"Autocrat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... same wooden indifference he always exhibited. But Patsy detected a slight twinkle in the shrewd gray eyes that made her feel they were welcome. Carg, a seaman of vast experience, was wholly devoted to his young master. Indeed, the girls suspected that young Jones was a veritable autocrat in his island, as well as aboard his ship. Everyone of the Sangoans seemed to accept his dictation, however imperative it might be, as a matter of course, and the gray old captain—who had seen much of the world—was not the least subservient to his ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... in the interests of the colonial clique, was rendered of none effect. In fact, he was subservient to the wishes of those who had all long objected to those measures, but had not dared even to hint their objections to the beneficent autocrat who had willed and given them effect for the general welfare. After Governor Longden came Sir Henry Turner Irving, a personage who brought to Trinidad a reputation for all the vulgar colonial prejudices which, discreditable enough ...
— West Indian Fables by James Anthony Froude Explained by J. J. Thomas • J. J. (John Jacob) Thomas
... counties restricted to a few of the chief families—in the boroughs thrown into the hands of the Baillies, who were venal beyond conception. It was the day, too, of Henry Dundas. A prominent member of the Pitt administration, he ruled Scotland as an autocrat, and as the dispenser of all her patronage. A patriotic autocrat no doubt, loving his country, and providing well for those of her people whom he favoured—still an autocrat. The despotism of Dundas has been pictured, in colours we may well believe sufficiently strong, by ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... years I have filled high positions in the State, and my long experience has shown me that when the ruling power is weak the people are oppressed. Those, therefore, who—like the great majority of rhetoricians—try to weaken the government, commit an abominable crime. An autocrat, who governs by his single will, may sometimes cause most deplorable results; but if he governs by popular consent there is no remedy possible. Before the majesty of the Roman arms had bestowed peace upon all the world, ...
— Thais • Anatole France
... who, with a hand still reeking from the massacre of 40,000 combatants, began his dispatch to the Autocrat in these words:— ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... telling him he was an autocrat; which disturbed his graven serenity. Autocrat and autocracy were not pleasant-sounding words just then. He snapped his head up, and for the first time looked as ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... mollified the martinet Miller himself. It was he who had managed the starting-rope in every race, and his voice from the towing path had come to be looked upon as a safe guide for clapping on or rowing steady. Even Miller, autocrat as he was, had come to listen for it, in confirmation of his own judgment, before calling on the crew ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... of only 15,000 men. I have to request you, therefore, to come forward with all the available force under your command. So important do I consider the occasion that I think it necessary to give this communication all the force of orders, and I send four boats, the Diana, Woodford, John Rain, and Autocrat, to bring you up. In five or six days my force will probably ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... a strong one. A cricket captain may seem to be an autocrat of tremendous power, but in reality he has only one weapon, the keenness of those under him. With the majority, of course, the fear of being excluded or ejected from a team is a spur that drives. The majority, consequently, are ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... translation gave rise to a number of literary quarrels. As Dean of Ch. Ch., Dr. Fell yielded to the besetting sin of deans, and fancied himself the absolute master of the University, if not something superior to mortal kind. An autocrat of this sort had no scruples about changing Wood's copy whenever he differed from Wood in political or religious opinion. Now Antony, as we said, had eyes to discern the greatness of Hobbes, whom the Dean considered no better than a Deist ...
— Oxford • Andrew Lang
... colleagues, Papillon and other Whig shareholders sold their stock and severed their connection with the company. Their places on the directorate were filled up by others who were devoted to Child and his policy, and thenceforth Child became the autocrat of the company. "The treasures of the company were absolutely at his disposal.... A present of ten thousand guineas was graciously received from him by Charles. Ten thousand more were accepted by James, who readily consented to become a holder ...
— London and the Kingdom - Volume II • Reginald R. Sharpe
... have heard much of it from the broken wretches who have been fortunate enough to escape, after years of toil and suffering. They know that the innocent as well as the guilty are liable to be sent there; that thousands upon thousands have died or been murdered there by the autocrat's petty tyrants, placed there to guard and work them, and that their bones molder or bleach upon the inhospitable shores, where wolves lay in wait for the bodies of victims which are thrown where they can reach them, and thus ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold
... For a man is never thrown upon his mettle, nor are his true resources made known even to himself, until to some extent he finds himself resisted (or at least modified) by the reaction of those around him. That day, says Homer, robs a man of half his value which sees him made a slave. But to be an autocrat is as perilous as to be a slave. And supposing Homer to have been introduced to Coleridge (a supposition which a learned man at my elbow pronounces intolerable—'It's an anachronism, sir, a base anachronism!' Well, but one may suppose anything, however base), ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... great man who rejoiced in the appearance of Luther's theses; and this was Erasmus, the greatest scholar of his age, the autocrat of letters, and, at that time, living in Basle. He was born in Rotterdam, in 1467, of poor parents, but early attracted notice for his attainments, and early emancipated himself from the trammels of scholasticism, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... never been obedient. She has always had the germ of the ruler and autocrat in her soul. It was born when Eve first looked with longing eyes at the apple swinging in ...
