"Servile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Huguenots submitted to their fate in the summer of 1629, finding themselves in a worse plight than they had been when they surrendered La Rochelle, for Richelieu treated with them no longer as with a foreign power. He expected them to offer him the servile obedience of conquered rebels. Henceforth he exerted himself to restore the full supremacy of the Catholic faith in France by making as many converts as was possible and by opening Jesuit and Capuchin missions in ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... given any thought to the anomaly of youth (though lowly) attending upon youth (though gilded) at its meals in this way—not old enough indeed to have pondered at all upon the relations of Capital and Labour or of the domineering and the servile—he had reflected a good deal upon the cut and fit of clothes, and there was something about the waiting-boy's evening coat that outraged his critical sense. Nor did the fact that the other's indifferent tailoring throw the perfection of his own ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... beat her in the way of thoroughness. It's true that you will find people who'll tell you that this terrific virulence in breaking through all established things, is altogether the fault of men. Such people will ask you with a clever air why the servile wars were always the most fierce; desperate and atrocious of all wars. And you may make such answer as you can—even the eminently feminine one, if you choose, so typical of the women's literal mind. "I don't see what this has to do with ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... forward as if in mockery of all honours, he addressed the authors of his elevation with servile flattery, promising them vast riches and high rank as the first-fruits of his promotion; and then he advanced into the streets, escorted by a multitude of armed men; and with raised standards he prepared to proceed, surrounded by a horrid din of shields clashing with a ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... me in the traitor's ranks? Now, as I live, I'd rather give my hand To Gessler's self, all despot though he be, Than to the Switzer who forgets his birth, And stoops to be a tyrant's servile tool. ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... her 20,000 or 30,000 men to Texas; organizes them on the Sabine, where supplies and arms can be concentrated before we have even notice of her intentions; makes a lodgment on the Mississippi; excites the negroes to insurrection; the lower country falls, with it New Orleans; and a servile war rages through the whole South and West." [Footnote: This letter was dated at the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, Feb. 13, 1843, and was printed a year later in the "National Intelligencer," with the date altered ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... Poet,—the mob, always fickle and always dazzled by outward show, suddenly set up a deafening roar of cheering. The pallid hue of terror vanished from faces that had but lately looked spectrally thin with speechless dread, and crowds of servile petitioners and place-hunters began to press eagerly round their monarch's chariot, ... when all at once a woman in the throng gave a wild scream and rushed away shrieking "THE OBELISK! ... ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... doings along a route that he probably does not intend to visit again. He knows perfectly well that women and children are afraid of him, and as a rule is very willing to work upon that fear—though the sight of a man, or of a dog with character, is sufficient to make him the most servile of his race. But where he meets a lonely woman he is ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands; And ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... the militia bill in the House of Representatives, December 10, 1811, said: "I speak from facts when I say that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom." This was said apropos of the danger of a servile insurrection in the event of a war with England—a war which actually broke out in the year following, but was not attended with the slave rising which Randolph predicted. Randolph was a thorough-going "States ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... Dulness, and the heroine is charged with being a "low Character," a "Milksop," and a "Fool;" with lack of spirit and fainting too frequently; with dressing her children, cooking and other "servile Offices;" with being too forgiving to her husband; and lastly, as may be expected, with the inconsistency, already amply referred to, of being "a Beauty without a nose." Dr. Harrison and Colonel Bath are arraigned ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... like a flock of clouds 460 Chased by the wind, flies the insurgent banner! Our winged castles from their merchant ships! Our myriads before their weak pirate bands! Our arms before their chains! our years of empire Before their centuries of servile fear! 465 Death is awake! Repulse is on the waters! They own no more the thunder-bearing banner Of Mahmud; but, like hounds of a base breed, Gorge from a stranger's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... all this interfere with her work, but it did, and at the sketch-class where she might have shown some rebound from the servile work of the Preparatory, and some originality, she disappointed those whom Charmian had taught to expect anything of her. They took her rustic hauteur and her professed indifference to the distinction of Ludlow's invitation, as her pose. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... destination of the scribbler. Occasionally one was startled by a French inscription in sickening terms of humility, the work of Persian minor officials in Government employ, who thus made a public exhibition of their knowledge of a foreign language and expounded in glowing terms their servile admiration for superiors. ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... The responsible writer's character, his position, antecedents, and probable motives have to be examined into; and this is what, in a different and adapted sense of the word, may be called the higher criticism, in comparison with the servile and often mechanical work of pursuing statements to their root. For a historian has to be treated as a witness, and not believed unless his sincerity is established.[61] The maxim that a man must be presumed to be innocent until his guilt is proved, ...
— A Lecture on the Study of History • Lord Acton
... more sublime than under conditions that test men's courage. Did he face hostile mob and servile judge? did he find himself misunderstood and deserted by those who had been his friends? must he bid his disciples a last farewell? did he see the shadow of the cross over his pathway?—yet he never faltered. ...
