Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Tyrant   Listen
noun
Tyrant  n.  
1.
An absolute ruler; a sovereign unrestrained by law or constitution; a usurper of sovereignty. Note: Free governments (in Greece) having superseded the old hereditary sovereignties (basileiai), all who obtained absolute power in a state were called tyrannoi, tyrants, or rather despots; for the term rather regards the irregular way in which the power was gained, whether force or fraud, than the way in which it was exercised, being applied to the mild Pisistratus, but not to the despotic kings of Persia. However, the word soon came to imply reproach, and was then used like our tyrant.
2.
Specifically, a monarch, or other ruler or master, who uses power to oppress his subjects; a person who exercises unlawful authority, or lawful authority in an unlawful manner; one who by taxation, injustice, or cruel punishment, or the demand of unreasonable services, imposes burdens and hardships on those under his control, which law and humanity do not authorize, or which the purposes of government do not require; a cruel master; an oppressor. "This false tyrant, this Nero." "Love, to a yielding heart, is a king, but to a resisting, is a tyrant."
3.
(Zool.) Any one of numerous species of American clamatorial birds belonging to the family Tyrannidae; called also tyrant bird. Note: These birds are noted for their irritability and pugnacity, and for the courage with which they attack rapacious birds far exceeding them in size and strength. They are mostly plain-colored birds, but often have a bright-colored crown patch. A few species, as the scissorstail, are handsomely colored. The kingbird and pewee are familiar examples.
Tyrant flycatcher (Zool.), any one of numerous species of tyrants which have a flattened bill, toothed at the tip, and resemble the true flycatchers in habits. The Acadian flycatcher (Empidonax Acadicus) and the vermilion flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubineus) are examples.
Tyrant shrike (Zool.), any one of numerous species of American tyrants of the genus Tyrannus having a strong toothed bill and resembling the shrikes in habits. The kingbird is an example.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Tyrant" Quotes from Famous Books



... too often does in protest against suffering and tyranny, has not scope and range enough to include the actual opportunities for action. Nature herself, by making a slave of the body, has thus made a tyrant of ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... perverse and ungrateful man not only lends him aid, but lends it cheerfully! As to the gunpowder, indeed, we might get over that. In some cases that may be innocently and, when it sends the lead at the hordes that support a tyrant, meritoriously employed. The alders and the willows, therefore, one can see, without so much regret, turned into powder by the waters of this valley; but, the Bank-notes! To think that the springs which God has commanded to flow from the sides of these happy hills for the ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... explanations, "and if His Little Excellency, Governor MacDonell, by the grace of Lord Selkirk, ruler over gentlemen adventurers in no-man's-land, expels the good Nor'-Westers from nowhere to somewhere else, what do the good Nor'-Westers intend doing to the Little Tyrant?" ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... Sophocles, when a certain man inquired of him advanced in age whether he enjoyed venereal pleasures, reply, "The gods give me something better; nay, I have run away from them with gladness, as from a wild and furious tyrant." For to men fond of such things, it is perhaps disagreeable and irksome to be without them; but to the contented and satisfied it is more delightful to want them than to enjoy them; and yet he does not want who feels no desire; therefore I say that this freedom from ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various

... applying to some of the great Peace River region north of Edmonton. And as he told her of his August journey through this noble country, with its superb rivers, its shining lakes and forests, and its scattered settlers, waiting for a Government which was their servant and not their tyrant, to come and help their first steps in ordered civilisation; to bring steamers to their waters, railways to link their settlements, and fresh settlers to let loose the fertile forces of their earth—she suddenly saw in him his old self—the Anderson who had sat beside her in the crossing ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... for the time absolute. Would he use it for the good of all? If so, wider scope and higher honor would come to him. Or would he become intoxicated with power, take things easy, boss his fellow-servants around, and become a petty tyrant? If so, he would get what was coming to him. Every man's duty is measured by his knowledge and by his power. If, therefore, a man rises to leadership, and finds his elbow-room enlarging, let him stiffen his sense of duty to correspond, or there will be trouble. ...
— The Social Principles of Jesus • Walter Rauschenbusch

... king, go and summon this tyrant to your presence,' he said, 'so that this poor dame may have justice, and that ye may punish him for ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert

... is, I hope not—I think not—I won't be too confident—none of us should be—that we are not Snobs. That very confidence savours of arrogance, and to be arrogant is to be a Snob. In all the social gradations from sneak to tyrant, nature has placed a most wondrous and various progeny of Snobs. But are there no kindly natures, no tender hearts, no souls humble, simple, and truth-loving? Ponder well on this question, sweet young ladies. And if you can answer it, as no doubt you can—lucky ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray

... them, that it is possible that Caburus may see a chance to achieve our object. I shall leave it to him whether to give whatever signal he may agree on with his men, or to withhold it. If he sees an opportunity, that will mean that, in his judgment, there is a good chance of killing the tyrant and getting away unrecognized. You know how cautious Caburus is: you will run no risk if he does not give the signal ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White

... disgusted, wearied, shamed, distressed at the endless chaos of superstitions which has been inflicted upon this most salutary sacrament of confession by the ignorance of true theology, which has been its own tyrant ever since the time that men have been making ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... Fenelon with Seneca. To both were committed children, heirs apparent to thrones,—willful, cruel, disobedient, and hard to control. In Seneca's pupil the seeds of cruelty remained, to germinate into the awful tyrant; in Fenelon's the evil seemed to be permanently eradicated, and the result was a prince with generous impulses and noble intentions. And this result was largely owing to the difference in the teachers,—Fenelon, the gentle, but firm, patient, painstaking conscientious man; Seneca, ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley

... sharpe and white teeth bit me on every side. In like sort have I read in Histories how the King of Thrace would throw his miserable ghests to be torne in peeces and devoured of his wild Horses, so niggish was that Tyrant of his provender, that he nourished them with the bodies ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius

... not very likely to prove a domestic tyrant. She is the gentlest dearest girl, and is very well used to bachelor habits in the person of her uncle. I don't believe she will ever extinguish our cigars, Jack, even in the drawing-room. I look forward to the happiest home that ever ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... Vaillant came to see me in my dressing-room at the theatre. I was playing Lorenzaccio, and he said to me: "Ah, that Florentine was an anarchist just as I am, but he killed the tyrant and not tyranny. That is not the way ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt

... enterprises which were conducted with so much secresy under the surveillance of the Tudor, began already to crown themselves as certainties, and compare their 'olives of endless age' with the spent tombs of brass' and 'tyrant's crests,' at that sure prospect which, a change of dynasties at that moment seemed to open,—at least, to men who were in a position then to estimate ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... accepted their lot bravely, and, with the help of the alley, pulled through. Two of them married again, and made a bad job of it. Second marriages seldom turned out well in the alley. They were a refuge of the women from work that was wearing their lives out, and gave them in exchange usually a tyrant who hastened the process. There never was any sentiment about it. "I don't know what I shall do," said one of the widows to me, when at last it was decreed that the tenements were to be pulled down, "unless I can find a man to take care of me. Might get ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis

... that he should waste our lands, Despoil our temples, and, by sword and flame, Return us to the dust from which we came; Such food a tyrant's appetite demands: And we can brook the thought, that by his hands Spain may be overpower'd, and he possess, For his delight, a solemn wilderness, Where all the brave lie dead. But, when of bands That he will break for us he dares to speak, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... out as eminently suited to keep a refractory crew in order and get the last ounce of work out of the laziest skulker. But it happened that Kennedy was not that sort of man at all. Although admirably fitted by Nature for the part, he was not the typical quarterdeck tyrant and bully, but a genial, merry, great-hearted Irish-American of the very best stamp. He could, however, if occasion demanded it, display a sternness and severity of manner well calculated to subdue the most recklessly ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood

... wild. Last night, five citizens were arrested, on no charge at all, and carried down to Picayune Butler's ship. What a thrill of terror ran through the whole community! We all felt so helpless, so powerless under the hand of our tyrant, the man who swore to uphold the Constitution and the laws, who is professedly only fighting to give us all Liberty, the birthright of every American, and who, nevertheless, has ground us down to a state where we would not reduce our negroes, who tortures and sneers at us, and rules us with ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson

... Chauvelin! for there will be no escape this time, not even if the mightiest tyrant on earth tried to protect you, not even if you succeeded in building up an empire and placing yourself upon ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... Chinese women allow their daughters' feet to be encased in iron shoes, nor that the Hindoo widows walk calmly to the funeral pyre; for great are the penalties of those who dare resist the behests of the tyrant Custom. ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... food, and countless myriads resort to them. At this period the note of the pigeon is coo coo coo, like that of the domestic species but much shorter. They caress by billing, and during incubation the male supplies the female with food. As the young grow, the tyrant of creation appears to disturb the peaceful scene, armed with axes to chop down the squab-laden trees, and the abomination of desolation and destruction produced far surpasses even ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir

... when Brahmans strive. A boundless power 'tis thine to wield: To such a king thou shouldst not yield, Who, very mighty though he be,— So fierce thy strength,—must bow to thee. Command me, Saint. Thy power divine Has brought me here and made me thine; And I, howe'er the tyrant boast, Will tame his pride and slay his host." Then cried the glorious sage: "Create A mighty force the foe ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... lithe, glowing creature of beauty and passion," "a royal woman conscious of mental and physical perfection," succeeded her father as tyrant over the motley crew of Spaniard and Briton, Creole and mulatto, Carib ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... it, God punished him for doing so speedily enough. He does not usually punish statesmen nowadays for such letters; perhaps because He does not love them as well as Raleigh. But as for the letter itself. Essex is called a 'tyrant,' because he had shown himself one. The Queen is to 'hold Bothwell,' because 'while she hath him, he will even be the canker of her estate and safety,' and the writer has 'seen the last of her good days ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley

... in reverent groups And sing to their domestic God, You, all the time, dear tyrant, (How I laugh!) Could, without effort, place your hand among them, And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various

... medicine of the state corrupted into its poison. They have seen the French rebel against a mild and lawful monarch, with more fury, outrage, and insult than ever any people has been known to rise against the most illegal usurper or the most sanguinary tyrant. Their resistance was made to concession; their revolt was from protection; their blow was aimed at a hand holding out graces, favors, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... the whole Mexican nation, recalling in strong terms the Massacre of Fanning, the butchery of Alamo, and other like atrocities; ending in an appeal to all patriots and lovers of freedom to arm, take the field, and fight against the tyrant of Mexico and ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid

... POLYCRATES, the tyrant of Samos, and friend of Anacreon and art and literature generally; formed an alliance with Amasis, king of Egypt, who, struck with his prosperity, ascribed it to the envy of the gods, insinuating that they intended his ruin thereby, and advised him, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... (from it), but flits past what lies in its mid path"—a conceit which the poets have since echoed a thousand times. Another very important thing that experience taught women was that by deferring or withholding their caresses and smiles they could make the tyrant man humble, generous, and gallant. Girls who do not throw themselves away on the first man who happens along, also have an advantage over others who are less fastidious and coy, and by transmitting their disposition to their daughters they give it greater vogue. Female coyness ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... unprincipled libelling of the truly noble ones of the earth, because they the sons of peasants and handycraftsmen, stood up for the rights of outraged humanity, and proclaimed that it is worth makes the man and not embroidered clothing. The heartless, unprincipled son of the tyrant was transformed in that worthless book into a slightly-dissipated, it is true, but upon the whole brave, generous and amiable being; and Harrison, the English Regulus, honest, brave, unflinching Harrison, into a pseudo-fanatic, a mixture of the rogue and fool. Harrison, probably ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... was Moby Gore, the huge and overbearing first mate of the pirates on his daily mission of inspection and prisoner baiting. Quirl crept further into his corner. It would be fatal to his plan for him to attract the attention of this petty tyrant. It was hard enough to keep away from him—to crush back the almost overwhelming desire to fly at ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl

... Here he recognises the uncertainty but still 'trusts' that he will be liberated, but yet he does not know 'how it may go with' him. We think of him in his lodging sometimes hoping and sometimes doubting. He had a tyrant's caprice to depend on, and knew how a moment's whim might end all. Surely his way of bearing that suspense was very noteworthy and noble. It is difficult to keep a calm heart, and still more difficult to keep on steadily at work, when any moment might bring the victor's axe. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... best to do so. She plainly preferred the younger and less quarrelsome suitor, and often followed him off, bringing down upon herself in consequence the wrath of the elder, and instant pursuit, which ended in the disappearance of her chosen hero, and a forced endurance of the tyrant's presence, till it appeared that she would have to "marry him to get rid of him," as our plain-spoken grandmothers characterized a similar situation ...
— In Nesting Time • Olive Thorne Miller

... which Richard's sword had been the key. The world went grinding on and on, much the same, without him whom it had forgotten; but the over-world remembered him, and now and then looked in at a window: all dungeons have one window which no gaoler and no tyrant ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald

... is the fatherland? Is it not a good field, whose owner, lodged in a well-kept house, can say: "This field that I till, this house that I have built, are mine; I live there protected by laws which no tyrant can infringe. When those who, like me, possess fields and houses, meet in their common interest, I have my voice in the assembly; I am a part of everything, a part of the community, a part of the dominion; there ...
— Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary • Voltaire

... shepherd, who "seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep and flieth": and Gregory says (Hom. xiv in Ev.) that "the wolf comes upon the sheep when any man by his injustice and robbery oppresses the faithful and the humble." Therefore if, on account of the persecution of a tyrant, a bishop withdraws his bodily presence from the flock entrusted to his care, it would seem that he is a hireling and not ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas

... His mistress, I take for granted, is by this time dead, and he wears some other body's shackles. Her death comes with regard to the King of Prussia, 'comme la moutarde apres diner'. I am curious to see what tyrant will succeed her, not by divine, but by military right; for, barbarous as they are now, and still more barbarous as they have been formerly, they have had very little regard to the more barbarous notion of divine, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... image and the hammered heart. She prayed to the goddess whom the Middle Ages had perfected and who in the minds of the simple and the savage has survived the Renaissance and still triumphantly flourishes; the Queen of heaven, the Tyrant of heaven, the Woman in heaven; who was so venerated that even her sweat is exhibited as a relic; who was softer than Christ as Christ was softer than the Father; who in becoming a goddess had increased her humanity; who put living ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett

... thou art as prone now as erewhile to indulge that feeling to which thou hast already given way, then know I right well that I must leave thee to thy own devices, for bootless will be my teachings and my warnings. Still, although this cruel tyrant, to whom in thy youthful simplicity being taken by surprise thou hast yielded thy freedom, appears to have deprived thee of understanding as well as of liberty, I will put thee in mind of many things, and entreat thee to fling off and banish wicked thoughts ...
— La Fiammetta • Giovanni Boccaccio

... "this is the sword of John Sevier, the rebel that led us up the sides of King's Mountain when every tyrant gun that belched in our face ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... somewhat sarcastically lamented that the appetites of the rich do not increase with their wealth; in like manner, it would be a grievous thing could liberty be monopolized or scraped into heaps like wealth; a petty tyrant may persecute and imprison thousands, but he cannot thereby add one hour or inch to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 14, No. 392, Saturday, October 3, 1829. • Various

... at him. He laughed a little to turn off the edge of his seriousness. "You would know what I mean, dear Mary, if you had read Herodotus. A Greek tyrant feared his own excessive prosperity, and therefore made a sacrifice to fortune. I mean, he gave up something which he held most precious; he took a ring from his finger and cast it into the sea, lest the Deity should afflict him, if he did not ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman

... them. Unus was extolled by everybody, and seemed perfectly happy. Peggy communicated his thoughts, which were every way in favour of his new friends. Waally he detested. He denounced him as a ruthless tyrant, and declared he would prefer death to submission to his exactions. Juno highly approved of all his sentiments, and was soon known as a sworn friend of Peggy's. This hatred of tyranny is innate in men, but it is necessary to distinguish between real oppression ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... My tyrant glanced at me with a dark scowl. "After your behavior, girl, you ought to bless your lucky stars that you got off as you did. If I had done right, I'd have made you pay up well for the trouble you've given. But I've spared you. At the same time I wouldn't ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... slowly saturating it with memories, has been crushed out of them—if it ever existed—by hard blows of fortune; it is safer, they think, to transform the labour of their hands into gold, which can be moved from place to place or hidden from the tyrant's eye. They have none of our sentimentality in regard to inanimate objects. Eliza Cook's feelings towards her "old arm-chair" would strike them as savouring of childishness. Hence the unfinished look of their houses, within and without. Why expend thought and wealth ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas

... and not oblivion I found. My suffering self dwelt with me just the same; But here no sleep was, and no sweet dreams came To give me respite. Tyrant Death, uncrowned By my own hand, still King of Terrors, frowned Upon my shuddering soul, that shrank in shame Before those eyes where sorrow blent with blame, And those accusing lips that ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... kingly way he has taken but little account of lives sacrificed to his impulsive policy; he is a king with a double-edged sword bared in his right hand. The East Wind, an interloper in the dominions of Westerly weather, is an impassive- faced tyrant with a sharp poniard held behind his ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... Monmouth clung in agonies of supplication round the knees of the stern uncle whom he had wronged, and tasted a bitterness worse than that of death, the bitterness of knowing that he had humbled himself in vain. A tyrant trampled on the liberties and religion of the realm. The national spirit swelled high under the oppression. Disaffection spread even to the strongholds of loyalty, to the Cloisters of Westminster, to the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... girl. No one is to blame but the tyrant of Russia. Now the Nihilists insist that neither of these men has been sent to Siberia. They think they are in the prison of 'St. Peter and St. Paul.' That information came to me to-day in the letter I was just now answering. So, Katherine, I think you have been unjust ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr

... to the matter. Then came a long period during which I had no opportunity of seeing him. It was the period, as I afterward learnt, of his visit to Armenia and of the terrible struggle on which he embarked against Abdul the Damned, a struggle which ended in the tyrant's downfall. ...
— The Confessions of Arsene Lupin • Maurice Leblanc