— Fair to Look Upon • Mary Belle Freeley
... the death-signal! Would he give the other half,—the downward gesture? The baffled rebels tasted all the bitterness of death in that agonizing suspense. They felt that their lives were literally in his grasp; and so the stern autocrat wished them to feel, for he knew it was a lesson ...
— The Bridge of the Gods - A Romance of Indian Oregon. 19th Edition. • Frederic Homer Balch
... seems, had so bothered the stable-boss with questions about the farm, its location, distance from the city, and general management, that at last that autocrat had said: "See here, Doyle, if you want to go up there just say so and I'll send you as car hostler with the next batch. I'll give you a note to the farm superintendent. Guess he'll let you hang around ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... evidence had been secured that Gorham himself had, at least in one instance, taken advantage of his position for personal gain. What this instance was his informant could not at that moment say—the facts were being carefully compiled, but the evidence was beyond dispute. This autocrat, who talked of principle and honor, had been caught red-handed in the very act against which he pretended to stand; and, of course, this instance was but one of many. Doctor Jekyll could take it upon himself to deliver platitudes upon moral rectitude, while Mr. Hyde ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, the masters, have anything to do with the making or keeping them so. I maintain that despotism is the best kind of government for them; so that in the hours in which I come in contact with them I must necessarily be an autocrat. I will use my best discretion—from no humbug or philanthropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the North—to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my business—laws and decisions which work for my own ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... wars in heaven as described in Paradise Lost, gashes deep in the celestial bodies but closing instantly. In those years Dr. Holmes was himself an enthusiastic oarsman and that night whom should we encounter alone in his little skiff but the Autocrat himself, out for his pleasure; he was plainly recognisable, though in most informal athletic dress, and as we sped past him a few rods away, Eliot from the stroke shouted a greeting over the water. "Why, Charlie," came ringing back ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... scheme which, in its final accomplishment, would avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, and in the course of its accomplishment might furnish him with ample occasions for removing his other enemies. It may be readily supposed, indeed, that he who could deliberately raise his eyes to the Russian autocrat as an antagonist 5 in single duel with himself was not likely to feel much anxiety about Kalmuck enemies of whatever rank. He took his resolution, therefore, sternly and irrevocably, to effect this astonishing translation of an ancient people across the pathless deserts of Central ...
— De Quincey's Revolt of the Tartars • Thomas De Quincey
... said it brusquely, almost rudely, and Diana was taken with a sudden desperate inclination to laugh. All in a moment he reminded her forcibly of the uniformed autocrat holding up one lordly hand to stop the traffic. She moved towards the entrance, keeping her face averted. "The same sort of policeman as Mr. Stanley, I suppose?" she suggested, affably, but he seemed ...