— How to Teach Religion - Principles and Methods • George Herbert Betts
... be, nor might she face that wild company. Howbeit, thinking it good to have a friend at court, I made occasion to put in the hand of the old serving-woman all of such small coins as I had won in my life servile, deeming myself well quit of such ill-gotten gear. And thereafter, with great mirth and noise, they set forth to climb the hill towards the castle, where I was led, through many a windy passage, to the chamber of Sir Hugh Kennedy. There were torches lit, and ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... ragamuffins, the realist of the fifteenth century would wander hopelessly were it not for the antique. Genius and science are of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean and servile; the movements of the "Thunder-stricken" in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's Liberation of St. Peter is ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... had never consented to read Macaulay; she had never expressed her belief that his play was second only to the works of Shakespeare. She followed dreamily in their wake, smiling and delighting in the sound which conveyed, she knew, the rapturous and yet not servile ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... Believe me, I am rapt with admiration, To think a man of thy exterior presence Should (in the constitution of the mind) Be so degenerate, infirm, and base. Art thou a man? and sham'st thou not to beg? To practise such a servile kind of life? Why, were thy education ne'er so mean, Having thy limbs: a thousand fairer courses Offer themselves to thy election. Nay, there the wars might still supply thy wants, Or service of some virtuous gentleman, Or honest ...
— Every Man In His Humour • Ben Jonson
... Three men, whose looks he very much approved, And thought such honest fellows he had round, Their like could nowhere be discovered round; Without suspecting any thing was wrong, The three, with complaisance and fluent tongue, Saluted him in humble servile style, And asked, (the minutes better to beguile,) If they might bear him company the way; The honour would be great, and no delay; Besides, in travelling 'tis safer found, And far more pleasant, when the party's round; So many robbers through the province range, ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... that beauty in art is created by what Raphael so well describes,—namely, THE IDEA OF BEAUTY IN THE PAINTER'S OWN MIND; and that in every art, whether its plastic expression be found in words or marble, colours or sounds, the servile imitation of Nature is the work of journeymen and tyros,—so in conduct the man of the world vitiates and lowers the bold enthusiasm of loftier natures by the perpetual reduction of whatever is generous ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... first—educated people are used to self-control—but in the long run his nerves will give way sooner. Moral courage is a thing I admire more than anything, but there's no use for it in the army, in fact it's worse than useless in the army. The man who's too servile to be capable of feeling humiliation and too stupid to understand what danger is—that's the man who makes a good, steady soldier. We've seen men so horribly smashed up by bombs that it makes you sick to look at them, and then people ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... wild terror she saw that his passion for her was waning. Therefore, her reproaches and threats became at times almost terrific, and again her servile entreaties were even more pitiable and dreadful, in view of what a true wife's position and right ought to be. He, wearying of her fierce and alternating moods, and selfishly thinking of his own ease and comfort, as was ever the ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... here upon the character of the thrice renowned Ker. It is evident to all, he was a man of a great mind, far above a servile and mercenary disposition.—He was, for a number of years, hurried from place to place, and guarded from prison to prison. He endured all this with undaunted courage.—He lost a good estate then for the cause of Christ: and, though he got not the martyrs ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... other side, were treated as of equal authority in their respective spheres The ingenuity of the theologians was to be employed in harmonising them. It is, in fact, only from this period that "the Scholastic Philosophy became distinguished by that servile deference to authority" which we ordinarily attribute ...
— The Church and the Empire - Being an Outline of the History of the Church - from A.D. 1003 to A.D. 1304 • D. J. Medley
... undisturbed, the proud camps of Whig and Tory. If Mr. Hyndman were a man of keen humour, which is far from my conception of his character, he might rest from his troubling and look on: the walls of Jericho begin already to crumble and dissolve. That great servile war, the Armageddon of money and numbers, to which we looked forward when young, becomes more and more unlikely; and we may rather look to see a peaceable and blindfold evolution, the work of dull men immersed in political tactics and dead ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spell. Liberal Unionists howl in its high places, and in its ruins Mr. Lecky builds his nest. Its records read with something of the mysterious arrogance of Chinese: hardly a generation away from us, we read of a race who believed in the present with the same sort of servile optimism with which the Oriental believes in the past. It may be that banging his head against that roof for twenty years did not improve the temper of the prophet. But he made what he praised in the old ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... the town a chop-house, a barber's shop. He has lost the lines of grandeur of the horizon, hills and plains, and, with them, sobriety and elevation. He has come among a supple, glib-tongued tribe, who live for show, servile to public opinion. Life is dragged down to a fracas of pitiful cares and disasters. You say the gods ought to respect a life whose objects are their own; but in cities they have betrayed you to a cloud ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the freedom of our slaves; this soldier, single-handed, freed three millions of bondsmen. Other generals, with cannon, have captured castles; this man beat castles down with his naked fists. And when he had achieved freedom for his people he led them into the desert, and taught the crude and servile slaves the principles of law, liberty and government. Under his guidance the mob became an army; the slaves became patriots and citizens; the savages were clothed with customs and institutions. His mind became a university for ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... Revealed me very Love, flame-clad, august. Also I strove to be as we are not, Loyal, and honourable, and even just. My webs of life in reveries were dyed As veils in vats of purple: so there stole Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride Through the imperial vesture of my soul.— And lo! like any servile fool I crave The dark strange rapture ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... everybody practises with more or less skill and attention, deals with a material far too unrepresentable to be called beautiful. The art remains in the sphere of the pleasant, and is consequently regarded as servile, rather ...