... the successive changes which the revolution has produced; if the question is no longer between monarchy, and even the pretence and name of liberty, but between the ancient line of hereditary princes on the one hand, and a military tyrant, a foreign usurper, on the other; if the armies of that usurper are likely to find sufficient occupation on the frontiers, and to be forced at length to leave the interior of the country at liberty to manifest its real ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones

... favour by serving Henry in the disgraceful affair of his first divorce. He promoted the marriage of Anne Boleyn with the King. On a frivolous pretence he pronounced that marriage null and void. On a pretence, if possible still more frivolous, he dissolved the ties which bound the shameless tyrant to Anne of Cleves. He attached himself to Cromwell while the fortunes of Cromwell flourished. He voted for cutting off Cromwell's head without a trial, when the tide of royal favour turned. He conformed backwards and forwards ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... In spite of the velvet cloak of courtesy, our Peruvian is a born tyrant, and you—forgive me—but you know you're the very child of caprice. I am most thankful, however, that you are not impressionable. Otherwise this experience might leave a ...
— Under the Southern Cross • Elizabeth Robins

... disciple and admirer of Chaucer: he died in 1440."—Id. "The Grammarian Varro, 'the most learned of the Romans,' wrote three books when he was eighty years old."—Id. "John Despauter, the great Grammarian of Flanders, whose works are still valued, died in 1520."—Id. "Nero, the Emperor and Tyrant of Rome, slew himself to avoid a worse death."—Id. "Cicero the Orator, 'the Father of his Country,' was assassinated at the age of 64."—Id. "Euripides, the Greek Tragedian, was born in the Island ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... sun declines, there is again a gradual reviving, and when the vesper bell rings out his sinking knell, all nature seems to rejoice that the tyrant of the day has fallen. Now begins the bustle of enjoyment, when the citizens pour forth to breathe the evening air, and revel away the brief twilight in the walks and gardens ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... him. Their names were Emmanuel, Sabael, and Ismael. He ordered them to be examined apart, lest they should encourage one another in their faith and endurance under torture. Emmanuel, seeing his object, said, "Tyrant! we Three are ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... blameless, Camillo a true subject, Leontes a jealous tyrant, and the king shall live without an heir if that which is lost ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb

... to escape from the cruel bands of his harsh master, who kept on a-treatin' of him worse and worse, would you, his father, go and coolly look at him and say, "If you was only a handsome boy, with a strong mind in a strong body, I'd deliver you out of this tyrant's clutches and take you back to be my son again; but since you are a poor, weak, deformed little critter, that can never do much, or be much, I'll leave you here to be abused and tormented as before"—is that what you ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... features; the ragged penthouse brows; are 'close denotements' of the truth of 'Common Report.' In short, judging from the much-bepraised 'likeness' to which we allude, if Sir HUDSON LOWE was not a tyrant, and a small-minded one withal, GOD doesn't write a legible hand. . . . SOME clever wag in the last BLACKWOOD has an article, written in a hurry, upon the hurriedness of literary matters in these our 'go-ahead' days. 'People,' he says, 'have not only ceased to purchase those old-fashioned things ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various

... He is a rich, man, too, and why should not a New York merchant do what a Syracuse tyrant and an Egyptian prince did? Has Bourne's yacht those sumptuous chambers, like Philopater's galley, of which the greater part was made of split cedar, and of Milesian cypress; and has he twenty doors put together with beams of citron-wood, with many ornaments? Has the roof of his cabin ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis

... thy brethren, with a full resolution, thou knowest, to rejoin ye, if she once again disappointed me, in order to go together (attended by our servants, for shew sake) to the gloomy father; and demand audience of the tyrant upon the freedoms taken with my character. In short, to have tried by fair resolutions, and treat his charming daughter with less inhumanity, and ...
— Clarissa, Volume 3 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson

... rendered the country almost uninhabitable. Here, within a half-submerged territory, a race of wretched ichthyophagi dwelt upon terpen, or mounds, which they had raised, like beavers, above the almost fluid soil. Here, at a later day, the same race chained the tyrant Ocean and his mighty streams into subserviency, forcing them to fertilize, to render commodious, to cover with a beneficent network of veins and arteries, and to bind by watery highways with the furthest ends of the world, a country disinherited by nature of its rights. A region, outcast ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... war in which he had fought lay between them, the division that had embittered his life and made him an exile from his people. But the little girl with her great, serious eyes became the old physician's idol and tyrant, and how he worked over her father! Even in those last hours when the end had unexpectedly appeared, and General Huntington was making his last arrangements with the same courage which had made him a noted officer when ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... institution of which you are an unworthy member, you have distressed the widow and the orphan, given a loose to all the insolence of office, embroiled your neighbours by fomenting suits and animosities, and played the tyrant among the indigent and forlorn. You have abused the authority with which you were invested, entailed a reproach upon your office, and, instead of being revered as a blessing, you are detested as a curse among your fellow-creatures. ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... true faith, before ever he came into the land of Britain; but when Sir Galahad and his fellows came there after long voyage, they found it ruled by a heathen king named Estorause, who cast them into a deep dungeon. There they were kept a year, but at the end of that time, the tyrant died. Then the great men of the land gathered together to consider who should be their king; and, while they were in council, came a voice bidding them take as their king the youngest of the three knights whom ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... fretfully drowsy, but with the innate perversity of toddling babyhood, resented and resisted every effort to soothe her to sleep. Refusing to lie across the nurse's lap, the small tyrant clambered up, wrapped her arms about her neck, and finally Beryl rose and walked up and down, humming softly Chopin's dreamy "Berceuse"; while the baby added a crooning accompaniment that grew ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... unmercifully when by chance he leaves the lake?—that he hisses and croaks most unmusical, most melancholy?—and that he gathers all unclean garbage for his food—newts, and frogs, and crawling worms? In short, that though, in his pride, and grandeur, and passionate energy, he is the Tyrant of Olympus, he is, in many other respects, an animal not greatly to be admired—by no means comparable as a dish at Christmas to a well-fed goose, or even a couple of ducks. For reading aloud to ladies after tea, I prefer Ion to Othello. And ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... the priest, while performing his duties in the church, heard the news and announced it. Fifty men rushed out to kill the local police captain who had been a regular tyrant. As they came to his home they were met by the captain's ten-year-old daughter, who stood in front of her father and calmly said: "You will have to kill me first," and thus ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols

... thinking of my tyrant, and her caprices, and her beauty. Her smile, for instance; surely it was the sweetest smile in the world—if only she were less lavish of it! Then, what a delicious little hand—if mine were the only lips permitted to kiss it! Why was she so charming?—or ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... keep strict watch over his face, in his first interview with Caesar after the civil wars, he could not mean that he might thereby conceal his character from Caesar, who knew well enough what that was; but he meant, that by such precaution he might conceal from the tyrant his actual hatred and disgust for his person. Yet for the character and secret nature of a man, fronti ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 484 - Vol. 17, No. 484, Saturday, April 9, 1831 • Various

... off onto the Caesars, Augustus and Domitian, and quite a few on 'em. Nero's bust I despised lookin' at—brutal tyrant—as Josiah truly said anybody that would kill his wife and grandmother would do anything and wuz too mean to be looked at. If I could covered up his face I'd been willin' to used my best crape veil that I mourned for Mother Allen in. Nero's grandma, ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley

... that the monsters of the world—Henry VIII for example, sacrilegious, murderer, and adulterer; Martin Luther, whose printed table-talk is unfit for any respectable house; Queen Elizabeth, perjurer, tyrant, and unchaste—were persons who had had all that the Catholic Church could give them: the standards of her teaching, the guidance of her discipline, and the grace of her sacraments. What, then, is the reconciliation ...
— Paradoxes of Catholicism • Robert Hugh Benson

... Then she returned the scroll to its place and when her mistress awoke, she said to her, "O my lady, indeed I am to thee a true counsellor and am tenderly anxious on thy account. Know that love is a tyrant and the hiding it melteth iron and entaileth sickness and unease; nor for whoso confesseth it is there aught of reproach." Rejoined Rose-in-Hood, "And what is the medicine of passion, O nurse mine?" Answered the nurse, "The medicine of passion is ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... Christ's beauty it is possible to be, when engrossed with selfish aims and outward things! How near a soul may be to the light, and yet turn away from it and plunge into darkness! How patient that silent prisoner, who lets Himself be bandied about from one tyrant to another, not because they had power, but because He loved the world, and would bear the sins of every one of us! How terrible the change when these unjust judges and He will change places, and Pilate and Herod ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... the cunning little creature that he was glad when the lady gave him another lump of sugar which he put quickly in his mouth, swelling out his jaw in a comical manner while his little, sharp eyes were watching the other monkey. But alas! the old tyrant rushed down upon him, took the sugar out of his mouth, and put it in his own, and slapped the little one he had robbed ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang

... of Washington: but we are no less indebted to him for the gift of his inestimable mother. Had she been a weak and indulgent and unfaithful parent, the unchecked energies of Washington might have elevated him to the throne of a tyrant, or youthful disobedience might have prepared the way for a life of crime ...
— Mrs Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters - Volume 3 • Various