— The Rhodesian • Gertrude Page
... pride and high living, two delicious capital sins. Adolphe is gaining ground again, but alas! (this reflection is worth a whole sermon in Lent) sin, like all pleasure, contains a spur. Vice is like an Autocrat, and let a single harsh fold in a rose-leaf irritate it, it forgets a thousand charming bygone flatteries. With Vice a man's course must always be ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... patricians, and autocrat of bons-vivants, had a mountain cut through in the neighborhood of Naples, so as to open a canal, and bring up the sea and its fishes to the centre of the gardens of his sumptuous villa. So Cicero ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... driven the weavers of Silesia to a state of frenzy and tumult almost resembling a Jacquerie; and there and elsewhere serfs and peasants talked openly of casting off the restraints and burdens of Feudalism. In such a case the veriest autocrat must pause before he commits his country to the risks of a loan (that of 1792 had exhausted Prussia's credit), or to a campaign where the losses were certain and the gains doubtful. On this last topic various schemes had been bandied to and fro between Berlin ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose
... governor, sovereign, monarch, president, king, potentate, dynast, lord, satrap, rajah, emir, caliph, burgrave, procurator, Pharaoh, interregent, despot, regent, dominator, arbiter, viceroy, vicegerent, autocrat, oligarch, liege lord, protector, kaiser, czar, dey, doge, mogul, pasha, bey, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... One might think that a man, even a ship's autocrat, when detected in an attempt at cold-blooded murder, would make some specious explanation of his act. Not Swope. No hypocritical contrition showed in the face the lantern lighted; rather, a cool, pitiless inhumanity that ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... response to Ingeborg's grateful anxiety to return my hospitality—I went to dine with her 'children.' I found Axel occupying the seat of honour, and grumbling at the soup and the sauces like a sort of autocrat of the dinner-table, and generally making things unpleasant. I had to cling to my knife and fork so as not to throw the water-bottle at his head. Ingeborg presided meekly over the dishes, her ugliness more rampant than ever after the illusion of the mask. I remembered ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... averse to rest. The eyes of the two young women did not linger more upon the wounded man than upon his brother. He, in turn, looked straight into their eyes, courteously, respectfully, gravely, yet fearlessly and calmly, as though he knew what power and possibilities were his. Enigma and autocrat alike, Beau Law of Edinboro', one of the handsomest and properest men ever bred on any soil, was surely a picture of vigorous young manhood, as he rode toward Sadler's Wells, with two of the beauties of the hour, and in a coach and four which might ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... social privilege, social distinction. Implied, further, of administrative and personal power—all it set forth of the somewhat rugged facts of his profession and daily environment. Of this small world he was undisputed autocrat, Grand Cham of this miniature Tartary—of this iron-walled two-thousand-ton empire, the great ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... "You smell the autocrat? Yes, he can mould and govern the creatures about him. His toughest rebel is himself! If you see Clara . . . You wish to see ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... increasing satisfaction, she studied her husband's character, finding, like all new wives, that almost all her preconceived ideas of him had been wrong. Like all the world, she had always fancied Greg something of an autocrat, positive almost to ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... fire on a Saturday night, still survives as the "Three Horseshoes"—the inn to which the secret-looking man who stirred his rum and water with a file, brought Magwitch's two one-pound notes for Pip, and the redoubtable Jaggers, the autocrat of the Old Bailey, with his burly form, great head, and huge, cross-examining forefinger announced to Pip his Great Expectations. Down the river in the direction of yonder "distant savage lair", ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... mankind are necessarily occupied with petits soins and apt to be dulled by the mechanical routine of their daily lives. Latterly he often told me that, after all, there was a great deal to be said for the rule of the enlightened autocrat. "But," he said, "the mischief is that you can't guarantee a succession of enlightened autocrats; so we must make the best of the rule of the majority." The backwardness of England in education used to make him wring his hands. To ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... in his hand, Judge Enderby bearded the autocrat of the Clan Macgregor on his own deck to such good purpose that Miss Cecily Wayne presently learned of the end of her troubles so far as prospective incarceration went. The knowledge, preserved intact for her own uses, put in her hand a dire weapon for ...
— Little Miss Grouch - A Narrative Based on the Log of Alexander Forsyth Smith's - Maiden Transatlantic Voyage • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... great people—but it is not them you represent. You represent an hereditary monarch, the only one in western Europe who still speaks of the divine right of Kings—a man who would be an absolute autocrat, if he dared. Supporting him is a powerful circle of hereditary nobles, whose interest it is to increase in every possible way the prestige and power of the throne. At their command, ready to do their bidding, is a magnificent ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... trampled on the liberty of the rising press, which was the most hopeful educational influence in the country; and he created superfluous ministerial portfolios for his untalented brothers. In fact he reglamented Greece from his palace at Aigina like a divinely appointed autocrat, from his arrival in January 1828 till the summer of 1831, when he provoked the Hydhriots to open rebellion, and commissioned the Russian squadron in attendance to quell them by a naval action, with the result that Poros was sacked by the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth
... faith, that reforms must come from the Emperor to the people, yet he desired that the Emperor should be a Russian Liberal—a very different thing from a "European" Liberal, but still something different from Alexander III. or from Count Tolstoi's ideal of a Russian autocrat.... ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke V1 • Stephen Gwynn
... John Knox reproved his queen in the accents of modern democracy. In the town, in one of those little shops plastered like so many swallows' nests among the buttresses of the old Cathedral, that familiar autocrat, James VI., would gladly share a bottle of wine with George Heriot the goldsmith. Up on the Pentland Hills, that so quietly look down on the Castle with the city lying in waves around it, those mad and dismal fanatics, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... man is eager for expansion and liberty, and accustoms himself with difficulty to the severe restrictions which social necessities impose upon him. His nature is still that of a semi-nomadic animal, living as an autocrat with his family, possessed of a number of egoistic wants, and, wherever he goes, opposing the rights, liberties and desires of other men, who generally compel him to subordinate his desires to theirs. This is ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... impression she made was nevertheless one of luxury. On the other hand, her sister had her dresses from Paris, and wore them and her ornaments according to all the formulas; she was good-naturedly correct, and bent her round white shoulders to whatever burden the Parisian autocrat chose to put upon them. Madeleine never interfered, ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... within five years. There were various interests, and some of these would advance the request, "Tell us what you are to recommend; let us have a part in framing the laws under which we are to be governed. You are an autocrat in your ways, and it is intolerable that we should not have ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... be sufficient to appreciate the horrors of war. But there are seasons when the evils of peace, though not so acutely felt, are immeasurably greater, and when a powerful nation, by admitting the right of any autocrat to do wrong, sows by such complicity the seeds of its own ruin, and overshadows itself in time to come with that fatal influence which great and ambitious powers are sure to ...
