not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells which proscribed me were anonymous? Is the writer ignorant of the public opinion and the public conduct upon that occasion? If he is, I am not: the public will forget both long before I shall ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron

... as I believe, served him but too faithfully through good and ill, until death broke the bond between two men who were not fitted to lead the comparatively calm, eventless life which the laws of society, and the wants of the many prescribe to all; under penalty of social ostracism to the few who scorn to be fettered by a multitude of ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall

... in the most convenient place, and, like Caesar beside Pompey's statue, wrapped his mantle about his face and forgot the world. He was a vagabond Indian, abandoned yet self-contained, outcast yet gregarious. No social ostracism unnerved him, no threats of the H. B. C. officials moved him; and when in the winter of 187 he was driven from one place to another, starving and homeless, and came at last emaciated and nearly dead to the Post at Yellow Quill, he asked for food and shelter as if ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... days," smiled the lieutenant, "such a suspicion against a cadet officer would certainly have resulted in ostracism for him." ...
— Dick Prescotts's Fourth Year at West Point - Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps • H. Irving Hancock

... a gentleman of his station should not run any risk of appearing as a 'negro trader,' the last word of opprobrium to be slung at a man. So far as I can remember, this rule was well kept and social ostracism was likely to be visited on any one who was fairly suspected of buying or selling slaves for profit. This state of opinion was, I believe, very general among the better class of slave owners in Kentucky. When negroes were sold it was because they were vicious and intractable. Yet there were exceptions ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... of rebels who turn a deaf ear to epithets, ostracism is brought to bear. This may vary from the "cold shoulder" to the complete "boycott." Losing the friendship and approval of comrades, being cut off from social sympathy, is a familiar form of group pressure. Ridicule and derision are a kind of evanescent ostracism, ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... "I am not prepared to discuss any policy of ostracism. What you call our 'tail' is a vital section of our party. Their creed may be one-sided, but it is none the less part of ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan

... source of political strength and of weakness. The moralist unquestionably secures wide popular support; but he also wearies his audience, and many a voter has turned from Wilson in the spirit that led the Athenian to vote for the ostracism of Aristides, because he was tired of hearing him called "the Just." Whatever the immediate political effects, the country owes to Wilson a debt, which historians will doubtless acknowledge, for his insistence that morality must go hand in hand with public policy, that as with individuals, ...
— Woodrow Wilson and the World War - A Chronicle of Our Own Times. • Charles Seymour

... that the match was broken off. The horse-stealing story, more or less garbled, found its way through lips that pretended to decry it, yet eagerly repeated it. Only one member of the Rightbody family—and a new one—saved them from utter ostracism. It was young Mr. Ryder, the adopted son of the prospective head of the household, whose culture, manners, and general elegance, fascinated and thrilled Boston with a new sensation. It seemed to many ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... respectability; thousands of young women who should be honored wives and happy mothers are thrown upon their own resources,—forced to choose between virtue and rags and silks and shame. The latter soon learn that honest poverty brings almost as complete social ostracism, almost as much contumely, as dishonest finery, and, despairing of ever becoming true men's wives, too many of ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... Daniel, who was then too far away to be on hand in time to hear what was to have been said before death ensued. Thus died a man who was brave enough, in the midst of environments that were exacting to the extent of active ostracism for his assertion of his belief that the Negro is a real human being, possessed of a mind, soul and rights to happiness, and should share in the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... either, to "ride your hobby" at a dinner party, and the real truth as to the cause of the sudden social ostracism of young Freddie H——, a New York clubman of some years ago (now happily deceased), is that on one occasion this young fellow, who had developed a craze for marksmanship amounting almost to a mania, very nearly ruined a dinner party given by a prominent Boston society matron by ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart

... Nottingham addressed the following letter to the Pall Mall Gazette, in May 1870:—Sir,—The fox is tolerated, nay preserved (under the penalty of conventional ostracism against his slayers,) because he is the only animal with whose intellect man may measure himself upon equal terms without an overwhelming sense of the odds in his favour. The lion, the elephant, the ibex, the chamois, and the red deer are beasts of chase falling before man, ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... the sympathies and efforts of the Association have run. It pleaded for the slave in his bondage, when to do so cost odium and ostracism; it joined with others in the appeal against slavery, with the hope that righteousness would avert the calamity of war. When the slave came forth free, it went with prompt hands to fit him for his new position, and now, as he enters the long and dark struggle against poverty, ignorance and ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various

... 1300),—an office which the Florentines had made bimestrial in its tenure, in order apparently to secure at least six constitutional chances of revolution in the year. He advised that the leaders of both parties should be banished to the frontiers, which was forthwith done; the ostracism including his relative Corso Donati among the Neri, and his most intimate friend the poet Guido Cavalcanti among the Bianchi. They were all permitted to return before long (but after Dante's term of office ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell

... the world, but who really trained Pericles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a busybody ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various

... reasons—innumerable ones, in fact; some of them adequate, others entirely inconsistent, that Princess Mirski or Madame Apukhtin might have named. Yet, in the final summing-up, there would probably have been a traditional indefiniteness about the wherefore of the Gregoriev ostracism. It was simply understood, instinctively, throughout Moscow, that no person of that name was knowable. And this fact, mirabile dictu, had, after long cogitation, been at last borne in upon ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter

... skirts from blowing up and entangling her waist, denotes that she will carry on a secret flirtation and will be horrified to find that scandal has gotten possession of her name and she will run a close risk of disgrace and ostracism. ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller



Words linked to "Ostracism" :   Coventry, ejection, exclusion, ostracize, ostracise, expulsion, riddance



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