— The Sense of Beauty - Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory • George Santayana
... to cure the evil, You give all royal witchcraft to the devil: When servile chaplains[163] cry, that birth and place 220 Indue a peer with honour, truth, and grace, Look in that breast, most dirty D——! be fair, Say, can you find out one such lodger there? Yet still, not heeding what your heart can teach, You go to church ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... by the manner in which the Scriptures have been distorted to make them seem to sanction almost every social and civil wrong. They have been quoted as authority for the absolute subjection of woman; and, with equal fairness, for servile submission to despotic monarchs, for the use of intoxicating drinks, for the burning of heretics, and for the justification of slavery. Within a very few years past, these very Epistles have been brought forward to prove the "sum of all villainies" a God-given ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster
... strife for "sedulously fomenting" religious animosities with a view to arresting the Nationalist movement. Similarly, the constitution of the Universities has been changed with a view to rendering the youth of India "stupid and servile" ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... was pliant, And far from defiant —"And servile," no doubt you retort!— But if you struck a snag on A bottle-green dragon, Who filled up two-thirds of your court, And curled up his tail on your new tin roof, And made your piazza groan under his hoof, Would you threaten and thunder, Or just knuckle under Completely, ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... of the Canadian public, by exaggerating the advantages to be derived from a settlement in the colony, by praising all the good qualities of her people, and by throwing a flattering veil over their defects; but this is not my object, and such servile adulation would do them no good, and degrade me in my own eyes. I have written what I consider to be the truth, and as such I hope it may do good, by preparing the minds of emigrants for what they will really find, rather ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... philosophy in this, we might say, for surely historians up to Esmond's day had not all been pompous and servile, while something like dignity is desirable. But here we have Thackeray speaking through Esmond his own thoughts about history, and proclaiming the rise of naturalism against the romantic high-heeled school. And in a much later chapter, where Esmond visits Addison, we have the true ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... farmer for a heroine. I must ask the reader to follow all these references to his future wife; they are essential to the comprehension of Burns's character and fate. In June, we find him back at Mauchline, a famous man. There, the Armour family greeted him with a "mean, servile compliance," which increased his former disgust. Jean was not less compliant; a second time the poor girl submitted to the fascination of the man whom she did not love, and whom she had so cruelly insulted little more than a year ago; and, though Burns took advantage ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... honourable misters so and so, and Sir Harry and Sir Charles, and be wonderfully saucy to any one who was not a lord, or something of the kind; and this high opinion of themselves received daily augmentation from the servile homage paid them by the generality of the untitled male passengers, especially those on the fore part of the coach, who used to contend for the honour of sitting on the box with the coachman when no ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... Address, and in his peroration, after laying stress on the responsibilities he was incurring, proceeded: "I do not desire to be Minister of England; but while I am Minister of England I will hold office by no servile tenure; I will hold office unshackled by any other obligation than that of consulting the public interests and providing for ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... virtus Capuae. In 216 B.C. Capua was, after Rome, the richest and most powerful city in Italy. As the result of Cannae she aspired to dominion over Italy. Spartacus acer, leader of the Servile War, 73-71 B.C. 6. novis rebus infidelis faithless to revolution, because they assisted in betraying Catiline's plot 63 B.C.—Wickham. 9. impia ... aetas we an impious generation whose blood is foredoomed (i.e. there is a curse on us) ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... would mar the composition. At the risk of repeating myself, I maintain that Prague can well afford to be original and forgo any imitation of other cities by insisting on standing on seven hills; a truly great city should not descend to servile flattery. Paris, for example, undoubtedly a great city, is quite content to stand on two hills, Montmartre and Montparnasse, the latter quite worn flat by the levelling ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... sounding for onset; then follow chariots loaded with myrrh and garlands; and then a black bull; then come the young men of free birth carrying libations of wine and milk in large two-handed vessels, and jars of oil and precious ointments, none of servile condition being permitted to have any hand in this ministration, because the men died in defense of freedom; after all comes the chief magistrate of Plataea (for whom it is unlawful at other times for him ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... centre of the enemy's country, on the very summit of his highest mountain; from its impregnable watch-towers, his camps and arsenals, his columns and forts, are all revealed; within its walls, the free life continues while the legions of Death and Pain and Despair and all the servile captains of tyrant Fate afford the burghers of that dauntless city new spectacles of beauty." In like manner, the world of Greece, in which Palamas lives, "our home," as he calls it, may have its dreadful silences that are "full of moans," ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... who had been praetor in the former year, sprung not only from humble but mean parentage. They report that his father was a butcher, the retailer of his own meat, and that he employed this very son in the servile offices of ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... about them, a primitive, but very proud people, regarded their Sovereign and her husband with no servile awe. With them, even respect begins, like charity, at home; what there is left, they give loyally to their superiors in rank. To the Queen and her family they have given more,—love and free-hearted devotion. Her ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... mumbling and gesticulating; M. le Duc d'Orleans pretending to neither see nor hear him, the King astonished, and M. de Frejus laughing in his sleeve. The bait so well swallowed,—no one doubted that the Marechal, audacious as he was, but nevertheless a servile and timid courtier, would feel all the difference between braving, bearding, and insulting Cardinal Dubois (odious to everybody, and always smelling of the vile egg from which he had been hatched) and wrestling with the Regent in the presence of the King, claiming to annihilate M. le Duc ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... motionless, compelled to watch the horrid scene, like Niobe when chained to Sipylus. His servile spirit bowed before the ruler's power, instead of arming his right hand with the dagger of revenge, and when the frantic king asked him the same question a second time, he actually answered, pressing his hand on his heart: "A god could not have ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel, and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland: their archaeological, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... was first prompted by reverence and not the servile form into which it has too much degenerated. A form is only a sign at best. If there is nothing to prompt the sign, what a mockery it is! Truly, 'the letter killeth but the spirit ...