— Speeches: Literary and Social • Charles Dickens
... consuls, not less than others. And even the occasional dictator, if by law irresponsible, acted nevertheless as one who knew that any change which depressed his party, might eventually abrogate his privilege. For the first time in the person of an imperator was seen a supreme autocrat, who had virtually and effectively all the irresponsibility which the law assigned, and the origin of his office presumed. Satisfied to know that he possessed such power, Augustus, as much from natural taste as policy, was glad to dissemble it, and by every ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... forth. The duke's reply was to threaten him with arrest in case he should write any more letters upon this subject. Schiller now resolved to take his fate in his own hands. Resistance and submission to the autocrat were alike out of the question; the only recourse was flight ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... is a very remarkable body. It is practically a Home Rule authority for agricultural purposes only. The Irish Minister for Agriculture by no means rules as an autocrat. He has to submit his policy to a large "Advisory Council" of over 100 members elected by all the County Councils of Ireland. Out of this Council a committee is chosen which is practically a Cabinet. This Agricultural Parliament now ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... Here, while we are given a most charmingly sympathetic, delicate account of the bird "who has only to be seen or heard, and Death adjusts an arrow," it is the cardinal's pathetic fate that impresses one most. Seen through less poetical eyes, however, the bird appears to be a haughty autocrat, a sort of "F. F. V." among the feathered tribes, as, indeed, his title, "Virginia redbird," has been unkindly said to imply. Bearing himself with a refined and courtly dignity, not stooping to soil his feet by walking on the ground like the more democratic robin, or even ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... are, Esther," he said, in a disgusted voice; "but, there, you women are all alike," continued the youthful autocrat. "You pet one another's morbid fancies, and do no end of harm. Because Carrie wants cheering, you keep her low with all these books, which feed her gloomy ideas. What do you say? she likes it; well, many people like what is not good for them. I tell you she is ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... consummate it. With Russia on one side and France on the other, the only hope of Germany is in union. But this aim of the great Austrian statesman was defeated by the stupidity and greed of the Prussian king, and by his interested friendship with "the autocrat of all the Russias." Alexander got Poland, with an addition of about four million subjects to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... he did not like this—and though afterward, when he had also climbed the gate and taken up his station under a clump of trees at the autocrat's behest, he strove to soothe his ruffled feelings by the argument that it was probably the absolutely correct deportment for a shooting party, his mind remained unconvinced. Moreover, in parting from him, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... sought to break away from Austria. Kossuth heroically led the Hungarians against their Austrian masters, only to be beaten in the end because of the advent of the Russians, because one autocrat came to ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard
... being an entomologist; I quite agree with the "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table*", that "the subject is too vast for any single human intelligence to grasp." If my life depended upon it I could not give the scientific name of every least organ and nerve of a moth, and as for ...