... are superiour to all that pass'd before you; so is the Conjuncture, and the steps by which you are happily ascended to it, Miraculous, and alltogether stupendious: So that what the former Ages might produce to deprecate their fears, or flatter the Inclinations of a Tyrant, we offer spontaneously, and by Instinct, without Artifice to your Serene Majesty, our just and rightfull Soveraign. And if in these expressions of it, and the formes we use, it were possible to exceed, and so offend your ...
— An Apologie for the Royal Party (1659); and A Panegyric to Charles the Second (1661) • John Evelyn

... And nerve thy soul to bear; They may gloat o'er the senseless words they wring From the pangs of thy despair; They may veil their eyes, but they cannot hide The sun's meridian glow; The heel of a priest may tread thee down And a tyrant work thee woe; But never a truth has been destroyed; They may curse it and call it crime; Pervert and betray, or slander and slay Its teachers for a time. But the sunshine aye shall light the sky, As round and round we run; And the Truth shall ever come ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... cruelty of the tyrant, Jupiter struck him with lightning in deadly earnest and then cast him into the outer darkness of Tartarus, where he was for ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... her; she listened again to all the scornful cutting words that had the effect at last of waking such a strange frenzy of rage in her, a rage that was like insanity. And now how gladly would she have dismissed the rest, but the tyrant Memory would not let her be, she must re-live it all again, and not one feeling, thought, or word be left out. Oh, why, why did she remember it all now—when, starting from her seat as if some demon had possessed her, she turned on her mocker ...
— Fan • Henry Harford

... disposition.—See that your intended Spouse is kind-hearted, generous, and willing to respect the opinions of others, though not in sympathy with them. Don't marry a selfish tyrant who ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols

... which he hailed every new token of his prowess, and still see the packed Piazza surge, as it was swept by it like corn in a breeze. "Woe unto you, heathen masticator," he would cry, holding high the forceps and its victim, "Woe unto you when you meet Palamone, Tyrant of Pain! Blessed be the pincers and the fork, which have gained the celestial paradise for Sant' Agnese, and the terrestrial for this worthy man! I tell you, signori," he would say, looking round upon the gaping company, "I would rather be in this man's ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... in his nature is now let loose. He becomes an open tyrant, dreaded by everyone about him, and a terror to his country. ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley

... the orator. "And it is not Paris alone, it is all France, which, with us, entreats you to decide upon delivering her from this tyrant. All is ready; nothing is wanting but a sign from your august head to annihilate this pygmy, who has attempted to assault the royal ...
— Cinq Mars, Complete • Alfred de Vigny

... not that the little woman was venal, but she had a passion for passion, a taste for romantic intrigue. As she was unhappy in her own home, married to a dentist who beat her, all husbands were monsters in her eyes, and poor Risler especially seemed to her a horrible tyrant whom his wife was quite ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... So long as the war is going on that may be done, but when the soldiers come home the hate will come home as well. In times of war peoples may hate abroad and with some unanimity. But after the war, with no war going on or any prospect of a fresh war, with every exploiter and every industrial tyrant who has made his unobtrusive profits while the country scowled and spat at England, stripped of the cover of that excitement, then it is inevitable that much of this noble hate of England will be seen for the cant it is. The cultivated hate of the war ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... second Washington? What will his own country say of him? I know not, of course; but I know what quite a number here say of him now. They say he is a small specimen of a statesman, and no military chieftain at all. And worse still, that he is a capricious tyrant, for lifting up Yankees and keeping down great Southern men. Wise, Floyd, etc. are kept in obscurity; while Pemberton, who commanded the Massachusetts troops, under Lincoln, in April, 1861, is made a lieutenant-general; ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... much the prettier gentleman; and had taken such care to accomplish her son Commodus according to her own notions of a fine man, that when he ascended the throne of his father, he became the most foolish and abandoned tyrant that was Jo ever placed at the head of the Roman empire, signalizing himself in nothing but the fighting of prizes, and knocking out men's brains. As he had no taste of true glory, we see him in several medals and statues which ...
— The Coverley Papers • Various

... Teasing Telum veneris Thlasiae Thlibiae Torture, the attraction of Tumescence Turcomans, marriage by capture among Tyrant-bird, courtship of ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 3 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... sage spoke next. He said: All of you who are here present I reckon to be kinsmen and friends and fellow-citizens, by nature and not by law; for by nature like is akin to like, whereas law is the tyrant of mankind, and often compels us to do many things which are against nature. How great would be the disgrace then, if we, who know the nature of things, and are the wisest of the Hellenes, and as such are met together in this city, which is the metropolis of wisdom, and in the greatest ...
— Protagoras • Plato