— The Right Knock - A Story • Helen Van-Anderson
... before us; it is that of a Dane, the learned and severe Zoega, to whom the young artist is specially recommended, but who only sees in him a common talent; whose words are only those of censure, and whose eye sees only a servile imitation of the antique in his works. Strictly honest in his judgment, according to his own ideas, is this man, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... competent judges a characteristic mark of the genuineness, independency, and (if I may apply the word to a book), the veraciousness of each several document; a mark, the absence of which would warrant a suspicion of collusion, invention, or at best of servile transcription; discrepancies so trifling in circumstance and import, that, although in some instances it is highly probable, and in all instances, perhaps, possible that they are only apparent and reconcilable, no wise man would care a staw whether they were real or apparent, reconciled ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... man of truth, lord of his own actions and expressing that lordship in his behavior, not in any manner dependent and servile either on persons or opinions or possessions. Beyond this fact of truth and real force, the word denotes good-nature or benevolence: manhood first, and then gentleness.—Power first, or no leading class.—God knows that all sorts of gentlemen knock at the door: but ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... soldiery strengthened a suspicion that they were to be used in the onslaught which was preparing against the religious freedom and the political privileges of the country. They were to be the nucleus of a larger army, it was believed, by which the land was to be reduced to a state of servile subjection to Spain. A low, constant, but generally unheeded murmur of dissatisfaction and distrust upon this subject was already perceptible throughout the Netherlands; a warning ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the slaves of the proscribed, if they would bear testimony against their masters. One did so. Sulla freed him, but then put him to death. Thus the slaves were the sport of political factions and leaders. The Roman conquests caused everywhere a certain servile temper. All conquered people were depressed into quasi-slavery. All had to pay a head tax, which was a mark of servitude. The Roman system reduced all to servitude. A late emperor called the senators "slaves in the toga." When all were rendered nil under the emperor ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Morcar and Edwin, as if accidentally, entered, and their salutations of Harold were such as became their relative positions; reserved, not distant—respectful, not servile. With the delicacy of high natures, they avoided touching on the cause before the Witan (fixed for the morrow), on which depended their earldoms or ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... property was taken away from him, and some of it was handed over to Antonina, with whom he had been ordered to reconcile himself on the most humbling terms: his great military household, containing many men of servile origin, whom he had trained to such deeds of valour that it was a common saying, "One household alone has destroyed the kingdom of Theodoric", was broken up, and those brave men who would willingly have died for their ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... modified by the translator's own opinions and criticism, is elegant, industrious, and interesting. Serassi's was the first copious biography of the poet founded on original documents; and it deserved to be translated by Mr. Black, though servile to the house of Este, and, as might be expected, far from being always ingenuous. Among other instances of this writer's want of candour is the fact of his having been the discoverer and suppresser of the manuscript review of Tasso by Galileo. The best summary account of the ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... institutions as the Museum of Geology, the Museum of the College of Surgeons, and such institutions which really have a motive in view—steadfastly adhered to—I saw, then as now, that every provincial museum was nothing if left to its own devices, and, if "inspired," was, at the best, but a sorry and servile imitator of the worst points ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... well known that among the Jews it was, and is, customary to prepare, and set out, in the afternoon of the Friday, all the food and necessaries for every family during the Sabbath day. Because they were forbidden to light a fire, or do any servile work, on that day; and therefore Friday was very properly called "the day of preparation." But it appears to me next to impossible, that any Jew would call the sabbath "the day that followeth the day of the ...