— Moths of the Limberlost • Gene Stratton-Porter
... books which have made his name famous on two continents. Thackeray had passed his fortieth year before he produced his magnificent novel. Holmes, too, was more than forty when he began that unique and original book, "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," one of the most thoughtful, graceful, and able investigations into philosophy and culture ever written. We have the author in every mood, playful and pathetic, witty and wise. Who can ever forget the ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... wishes for fame in the times to come, but would rather be without it in his own day. In his dialogue on fortune and misfortune, the interlocutor, who maintains the futility of glory, has the best of the contest. But, at the same time, Petrarch is pleased that the autocrat of Byzantium knows him as well by his writings as Charles IV knows him. And in fact, even in his lifetime, his fame extended far beyond Italy. And the emotion which he felt was natural when his friends, on the occasion of a visit to his native Arezzo (1350), took him to ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... she opened an envelope that lay on the table within reach of her hand. "This is from my brother John—" and she turned toward Richard and Nathan. "He and Couture, in whose atelier I studied, are great friends. Now please pay attention Mr. Autocrat—" and she looked at Oliver over the edge of the letter ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... even the people—serfs of this boy autocrat though they were—began to murmur, and when one Sunday morning three clergymen preached from the text: "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child," the young sovereign remembered the counsels of his good mother and recalled the glories of his ancestors, saw how foolish and ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... want to read any more of it. You see that many of these statements are highly improbable. No, I shall not mention the paper.—The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... was the quick reply. "Uncle Peter may be an autocrat in his office, but I've noticed that Aunt Hannah is the ruler of ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... success, all he had to do was to make a present of gold to the Emperor, who immediately promulgated a law contrary to all those formerly in force. If, again, anyone else desired the revival of the law that had been repealed, the autocrat did not disdain to revoke the existing order of things and to reestablish it. There was nothing stable in his authority, but the balance of justice inclined to one side or the other, according to the weight of gold in either scale. In the market-place there were buildings under the management ...
— The Secret History of the Court of Justinian • Procopius
... Great White CZAR he has put down his foot; On the neck of the Hebrew that foot he will plant. Can fear strike a CAESAR—a Russian to boot? Can a ROMANOFF stoop to mere cowardly cant? Forbid it traditions of Muscovite pride! An Autocrat's place is the Conqueror's car, But he who that chariot in triumph would ride, Must not earn a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... assume an awful responsibility which Providence never meant them to handle. They had better let a great governing spirit like General Booth manage the whole thing in his own way. I am afraid I was even more of a democrat than even General Booth suspected. (Laughter.) I am an autocrat—I believe in one man doing a thing. Some persons imagine if they have got six little men together that they will total up into a Booth. The Lord makes His own Booths, and Moodys, and Spurgeons, and sends them out to do His work, and we shall ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... trousers, a flabby cravat, or a crumpled shirt collar. There was a touch of the magistrate in the man, a good deal more of the Councillor of the Prefecture, all the self-importance of the mayor of the arrondissement, the local autocrat, and the soured temper of the unsuccessful candidate who has never been returned since the year 1816. As to countenance—a wizened, wrinkled, sunburned face, and long, sleek locks of scanty gray hair; as to character—an incredible ...
— The Message • Honore de Balzac
... way to Seaford, which is nearly three miles east, sheltering under its white headland (a preliminary sketch, as one might say, for Beachy Head), we pass the Bishopstone tide mills, once the property of a sturdy and prosperous Sussex autocrat named William Catt, the grower of the best pears in the county, and the first to welcome Louis Philippe (whom he had advised on milling in France) when he landed at Newhaven in exile. A good story told of William Catt, by Mr. Lower, in his Worthies of Sussex, illustrates not only ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... willing or unwilling, does it follow that she will look with composure at a war on the limited monarchies in her neighborhood, which she has thought proper to recognize, and that war, too, headed by Russia? Jealous as she is, and with good reason, of the alarming strides of the great autocrat, and interfering, as she certainly did, with his distant enterprise upon Turkey, will she be content to see the kingdoms in her immediate neighborhood reduced to Russian dependencies, by those armies of occupation with which the success of Russia must be followed? Will Russia rise against the resistance ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt
... of this kind were very much in fashion during the years which followed the death of the great autocrat, Nicholas I., when the long-pent-up indignation against his severe, repressive regime was suddenly allowed free expression, and they were still much read during the first years of my stay in the country. Now the public taste has changed. The reform enthusiast ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... of his mother! As Managing Director of the Five Towns Universal Thrift Club, as proprietor of the majority of its shares, as its absolute autocrat, he was making very nearly four thousand a year. Why could he not as easily have said four as two to his mother? The simple answer is that he was afraid to say four. It was as if he ought to blush before his mother for being so plutocratic, his mother who had passed most of her life in hard toil ...