... Chancellor of the Exchequer, whom the whole Tory party was supposed to be cursing for his extortions, was praised for his minor poetry, or his saddle in the hunting field. The Tory leader, whom all Liberals were supposed to hate as a tyrant, was discussed and, on the whole, praised—as a Liberal. It seemed somehow that politicians were very important. And yet, anything seemed important about them except their politics. Mr. Audley, the chairman, was an amiable, elderly man who still wore Gladstone collars; he was ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton

... the obedience he will render will not be the loving assent of his heart, but a begrudged concession to circumstance. Your awe-invested legislature is not viewed as his friend and brother-helper, but his tyrant. Therefore the most natural bent of his workman-statesmanship—a rough, bungling affair—will be to tame you—you who ought to be his Counsellor and Friend. When he finds that your legislative action exerts upon him a repressive and restraining force ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins

... mango and orange-trees. At one of these little homesteads, we found a pretty large guard-house, established where four roads meet, and there our foot guide left us, and a gentlemanlike young officer, of the Brazilian Cacadores, rode with us, and entertained us by calling Luis do Rego a tyrant, and attributing the siege of Pernambuco entirely to the governor's obstinacy, in not joining the people of the province in throwing off the dominion of his master. Round the guard-house a number of negro girls, ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham

... he could not succeed in depraving me; my rugged, headstrong, and unsociable nature preserved me from his vile seductions. It is possible that I had not any strong tendencies to virtue; to hatred I luckily had. Rather than do the bidding of my tyrant I would have suffered a thousand deaths. And so I grew up without conceiving any affection for vice. However, my notions about society were so strange that my uncles' mode of life did not in itself cause me any repugnance. Seeing that I was brought up behind the walls of Roche-Mauprat, and ...
— Mauprat • George Sand

... death—these are the subjects that have inspired Lebensohn's best efforts. He insists constantly, Is not pity the daughter of heaven? Do we not find her among beasts even, and among reptiles? Man alone is a stranger to her, and he makes himself the tyrant of his neighbor. ...
— The Renascence of Hebrew Literature (1743-1885) • Nahum Slouschz

... the cataracts by a series of weirs, with water-gates for the facility of navigation; which with certain modifications will some day assuredly be carried out, and will render Egypt the most favoured country of the world, as absolute mistress of the river which is now at the same time a tyrant and a slave. The Pedias of Cyprus may during some terrific rainfall assume proportions that would convey a most erroneous impression to the mind of a stranger, who, upon regarding the boiling torrent overspreading a valley of some miles in width in its impetuous course ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... for the honor of His majesty; strike valiantly these monsters in the guise of men." Theodore of Beza considered the error of those who demanded freedom of conscience "worse than the tyranny of the Pope. It is better to have a tyrant, no matter how cruel he may be, than to let everyone do as he pleases." He maintained that the sword of the civil authority should punish not only heretics, but also those who wished heresy to go unpunished.[1] In brief, before the Renaissance there ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... Henry Esmond, sure enough, my lady," says Mrs. Worksop, the housekeeper (an old tyrant whom Henry Esmond plagued more than he hated), and the old gentlewoman looked significantly towards the late lord's picture, as it now is in the family, noble and severe-looking, with his hand on his sword, and his order on his cloak, which he had from the Emperor during the ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray

... allegiance with reluctance paid; And read the future overthrow of Rome In the unyielding spirit of his victim. Uncovered in the sun, weary and faint, Bowed to the earth with chains of ravished gold, With feet unsandaled, walked Zenobia, Slave to the craven tyrant's cruelty. Neither her peerless beauty, nor her sex, Nor yet her grievous sufferings could melt The despot's stony heart. She, who surpassed Her conqueror in all the qualities Of head or heart which crown humanity ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various

... receive Ahab's gold, silver, sons, daughters, and wives, but also required, that his servants should have at their pleasure whatsoever was delectable in Samaria. True it is, that his elders and people willed him not to hear the proud tyrant, but who made unto him the promise of deliverance? And who appointed and put his army in order? Who assured him of victory? The prophet of God only, who assured him, that by the servants of the princes ...
— The Pulpit Of The Reformation, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. • John Welch, Bishop Latimer and John Knox

... attendants to pursue him, and when they had taken him, to kill him. The officers knew that Cambyses would regret his rash and reckless command as soon as his anger should have subsided, and so, instead of slaying Croesus, they concealed him. A few days after, when the tyrant began to express his remorse and sorrow at having destroyed his venerable friend in the heat of passion, and to mourn his death, they told him that Croesus was still alive. They had ventured, they said, to save him, till they could ascertain whether ...
— Darius the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott



Words linked to "Tyrant" :   potentate, soul, tyrant flycatcher, despot, somebody, autocrat, tyrannous, Dionysius the Elder, Dionysius, swayer, dictator



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com