— The Grounds of Christianity Examined by Comparing The New Testament with the Old • George Bethune English
... was crossed ever so lightly, a spirit of antagonism and obstinacy was instantly aroused, which it sometimes took days to overcome, and was often made worse by servile coaxing and bribing on the part of those who had the care of her, this being considered the easiest way to get along ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... absolute fidelity to life, and he was the first worthy forerunner of the great men whose names are world-synonyms at the present day for those qualities. Almost every writer who preceded him had been more or less devoted to translations and servile copies of foreign literature. Against these, and the mock-classicism of the French pattern, which then ruled Europe, he waged relentless battle. He vitalized Russian literature by establishing its foundations firmly on Russian soil; by employing ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... away. The powers of the municipalities have, wherever they existed, been curtailed, and in some instances abolished entirely. It is not the status quo ante that has been restored in the Austrian dominions; the condition of the people has been rendered more servile. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... said the waiter, with a very peculiar look, half servile, half droll. "Madame se ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... had listened in my youth, and in my then condition of moral humiliation I felt the impropriety of putting the saddle on an animal connected with such respectable associations. No such scruples interfered with the use of the other animal, which was kept chiefly, I believe, for servile purposes. He was small and mean-looking—his foretop and mane in a hopeless tangle, with hay-seed on his eyelids, and damp straws scattered promiscuously ...
— The Opium Habit • Horace B. Day
... government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio had contained a provision which prohibited the use of servile labor therein, subject to the condition of the extraditions of fugitives from service due in any other part of the United States. Subsequently to the adoption of the Constitution this provision ceased to remain as a law, for its operation as such was absolutely superseded by the Constitution. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... consists first and foremost of its head, Mrs. —- , a lady of the old Scotch type, very talented, bright, humorous, charming, with a definite character which impresses its force upon everybody; beautiful in her old age, disdaining that servile conformity to prevailing fashion which makes many old people at once ugly and contemptible: speaking English with a slight, old- fashioned, refined Scotch accent, which gives naivete to everything she says, up to the latest ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the characteristics of a crowd, will, like a crowd, be extreme in its sentiments. Excessive in its violence, it will be excessive in its cowardice. In general it will be insolent to the weak and servile before the strong. ...
— The Psychology of Revolution • Gustave le Bon
... in full possession of his mental and physical strength. He is a genuine American, notwithstanding his long residence abroad, and has always a warm welcome for his countrymen visiting his studio. He is a favorite with the younger artists, who find in him a kind and judicious friend. Scorning servile imitation, he still exhibits in his works the freshness of his youth and the genuine originality which was the ...
— Great Fortunes, and How They Were Made • James D. McCabe, Jr.
... set straight on his seat by one desirous of helping him, instantly falls again on the other side. The simile—if limited to periods of transition—is most just. The youth of Italy, suddenly emancipated from the servile education of more than three centuries, and intoxicated with their moral liberty, find themselves in the presence of a Church destitute of all mission, virtue, love for the people, or adoration ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... registrars and head-clerks were all proctors, who, taking the cue from Chief Registrar Moore, executed their work by deputy, the deputies being clerks working long hours for small salaries—had kotooed to them with the most servile subserviency; but the Probate Office clerk was a government official, who could not be removed, even by the judge of the court, without the consent of the lord chancellor. What cared he, then, for Spenlow and Jawkins? "I am astonished, Mr. Spenlow," said a young clerk of the new regime, "that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... only nervous about it; I can't help being nervous. You were saying something just now; you were going to give me advice. I value your advice; you don't know how highly I value your advice." He said those words with a conciliatory smile which was more than helpless; it was absolutely servile in its ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... door-steps weeping. I suppose they expected to be treated in the manner that they had behaved to the French and Belgians, and as they would have done by us had the situation been reversed. When they found they were not to be oppressed they became servile and fawning. I had my officers' mess in the schoolmaster's house. He had been a non-commissioned officer of infantry, and yet he wanted to send his daughters in to play the piano for us after dinner. We would have despised the German less if he had been able to "hate" a little more after he ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... officers of the king of Sweden, the meanest of whom were fit to be generals in any other army, subjected to the servile taunts, and insolent behaviour of wretches undeserving to be ranked among ...
— The Fortunate Foundlings • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... from his favour: the extravagant tastes of the princeps and the many eccentricities of his life and character may perhaps find a reflection in some of the more grotesque extravagances of Lucan, such for instance as the absurdly servile dedication of the Pharsalia. But even in this direction his influence was ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... of the most enslaved people in all Europe (the French, no doubt, are intended; this was published in 1777,) are characterised as the merriest and most facetious of mankind. Still there may be more sincerity in the cheerfulness of the natives of Tonga-tabboo, for, exclusive of great and almost servile submission, their king does not seem to exact any thing from them, which, by depriving them of the means to satisfy the most indispensable wants of nature, could make them miserable. Be this as it may, so much seems to be certain, that their systems of politics ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... meagre crops of corn. The natives were poorer, humbler, and more miserable than any people we had yet observed in the course of our travels: whenever we stopped they flocked around us in crowds; and, asking for charity, used the most abject gestures....The Polish peasants are cringing and servile in their expressions of respect; they bowed down to the ground; took off their hats or caps and held them in their hands till we were out of sight; stopped their carts on the first glimpse of our carriage; in short, their whole behaviour gave evident symptoms of the ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... manor. This was a matter of legal status quite independent of the amount of land which the tenant held or of the services which he performed, though, generally speaking, the great body of the smaller tenants and of the laborers were of servile condition. In general usage the words villanus, nativus, servus, custumarius, and rusticus are synonymous, and the cotters belonged legally to the ...
— An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England • Edward Potts Cheyney
... myself. Not servile for applause, My Muse permits no deprecating clause; Modest or vain, she will not be denied One bold confession due to honest pride; And well she knows the drooping veil of song Shall save her boldness from the caviller's wrong. Her sweeter voice the Heavenly Maid imparts To tell the secrets ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cruel aggressions of a tyrant. Covey was a tyrant, and a cowardly one, withal. After resisting him, I felt as I had never felt before. It was a resurrection from the dark and pestiferous tomb of slavery, to the heaven of comparative freedom. I was no longer a servile coward, trembling under the frown of a brother worm of the dust, but, my long-cowed spirit was roused to an attitude of manly independence. I had reached the point, at which I was not afraid to die. This{191} spirit made me a freeman in fact, while I remained a slave in form. When a ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... would be an inducement for the one to endeavour to improve his fortune by his honest industry, lest he never be enabled to rise out of a state of dependence; and to the other, to keep, if not to improve, his own, lest he ever fall into such a servile state, and thereby lose the glorious power of conferring happiness on the deserving, one of the highest pleasures that a generous mind can know; a pleasure, Sir, which you have oftener experienced than thousands of gentlemen: and which may you still continue to ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... prejudices, he had thought to join his life with that of a native woman, the woman had shrunk away, mysterious, frightened at the idea, while her father, in the name of servile respect, opposed such an unheard of union. Febrer's idea was that of a mad man; the mingling of the rooster and the gull, the vagary of the extravagant friar which so amused the peasants. Thus had men willed in former times when they founded society and divided ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... country, whether in bondage or freedom. The great body of this race had been slaves in foreign lands and slaves in their native land. In the Eastern Hemisphere the African had always been in a servile condition. In Hayti and Jamaica experiments had been tried of freeing them, under the auspices of France and England. Miseries had resulted and ruin overwhelmed the islands. "Fanaticism may palliate, but could ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall
... patronised by successive kings; it numbered in its lists most of the eminent French writers. Yet what benefit has literature derived from its labours? What is its history but an uninterrupted record of servile compliances—of paltry artifices—of deadly quarrels—of perfidious friendships? Whether governed by the Court, by the Sorbonne, or by the Philosophers, it was always equally powerful for evil, and equally impotent for good. I might speak of the attacks by which it attempted ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... headlong into the childish amusements of her own ignorant and degraded people. What more, indeed, he asked himself savagely,—what more could be expected of the base-born child of the plaything of a gentleman's idle hour, who to this ignoble origin added the blood of a servile race? And he, George Tryon, had honored her with his love; he had very nearly linked his fate and joined his blood to hers by the solemn sanctions of church and state. Tryon was not a devout man, but he thanked God with religious fervor that ...
— The House Behind the Cedars • Charles W. Chesnutt
... is sometimes the name of an organ, sometimes of a disease. As an organ it is spongy and loose in texture, and attracts and retains the superfluities of the black-bile, expelled from the liver for its own cleansing. Hence it is a servile and insensitive organ, and accordingly suffers different diseases, such as obstruction, tumors, hardening, softening, abscess, and sometimes flatulence or repletion. The symptoms and treatment of each of these morbid conditions, ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... contrary, obedience deserves praise because it proceeds from charity: for Gregory says (Moral. xxxv) that "obedience should be practiced, not out of servile fear, but from a sense of charity, not through fear of punishment, but through love of justice." Therefore charity is a ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... not being immediately obeyed by the servile Chinaman, each of the two guards who stood by him seized one of the plaited tails of hair, which were nearly an ell in length, and pulled up his head from the floor. The Chinaman then remained cross-legged, with his eyes humbly fixed upon ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... the aforementioned town of Empthor was erected a fort, the ruins of whose walls may yet be traced. And the governor thereof had reduced the nurse of Saint Patrick under the yoke of slavery, and compelled her to be a servant unto him. And among other servile works enjoined to her, he had commanded her to clean with shovels all the offices within the fort, and to carry forth the soil from the stables. But the woman, having an ingenuous mind, and understanding that all power was from God, and that all things were ordained of God, made of her necessity ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... thou art gone, Gone like a star that through the firmament Shot and was lost, in its eccentric course Dazzling, perplexing. Yet thy heart, methinks, Was generous, noble—noble in its scorn Of all things low or little; nothing there Sordid or servile. If imagined wrongs Pursued thee, urging thee sometimes to do Things long regretted, oft, as many know, None more than I, thy gratitude would build On slight foundations; and, if in thy life Not happy, in thy death thou surely wert, Thy ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... he would cut our throats if it served his purpose," I answered. "He's servile, and servility goes hand in hand with treachery. The more I watch him, the more I see 'scoundrel' written in large type on every bend of ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... most servants, while they spoke with the appearance of respect in presence, altered their tone entirely when beyond the circle of the eye: theirs was eye-service, they were men-pleasers, they were servile. She had overheard her maid speak of her as Lady Clem, and that not without a streak of contempt in the tone. But here was a man who touched no imaginary hat while he stood in the presence of his mistress, neither swore at her in the stable-yard. He looked ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... wondering, dhat won tung iz not anoddher, or dhat each must hav her own essence and semblance; and dhat in ours, az in oddher picturage, an open vowel must not appear a shut won. Indispensabel dhen az dhe servile (i) in dhe three last exampels, iz it in aingel, dho inadmissibel in angellic; in evvery ainge and ainger, like rainge and rainger; az wel az in caimbric and Caimbridge; dho nedher ...