— The Card, A Story Of Adventure In The Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... hostess, the entertaining committee, and the people themselves are worn out. And yet, who is at fault? This is a critical point in the modern popular social. How shall the company disband in due season? In his "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," Oliver Wendell Holmes gives a suggestion on this point for the private visitor, who does not know how to go. Says Holmes: "Do n't you know how hard it is for some people to get out of a room when their visit is really over? They want to be off, and you want ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... girl's mother and wondered if her intercession would avail aught with the old autocrat. But he had not yet ventured upon this. There was nothing certain about Mrs. Mivane but her uncertainty. She never gave a positive opinion. Her attitude of mind was only to be divined by inference. She never gave a categorical answer. And indeed he would not have been encouraged to learn ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... presents a dreary picture. At a period when the intellectual activity of Europe is at its height, she still groans under the unrestricted despotism of an autocrat. Here the effects of progress that obtain elsewhere seem inverted. Such advance as is made in civilization and knowledge is used to buttress imperial tyranny and the knout is wielded more cruelly than ever before. We behold liberal institutions overthrown and a whole people held in ...
— Rabbi and Priest - A Story • Milton Goldsmith
... is, I doubt not, freest here; The single voice may speak his mind aloud; An honest isolation need not fear The Court, the Church, the Parliament, the crowd. No, nor the Press! and look you well to that— We must not dread in you the nameless autocrat. ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... The autocrat shifted uneasily, and in the dusk Everett could see that he was completely melted and ready to surrender his position if he could only find the line ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... on Richling's shoulder, and Richling's on his, he caught the eye of the captain of the yard, who was striding quietly up and down near by, and gave him a nod to indicate that he would soon adjust everything to that autocrat's satisfaction. Richling, dazed and trembling, kept his eyes still on the ground, while Ristofalo moved with him slowly away from the squalid group that gazed after them. They ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... used to have my breakfast at seven," and then telling the boy all about his boyhood, the cheery poet led him to the dining-room, and for the first time he breakfasted away from home and ate pie—and that with "The Autocrat" at his own breakfast-table! ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... our gourmands at home may think, we found as good cheer at Port Royal as they at their Rue aux Ours in Paris, and that, too, at a cheaper rate." For the preparation of this manifold provision, the Grand Master was also answerable; since, during his day of office, he was autocrat of the kitchen. ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the numerous feudal landowners. The feeling of loyalty among them was a great advance upon the blind subjection of the slave to his master. But the weight of feudalism was heavy on the lower strata of society. The lord was an autocrat, whose will there was neither the power nor the right to resist, and who could lay hold of as much of the labor and the earnings of the subject as he might choose to exact. The petty suzerain, because his needs were greater, was often more oppressive than the prince. ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... F. Daniels:—"Of all my father's historical studies," says the Autocrat of the Breakfast-table, "none ever interested me so much as his 'Memoir of the French Protestants who settled at Oxford, in 1686,'—all the circumstances connected with that second Colony of Pilgrim-Fathers, are such as to invest it with singular attraction for the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... thin, her face already deeply seamed with worry lines, a veritable slave to her home, but an autocrat to servants, agents and merchants. They said her will was strong; at least, excepting Fred, she had never been known to give in to any one. We have not spoken of Mary. Poor woman! She, too, was a slave—she was the hired girl. Meek almost to automatism, a machine which never ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... is my trainer's sister," he explained in a modulated tone to Allis. "A trainer is quite an autocrat, I assure you, and one must be very careful not to forget any of ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... This autocrat, who had never allowed contradiction, and before whom all her dependents bowed either with or against the grain, was now led in her turn; the bronze of her character became like wax in the little pink hands of her daughter. The commanding woman bent before the ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... do unless he is sufficient master of himself that he can come out of his own shell and give his men a chance to understand him as a human being rather than as an autocrat giving orders. Nothing more unfortunate can happen to an officer than to come to be regarded by his subordinates as unapproachable, for such a reputation isolates him from the main problems of command responsibility as well as its chief rewards. So holding himself, he will ...
— The Armed Forces Officer - Department of the Army Pamphlet 600-2 • U. S. Department of Defense
... refer to it in my hearing, without coupling some compliment with the mention. It well deserves a respectful consideration. There it stands, solitary and alone—not a council—of ten flues, but, like his sacred majesty of Russia, a unit of an autocrat. ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... we have been considering, has had two objects in view: 1. The more thorough centralization of the papacy, with a spiritual autocrat assuming the prerogatives of God at its head; 2. Control over the intellectual development of the nations ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... had risen from the situation of a confidential scribe to the Duke of Lerma to the nominal rank of secretary to the King—to the real station of autocrat of Spain. The birth of the favourite of fortune was exceedingly obscure. He had long affected to conceal it; but when he found curiosity had proceeded into serious investigation of his origin, he had suddenly appeared to make a virtue of necessity; proclaimed of ...
— Calderon The Courtier - A Tale • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... existence in two ways. It may emerge from the autocratic supremacy of an individual. The latter often loses the substance of his power and allows it to slip downward, while retaining its form and titles. In this case more of the power is retained by the orders nearest to the former autocrat than is acquired by those more distant. Since the power thus gradually percolates, a continuity and graduation of superiority and inferiority must develop itself. This is, in fact, the way in which in oriental states the social forms often arise. The power of the superior orders ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... bring himself to look at his watch. He was willing to venture a guess, from the sun, as to what time it was, but he could not clinch the knowledge by a look at the cruel, uncompromising little glass-faced autocrat in his pocket. He preferred to work in the less disheartening element of uncertainty. He did not want to know the hard, cold truth—not till he ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... once a week. I'm driven to this, or there'd be no sleep nor rest nor roof about our heads at Alabama Ranch. I don't give a rip what Barrie may have written about the bringing up of children—for he never had any of his own! He never had an imperious young autocrat to democratize. He never had a family to de-barbarize, even though he did write very pretty books about the subject. It's just another case, I suppose, where fiction is too cowardly or too finicky ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... whom I was personally a stranger, wrote to me just such a letter as one might have dreamed of from the "Autocrat": "One of my elderly friends of long ago called a story of mine you may possibly have heard of—Elsie Venner—'a medicated novel,' and such she said she was not in the habit of reading. I liked her expression; it titillated more than ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Czar or a bureaucracy find themselves forced to govern in opposition to a vague national feeling, which may at any moment create an overwhelming national purpose, that the facts of man's sublogical nature are most ruthlessly exploited. The autocrat then becomes the most unscrupulous of demagogues, and stirs up racial, or religious, or social hatred, or the lust for foreign war, with less scruple than does the proprietor of the worst newspaper ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... constantly hearing about the truly extraordinary and far-reaching authority of the American President—the London Times once said that, after the overthrow of the Russian Czar, the President of the United States was the last remaining autocrat—it is difficult to form a correct estimate of the power of public opinion in the Union. In America, just as no mayor can with impunity ignore the public opinion of his city, and no governor the public opinion of his state, so ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... by his brother Sava, Greek Archbishop of Servia. The Chronicles of Daniel tell that "he was led to the altar, anointed with oil, clad in purple, and the archbishop, placing the crown on his head, cried aloud three times, 'Long live Stephan the first crowned King and Autocrat of Servia,' on which all the assembled magnates and people ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... was an autocrat in camp, the engineers meekly called for more pie and coffee, disposed of it and strolled out of the mess tent over to their own little village ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... no doubt arises in the mind of the reader, Will China succeed in freeing herself from bondage to this hateful vice? It is easy for an autocrat to issue a decree, but not easy to secure obedience. It [Page 306] is encouraging to know that this decisive action is favoured by all the viceroys—Yuan, the youngest and most powerful, has already taken ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... the young men who composed it, for their varied capacities, for their fine patriotism, and their invincible determination to face all risks and invite all dangers. It has been said of Parnell that he was an intolerant autocrat in the selection of candidates for and membership of the Party, and that he imposed his will ruthlessly upon them once they were elected. I am told by those who were best in a position to form a judgment, and whose veracity ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... Consider Dr. Holmes' "Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," for example; is it essay or fiction? There is a definite though slender story interest and idea, yet since the framework of story is really for the purpose of hanging thereon the genial essayist's ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton
... unprecedented a step, that it brought him into trouble with Tiberius. The Emperor was half afraid that Germanicus had some designs upon the kingdom of Egypt, and as that land happened to be the granary of Rome, the jealous autocrat thought of the possibility of short-commons and a bread-riot in the Forum. But even if the tourist had no ulterior views, the Emperor thought that it did not look like business for a proconsul to be making holiday without leave,—and ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... ticket-seller, not merely from his natural self-assertion but even more because of his enviable acquaintance with certain actresses and his occasional privileges in the way of free passes, was the acknowledged autocrat of the table. Under his guidance the conversation quickly turned to theatrical and "show" talk. Much of it was vulgar, and all of it was dull. It was made the worse by the fact that they all tried to show, off a little before the ...