— A Minniature ov Inglish Orthoggraphy • James Elphinston
... the subject through a friend. It was couched in these terms: That, let a man possess what talents or accomplishments he might, it was not possible for him to maintain his proper station, in the public respect, amongst so many servants and people, servile to external impressions, without some regard to the ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... power to obtain such opinions and decisions as he desired. Preparatory to the trial of the Quo Warranto case against the City of London to procure the forfeiture of its charter, the king removed Chief Justice Pemberton and appointed in his place the servile Saunders who had drawn the writ in the case and had conducted all the proceedings in behalf of the crown as its counsel to the stage where the case was ready for argument in the Court of King's Bench. The case of the city was thereby made hopeless and the city itself ...
— Concerning Justice • Lucilius A. Emery
... I mean simply those who come after—those masters of younger birth who seem most nearly to take his place now that he is gone—not any avowed disciples, still less servile imitators of his thought or style. Following upon Homer there was the school of the Homeridae, or "sons of Homer." A cluster of poets at the beginning of the seventeenth century were styled "the sons of Ben Jonson." ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker
... Lucania to the sea, and, falling in with some Cilician piratical vessels, in the Straits, he formed a design to seize Sicily, and by throwing two thousand men into the island, to kindle again the servile war there, the flames of which had not long since been quenched, and required only a few sparks to set it again in a blaze. The Cilicians[34] came to terms with Spartacus, and received his presents; but they deceived him, and sailed off. Under these circumstances, he marched back from the ...
— Plutarch's Lives Volume III. • Plutarch
... charming, yet melancholy in his hour, Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature. His English translator in 1776 declares that "he meets with a much more favourable entertainment in England than in his native country, a servile nation that has lost all sense of liberty." Like many other notions current in 1776, this theory of Montaigne's popularity at home and abroad has lost its truth. Perhaps it would be more true to say that Montaigne is one of the last authors whom modern taste learns to ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... restrained, are great means to enrich; especially if the party have intelligence what things are like to come into request, and so store himself beforehand. Riches gotten by service, tho it be of the best rise, yet when they are gotten by flattery, feeding humors, and other servile conditions, they may be placed amongst the worst. As for fishing for testaments and executorships (as Tacitus saith of Seneca, testamenta et orbos tamquam indagine capi,[32]) it is yet worse; by how much men submit themselves to meaner ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... lettered critic; but to that awful character T have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... this cause of anger could not be removed by any thing done by you. Golden was not sensible of any fault. There was nothing, therefore, for which he could crave pardon. Blows and revilings had been patiently endured, but he was actuated by no tame or servile spirit. He never would expose himself to new insults. Though always ready to accept apology and grant an oblivion of the past, he never would avow compunction which he did not feel, or confess that he had deserved the treatment which he ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... them?—Or are these very differences additional proofs of poetic wisdom, at once results and symbols of living power as contrasted with lifeless mechanism—of free and rival originality as contradistinguished from servile imitation, or, more accurately, a blind copying of effects, instead of a true imitation of the essential principles?—Imagine not that I am about to oppose genius to rules. No! the comparative value ...
— Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher • S. T. Coleridge
... mind than common associates. It may be an instinctive agreement with Plato's definition of the wise man, as ever wanting to be with him who is better than himself. But in its usual form it becomes an unspeakable degradation, inducing servility, and lick-spittle humility, and all the vices of the servile mind. There can never be true friendship without self-respect, and unless soul meets soul free from self-seeking. If we had higher standards for ourselves, if we lived to God and not to men, we would also find that in the truest sense we would live with men. ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black
... was conspicuous in the west of Europe. What a glorious and important change! Those, who would have had otherwise no hopes, but that their miseries would be terminated by death, were then freed from their servile condition; those, who, by the laws of war, would have had otherwise an immediate prospect of servitude from the hands of their imperious conquerors, were then exchanged; a custom, which has happily descended to the present day. Thus, "a numerous ...
— An Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species, Particularly the African • Thomas Clarkson
... bought and sold at a profit, and most likely to produce quick returns if the maker's name is well known. Nor would it be the ghost of the real Schopenhauer unless we heard a vigorous denunciation of men who claim a connection with literature by a servile flattery of successful living authors—the dead cannot be made to pay—in the hope of appearing to advantage in their reflected light and turning that advantage ...
— The Art of Literature • Arthur Schopenhauer
... therefore most secure. These men, then, are the ones who grieve over the losses sustained by the change, who see themselves put under holy laws and just—they who before had no other laws than those of their own will, and their unbridled ambition, laws from which the others suffered as a servile, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the following language at the end of his fifteenth letter, dated at Thebes. "It is evident to me, as it must be to all who have thoroughly examined Egypt or have an accurate knowledge of the Egyptian monuments existing in Europe, that the arts commenced in Greece by a servile imitation of the arts in Egypt, much more advanced than is vulgarly believed, at the period when the Egyptian colonies came in contact with the savage inhabitants of Attica or the Peloponnesus. Without Egypt, Greece ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... and brought up many servile words of apology; at a crisis of this sort the beggar was uppermost in him, and the man of genius ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... perhaps, as they thought, because no vulgar tongue was worthy to express the pure conceit of an Imprimatur, but rather, as I hope, for that our English, the language of men ever famous and foremost in the achievements of liberty, will not easily find servile letters enow to spell such a dictatory ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... masters. The printing press is a machine that Art values because it obeys her. True art must have the vital energy of life itself, must take its colours from life's good or evil, must follow angels of light or angels of darkness. The art of the past is not to be copied in a servile spirit. For a new age we require a ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... men should be returned to slavery, and the officers turned over to the Governors of the States in which they were taken, to be dealt with according to the stringent law punishing the incitement of servile insurrection. Our Government could not permit this for a day. It was bound by every consideration of National honor to protect those who wore its uniform and bore its flag. The Rebel Government was promptly informed that rebel officers ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... by any sanctimonious debauch of sentimentality or religiosity, may we accomplish the first feeble step toward liberation. On the contrary, only by firmly planting our feet on the solid ground of scientific fact may we even stand erect—may we even rise from the servile stooping posture of the slave, borne down by the weight of ...
— The Pivot of Civilization • Margaret Sanger
... party would only give Balmawhapple a wished-for opportunity to display the insolence of authority, and the sulky spite of a temper naturally dogged, and rendered more so by habits of low indulgence and the incense of servile adulation. ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott
... (1777-1853) rivaled Quintana as a writer of patriotic verses. A liberal in politics like Quintana, Gallego also took the page xxxiii side of his people against the French invaders and against the servile Spanish rulers. He is best known by the ode El dos de mayo, in which he exults over the rising of the Spanish against the French on the second of May, 1808; the ode A la defensa de Buenos Aires against the English; and the ...
— Modern Spanish Lyrics • Various
... land, How could unguarded Virtue stand! With horror, grief, despair, the Dean Beheld the dire destructive scene: His friends in exile, or the tower, Himself[30] within the frown of power, Pursued by base envenom'd pens, Far to the land of slaves and fens;[31] A servile race in folly nursed, Who truckle most, when treated worst. "By innocence and resolution, He bore continual persecution; While numbers to preferment rose, Whose merits were, to be his foes; When ev'n his own ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... their "necessity" will show that the fifth article was framed in hostility to what seemed the principal mischief to be guarded against, to wit, the introduction of Chinese laborers by methods which should have the character of a forced and servile importation, and not of a voluntary emigration of freemen seeking our shores upon motives and in a manner consonant with the system of our institutions and approved by the experience of the nation. Unquestionably the adhesion of the Government of China to these liberal ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... outwardly was indistinguishable from the chanso. The meaning of the term is unknown; some say that it originally implied a poem composed by "servants," poets in the service of an overlord; others, that it was a poem composed to the tune of a [31] chanso which it thus imitated in a "servile" manner. From the chanso the sirventes is distinguished by its subject matter; it was the vehicle for satire, moral reproof or political lampooning. The troubadours were often keenly interested in the political events of their time; they ...
— The Troubadours • H.J. Chaytor
... soldier was 'idiot.' And on account of this strange stupidity of soldiers, things that would be disgraceful in private life become glorious in war. Their one virtue is obedience, unqualified by any of the balancing virtues, and they wear liveries to show that they are servile. And then the foolish things they try to do! You are familiar with the Peace Conference—generals and admirals spending weeks in uniform with swords at their sides to determine how to stop fighting, as if there were anything to do but to stop! I believe they had the grace to turn ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... the same name, in which Caecilius is frequently referred to; On the Sublime, attacked by (?) Longinus in his essay on the same subject (see L. Martens, De Libello [Greek: Peri hupsous], 1877); History of the Servile Wars, or slave risings in Sicily, the local interest of which would naturally appeal to the author; On Rhetoric and Rhetorical Figures; an Alphabetical Selection of Phrases, intended to serve as a guide to the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various |