— The Honorable Peter Stirling and What People Thought of Him • Paul Leicester Ford
... a broken life is, that what a person may do with a kind of conscience in the one part, he feels compelled to blush for in the other. The despotism exercised in the school, even though exercised with a certain sense of justice and right, made the autocrat, out of school, cower before the parents of his helpless subjects. And this quailing of heart arose not merely from the operation of selfish feelings, but from a deliquium that fell upon his principles, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... remained, the summoning of the household; and Father Brown ran back into the house. He found, however, that all the under servants had been given a holiday ashore by the autocrat Paul, and that only the sombre Mrs. Anthony moved uneasily about the long rooms. But the moment she turned a ghastly face upon him, he resolved one of the riddles of the house of mirrors. The heavy brown eyes of Antonelli were the heavy brown eyes of Mrs. ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... priests, some of them guards, and all of them had fought hard for their god. But the father of this girl incurred the displeasure of the Priest and finally, not yielding to discipline, his wrath. The stern autocrat of these tribes condemned him to extreme punishment—a fast of thirty days in the hut upon the mountain top—the hut of the Golden God. Cowed and frightened, the man, somewhat feeble with sickness, bade good-bye to his daughter and climbed the rugged path. Below, the girl ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... on one condition—that my rule shall be absolute," said the Marchesa, "and I begin my career as an autocrat by giving Mrs. Fothergill a list of the educational machinery I shall want, and commanding her to have them all ready by Tuesday morning, the day on which I declare the ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... road from earth to Heaven is absolutely straight. The Czar of Russia, when railways were introduced into that country, was asked to determine the line between St. Petersburg and Moscow. He took a ruler and drew a straight line across the map, and said, 'There!' Our Autocrat has drawn a line as straight as the road from earth to Heaven, and by the side of it are 'the crooked, wandering ways in ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... it our future consideration." This imperial acknowledgment dismissed a matter which apparently was promptly forgotten in the discussion of events in Manchuria. But the apparition of Krovitch, in arms, would not so easily down in the minds of the thoughtful present, even though an autocrat had dismissed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... dishes is enumerated, which are necessarily passed over in the translation, simply, because we have no corresponding terms to express them in any Christian tongue. They would puzzle the immortal Ude himself, or the no less celebrated Soyer, the present autocrat of the culinary kingdom. But my chief reason for passing them over so lightly is the following, viz.: I have fully ascertained from officers home on furlough, that these passages are never read in India, nor is the student ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... extended wall of the proscenium arch in the First Entrance (to One) there is usually a signal-board equipped with push buttons presided over by the stage-manager. The stage-manager is the autocrat behind the scenes. His duty is to see that the program is run smoothly without the slightest hitch or wait between acts and to raise and lower the olio, or to signal the act-curtain up or down, on ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page
... organiser of an unrivalled system of bribery and corruption, the Minister of whom a recent apologist frankly declares that to young members of Parliament who spoke of public virtue and patriotism he would reply "you will soon come off that and grow wiser," the autocrat enamoured of power who could brook no colleague within measurable distance, the man of coarse habits and illiterate tastes, above all the man who induced his countrymen to place money before honour, and whose administration even an admirer ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... opinion that the salvation of the Union was dependent upon the extension or the restriction of slavery. Realizing the futility and the hopelessness of voluntary emancipation, he asserted that the "Autocrat of all the Russias" would resign his crown, and proclaim freedom to all his subjects sooner than the "American masters" would voluntarily give up their slaves.[7] It is remarkable that Lincoln's speculative affirmation was followed by what he thought an impossibility, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... sobered by our dangers, and commenced our careers at this ancient institution founded by the first Lieutenant-Governor of Massachusetts. Here reigned supreme a fiery autocrat, a fervent admirer of Greek and Latin, a cordial hater of mathematics—my weakest point—a D.D., LL.D., who was determined to drive everybody into college. He had heard of my escapades, and was fully prepared ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... of humour we suppose that in this heated atmosphere it must have long ago evaporated. But strangely enough, the two most prominent politicians in Yugoslavia, the venerable Pa[vs]i['c], the Prime Minister of this new State of Serbs and Croats and Slovenes, even as he used for years to be the autocrat of Serbia, and his opponent Stephen Radi['c] are, both of them, by the grace of God, of a humorous disposition. Outwardly, there is not much resemblance between them: Pa[vs]i['c], the picture of a benevolent patriarch, ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... Julian's ripe and cultured intelligence. Eusebius explained his pupil's hatred of Christ in the following way: "He has heathen blood in him, for he comes of Illyrian stock; he does not belong to this sheepfold. Or is his pride so boundless, his envy so great, that he cannot tolerate any Autocrat in the realm of the spirit? He lives himself like a Christian, and teaches the same as Christ, but at the same time is ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg |
