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More "Usurp" Quotes from Famous Books



... loss by another, with whom she would be happier than with him; truly and solemnly he declared that if Alice rejected him still, if even Alice were no more, his suit to Evelyn never could be renewed, and Alice's memory would usurp the ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... repose, favour, and celebrity. He died a poor man, though wealth was within his reach. He devoted himself to the severest toil, amidst allurements to luxuriate in the delights of domestic and social intercourse, such as few indeed have encountered. He silently permitted some to usurp his hardly-earned honours, that no selfish controversy might desecrate their common cause. He made no effort to obtain the praises of the world, though he had talents to command, and a temper peculiarly disposed to enjoy them. He drew upon himself the poisoned shafts ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... "Do you recall that a number of newspapers took occasion then to sneer at government attempts to usurp State ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... in my honors by a mortal girl? In vain then did that royal shepherd, whose judgment was approved by Jove himself, give me the palm of beauty over my illustrious rivals, Pallas and Juno. But she shall not so quietly usurp my honors. I will give her cause to repent of so ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... house, no one else thought of answering the telephone. Mrs. Waddington would have been the last to usurp the prerogative. For that instrument was the tap root of her spy system over her daughter. By it, she picked up things; learned what this irresponsible responsibility of hers was doing. Mrs. Waddington had her mental lists of Kate's telephonic friends. She imagined that she could tell, ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... "I love the holy zeal which is jealous of allowing objects, dear even to your wishes, to encroach on the sanctuary of heaven. Be ever thus, meek child of the church, and no human idol will be able to usurp that part of your virgin heart ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter

... estranging children from their parents, may have had some reference to his own case. His local affections, however, were very strong, and he felt with unusual keenness the final parting from his old home, and the pang of thinking that strangers usurp our dwelling and the familiar places will know ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith

... to spoil One right of our homes, or one foot of our soil, One privilege pluck from our keeping, or dare Usurp one blessing 'tis ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... independence of citizen soldiers can restrain the princes of ordinary states who are wont to usurp the whole glory of victories, it must have been still more effectual against the Hebrew captains, whose soldiers were fighting, not for the glory of a prince, but for the glory of God, and who did not go forth to battle till the Divine assent ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part IV] • Benedict de Spinoza

... in other words, what is true being found no longer consistent with what we have been accustomed to call beauty, the latter would cease to be an object of desire, though something widely alien to it might usurp its name. If beauty be devoid of independent right to be, and definable only as an attribute of truth, then undoubtedly the cynosure to- day may be the scarecrow of to-morrow, and vice versa, according to our varying conception ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... country, however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived the military spirit of his country, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... men would revive the blessed style of that great doctor of the Gentiles, would be carried thus, ego, non dominus; and again, secundum consilium meum, in opinions and counsels, and not in positions and oppositions. But men are now over-ready to usurp the style, non ego, sed dominus; and not so only, but to bind it with the thunder and denunciation of curses and anathemas, to the terror of those which have not sufficiently learned out of Solomon that "The causeless curse shall ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon

... children for government. They were given power according to the qualities of their minds and according to the tasks for which they were fitted. We even bred them for governing. Later, when the machine began to usurp the place of labor all over the world and gave men freedom and peace and beauty, the task of government dwindled away little by little, and the phrenarchs ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker

... the best, the most virtuous and moral of my readers—cannot put out the fire that nature kindles in the adoring heart of woman. Her error was not that she loved Michael more, but that she had loved Mildred less. Ambition, if it usurp the rights of love, must look for all the punishment that love inflicts. Sooner or later it must come. "Who are you?" enquires the little god of the greater god, ambition, "that you should march into my realms, and create rebellion there? Wait but a little." Short was the interval ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various

... classes of emotions. This is Self-love;—which leads us to seek our own protection, comfort, and advantage. It is a sound and legitimate principle of action when kept in its proper place;—when allowed to usurp an undue influence, it degenerates into selfishness; and it then interferes in a material degree with the exercise of the affections, or, in other words, with our duty ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie

... felt so convinced of my powerlessness to love, that the thought of a serious passion did not at first enter my mind. However, a remembrance of my beautiful traveller pervaded my thoughts more and more, and threatened to usurp the place of everything else. I then subjected myself to a rigid analysis; I sought for the exact location of this sentiment whose involuntary yoke I already felt; I persuaded myself, for some time yet, that it was only the transient excitement of my brain, one of those fevers of imagination ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard

... the tempest from afar, And felt'st the horrors of the wat'ry war, To me unknown, yet on this peaceful shore Methinks I hear the storm tumultuous roar, And how stern Boreas with impetuous hand Compell'd the Nereids to usurp the land. Reluctant rose the daughters of the main, And slow ascending glided o'er the plain, Till AEolus in his rapid chariot drove In gloomy grandeur from the vault above: Furious he comes. His winged sons obey Their frantic sire, and madden all the sea. ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley

... should be wrested from her. If the husband scored one on her to-day she might never catch even, and he might hold the whip hand over her for the rest of their married life. As for the old man, it was hard enough to be old and have young ones usurp your place. ...
— Molly Brown's Orchard Home • Nell Speed

... the jury think? They were men of the world. Candidly, had they ever seen such a chauffeur and footman before? Did they look like servants? Of course they had Mr. Bumble's—their master's—confidence. But had they the jury's? He did not wish to usurp the functions of the cinema or the stage, but it was his duty to remind them that sometimes Truth was stranger than Fiction.... Here were two servants, who were obviously not servants at all, giving such overwhelming satisfaction that they were allowed unheard-of liberty—liberty which afforded ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... hate; Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state. To compass this, the triple bond[69] he broke; The pillars of the public safety shook; And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke: Then seized with fear, yet still affecting fame, Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name. So easy still it proves, in factious times, 180 With public zeal to cancel private crimes! How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, Where none can sin against the people's will! Where crowds can wink, and no offence be known, Since ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden

... her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head, "didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour—he can't escape it—it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... me that little spot, With grey hills compassed round, Where knotted grass neglected lies, And weeds usurp the ground. ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair

... battle—I do not even know by what name it will be known to future generations—would be to usurp the duties of the historian, and I shall only attempt, therefore, to tell you of that portion of it which I saw with my own eyes. On the morning of September 13 four Belgian divisions moved southward from Malines, their objective being the town of Weerde, on the Antwerp- ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell

... question, then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To usurp a usurpation—that is all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... downward tendency, who had not caught the meaning of their position and work, and felt none of its responsibilities. So under this no-government the School-house began to see bad times. The big fifth-form boys, who were a sporting and drinking set, soon began to usurp power, and to fag the little boys as if they were prepostors, and to bully and oppress any who showed signs of resistance. The bigger sort of sixth-form boys just described soon made common cause with the fifth, while the smaller sort, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... is the one who ever keeps himself under strict discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his inclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires and keeps the roots of his life under ground, and never allows them to ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden

... it has always been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the power which belongs to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... Caesar's ambition led him to usurp a power to which the Romans were not willing to submit, it appears that he used it with unexampled moderation. He was beloved and revered by the people, honoured and almost adored by his friends, and esteemed and ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... to usurp the rights of a husband and father, he thought to play his part still better by deceiving the mistress also. ... Ah! it is amusing, is it not? You also, Rose, you thought he was your old lover! Well, I at least am excusable, I the wife, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - MARTIN GUERRE • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... the reception of petitions at all," said the Southern leaders, "for they will lead to discussion on a forbidden subject. They are only an entrance wedge to disrupt the Union. The Constitution has guaranteed to us exclusively the preservation of an institution on which our welfare rests. You usurp a privilege which you call a right. Your demands are dangerous to the peace of the Union, and are preposterous. You violate unwritten law. You seek to do what the founders of our republic never dreamed of. When two of the States ceded their own slave territory to the central government, it was with ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XII • John Lord

... the other to the people of Moscow. This action struck terror among the nobles and the people. The former dreaded that the people might rise and avenge the czar, and the people were afraid that the nobles would once again usurp the government. The nobles and priests consulted and decided to beg Ivan's pardon and to submit to any punishment he might impose. Ivan consented to return to Moscow (p. 117) but on his own terms. This was ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen

... deep-sea sailing from the Java coast to Heligoland. Came Paradies, the little German trader, in his finest blacks, and chose a seat off in one corner of the room. Then "Foxy Grandpa" and the "Arizona Babe" arrived, and the old maid from Zamboanga, who, when expression failed her, would usurp the conversation with a "blab, blab, blab!" And as the serpent made for old Laocooen, so she now made ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... should trust large bodies of mercenary troops in her colonies, at so great a distance from her; lest, in process of time, when the spirits of the people shall be depressed by the military power, another Caesar should arise and usurp the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... do not preside at marriages, the devil will surely usurp their place. "He that is not with Me is against Me; and he that gathereth not ...
— Vocations Explained - Matrimony, Virginity, The Religious State and The Priesthood • Anonymous

... article guaranties "the right of people to bear arms." Without this right, ambitious men might, by the aid of the regular army, overthrow the liberties of the people, and usurp the powers of government. ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young

... promotion by purchase. But it is much rather the belief that 'the gift of God can be purchased with' anything but personal faith in Jesus, the Giver and the Gift. The effects of it are patent among us. Ceremonies usurp the place of faith. A priesthood is exalted. The universal Christian prerogative of individual access to God is obscured. Christianity is turned into a ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren

... easy head, By grosser fumes and calmer follies fed; Nor thoughts of when, or where, or how to come, The canvass general, or the general doom; Extremes ne'er reach'd one passion of his soul, A villain tame, and an unmettled fool; To half his vices he has but pretence, For they usurp the place of common sense; To half his little merits has no claim, For very indolence has raised his name; Happy in this, that, under Satan's sway, His passions tremble, but will not obey. The vicar at the table's front presides, Whose presence a monastic life derides; ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... whether we respect the Art or the Author. For Logic may be said to be an Art of right reasoning; an Art that undeceives men who take falsehood for truth; enables men to pass a true judgment, and detect those fallacies, which in some men's understandings usurp the place of right reason. And how great a master our Author was in this art, will quickly appear from that clearness of method, argument, and demonstration, which is so conspicuous in all his other writings. He, who had attained to so great a dexterity in the use of reason himself, ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... all the mischief, twice sets the two places side by side and elaborately compares them; in the course of which operation, by the way, he betrays the viciousness of the text which he himself employed. But what further helps to explain how easily [Greek: anapeson] might usurp the place of [Greek: epipeson][197], is the discovery just noticed, that the ancients from the earliest period were in the habit of identifying St. John, as St. John had identified himself, by calling him 'the one that lay ([Greek: ho anapeson]) upon the Lord's chest.' The ...
— The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels • John Burgon

... salvation to good heathens, or to good Jews, or to good Mohammedans, or to anybody who is good. God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him. Nor are we about to usurp Peter's keys, and lock anybody out of heaven, or into it either; we are only acting as jurymen upon the life and conduct of men held up to our children as noble examples of a good life, in their classics, by heathens ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson

... Huguenotism, Guise knew that he had been played upon by a subtler spirit than his own. The simulated affection was now changed into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the childless Henry ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... that time Windsor Castle became, comparatively, a mournful place. The terrace was shut up—the ancient pathway through the park, and under the castle walls, was diverted—and a somewhat Asiatic state and stillness seemed to usurp the reign of the old free and familiar intercourse of the sovereign with ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 13, No. 355., Saturday, February 7, 1829 • Various

... only ends. The party owes its right to existence to the people's will; when its life must be prolonged by artificial stimulants it is fit that it should die. It is not the people's master, but the people's servant; if it should usurp the oppressor's place, it must die ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... would who should dress a peasant in robes of state or give the nose or any other feature of a Venus to a satyr. What had the destroyers of mankind, that glorious pair, one of whom came into the world to usurp the dominion and abolish the constitution of his own country; the other to conquer, enslave, and rule over the whole world, at least as much as was well known to him, and the shortness of his life would give him leave to visit; what ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding

... self-restraint Bawr refrained from striking, that he might seem to usurp no share in Grom's amazing achievement. He stood leaning upon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Grom came scrambling down from the ledge and stood beside him. He took the bow and ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts

... our knowledge of the subject. The distinctions which they indicate have been carefully drawn, and appear to be of such authority that they should be generally accepted. Sometimes, as, for example, in mathematics, a conventional set of symbols may quite usurp the function of ordinary language, and may enormously curtail the labor of setting forth the processes and results ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... laughed. "Oh, there are exceptions, I hope," he said. "Love, like everything else that is great, is very, very rare. We call the disposition to usurp and absorb another person by that name, but woe betide him or her who is the object of such a sentiment. Yet happily, the real thing is to be found now and again. And from ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... certainly in the absence of martial law, they had no authority in the premises, under the Act of Congress,—that power being confided to commissioners and marshals. As well might a member of Congress or a State sheriff usurp the function. Worse yet, in defiance of the Common Law, they made color a presumptive proof of bondage. In one case a free negro was delivered to a claimant under this process, more summary than any which the Fugitive-Slave Act provides. The colonel of a Massachusetts regiment showed ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... make terms for them all. "If thou be indeed Odysseus," he said, "thou speakest justly concerning the evil doings of the wooers. And there lies the cause of the mischief, Antinous, struck down by thy righteous hand. He it was who sought to slay Telemachus, that he might usurp thy place, and make himself king in Ithaca. But now that he is gone to his own place, let us, the rest, find favour in thy sight. And as for thy possessions which have been wasted, we will pay thee back out of our own goods, as much ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell

... thing changes, every thing assumes a new face. What was entitled to please yesterday in times of tranquillity, is to-day, during the jar of public opinion, and will be to-morrow subject to all the variations of caprice. The marvellous and gigantic usurp the place of the natural, and claim alone the right to entertain. True it is that the dancers have found means to render this new manner interesting, while they have enjoyed the sweets of it. The pleasure of being ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon

... of the monarch. Henry VIII was always master; Elizabeth was more guided than guiding; the Councils of the Valois and Hapsburgs profited by the preoccupation or the stupidity of their masters to usurp the royal power for themselves. In public opinion the Council occupied a great place, similar to that of an English Cabinet today. The first Anglican prayerbook {478} contains petitions for the Council, though it did not occur to the people to pray for Parliament until ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... usurp authority, sir," said Mrs. Dodd quietly; "but we know what a severe headache is, and should be glad to see you sit still in the shade, and excite yourself as little ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade

... Greene, 'cause it's in the shade an' has a nice back," said Raymond, delightedly, almost as soon as they had reached the island; and Miss Greene flopped into it with a sigh of content in the realization that Miss Bell did not intend to usurp all the choice spots, as her persistence earlier in the day might possibly have suggested to a suspicious mind. There, alternately reading and dozing, she incidentally listened to the flow of conversation poured forth by her small charge, varied only by occasional ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan

... determine what is the seal, and who are the officers, of a community unknown as an organized body to the Congress of the United States? Can the right be admitted in that community to usurp the sovereignty over territory which belongs to the States of the Union? All these questions must be answered before I can consent to any such irregular proceeding as that which is now presented in the case ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis

... nature. If we are to find sermons in stones, we are to look for them in the relations of the stones to other things—when they are out of place, when they press down the grass or the flowers, or impede the plow, or dull the scythe, or usurp the soil, or shelter vermin, as do old institutions and old usages that have had their day. A stone that is much knocked about gets its sharp angles worn off, as do men. "A rolling stone gathers no moss," which is not bad for the stone, as moss ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs

... the shadow of something big, bloated, and crawling. I could distinguish nothing further. On reaching the door it paused, and I felt it was eyeing him—or rather his material body—anxiously. Perhaps it feared lest some other shadow, equally baleful, equally sly and subtle, would usurp its home. Its hesitation was, however, but momentary, and, passing through the door, it glided across the dimly lighted hall and out into the freedom of the open air. Picture succeeding picture with great rapidity, I followed it as it curled and fawned over the ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... older tragedians. But such a recommendation it is evident is little to his credit; for eloquence may, no doubt, have its place in the drama when it is consistent with the character and the object of the supposed speaker, yet to allow rhetoric to usurp the place of the simple and spontaneous expression of the feelings, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black

... Cambaceres generally came at mid-day, and stayed some time with him, often a whole hour. Lebrun visited but seldom. Notwithstanding his elevation, his character remained unaltered; and Bonaparte considered him too moderate, because he always opposed his ambitious views and his plans to usurp power. When Bonaparte left the breakfast-table it was seldom that he did not add, after bidding Josephine and her daughter Hortense good-day, "Come, Bourrienne, ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... yellow handkerchief shade forth the felon's bar; the daring burglar eyeing with confidence the counsel learned in the law's defects, fee'd by its produce to defend its quondam owner. The effigies of Pride, Extravagance, honest Distress, and reckless Plunder, all by turns usurp the scene. In my last waking sleep, just as I had composed myself in delicious indolence, a parcel fell with more than ordinary force on one beneath. These were two of my talking friends. I stirred not, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... and magistrates to be callit lordis and dominators over their subjectis, whom they govern civilly; bot it is proper to Christ onlie to be callit Lord and Master in the spirituall government of the kirk, and all utheris that beiris office therein aucht not to usurp dominion therein, nor be callit lordis, bot onlie ministeris, disciples, and servantis. For it is Christis proper office to command and rewll His kirk universall, and every particular kirk, throw His Spirit and Word, be the ministrie of men."[265] ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... also invited in Captain Cranston because I want to hear your side of a singular case. In an official letter to the post adjutant, Captain Devers charges that you went to the post hospital last night, ordered the attendant out of the room, and proceeded to usurp control of a patient under the doctor's care,—that you deliberately overthrew his authority and actually told the attendant his orders were of no account. This, if true, is a most serious matter, but I have learned that there are many sides to ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... of her intense charm was the ready tact with which she was careful never to usurp the place of any one else. She put aside the muslin that was to form covers for the boxes, and slipped her scissors back ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... Two things may be considered in the assault of the demons—the assault itself, and the ordering thereof. The assault itself is due to the malice of the demons, who through envy endeavor to hinder man's progress; and through pride usurp a semblance of Divine power, by deputing certain ministers to assail man, as the angels of God in their various offices minister to man's salvation. But the ordering of the assault is from God, Who knows how ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... by man in his own image, with his own desires and passions, stand in constant need of being recreated. They change as the habits and temper of the race which adores them alter; they are ever bound to do something fresh, lest man should forget them, and new divinities usurp their place. Hence came endless avatars in Hindoo mythology, reproducing all the dreamy monstrosities of that passive Indian mind. Hence came Jove's adventures, tinged with all the lust and guile which the wickedness of the natural man planted on a hot-bed of iniquity ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... of scantily peopled territory in any one of several ways. Often the statesman, no less than the soldier, plays an all-important part in winning the new land; nevertheless, it is usually true that the diplomatists who by treaty ratify the acquisition usurp a prominence in history to which they are in no way entitled by the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... but the Person, Place, and Time, And what was Merit turns to Crime. Wisdom, which men with so much pain, With so much weariness attain, May in a little moment quit, And abdicate the throne of Wit, And leave, a vacant seat, the brain, For Folly to usurp and reign. Should you but discompose the tide, On which Ideas wont to ride, Ferment it with a yeasty Storm, Or with high Floods of Wine deform; Altho' Sir Oracle is he, Who is as wise, as wise can be, In one short minute we shall find The wise man gone, ...
— The Methodist - A Poem • Evan Lloyd

... imagination can be the more readily transport me to you: it is then that my spirit holds with you a more tender and undivided commune. In the day the world can force itself upon my thoughts, and its trifles usurp the place which "I love to keep for only thee and Heaven;" but in the night all things recall you the more vividly: the stillness of the gentle skies,—the blandness of the unbroken air,—the stars, so holy in ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... because he knew I had always befriended him while under my military command, and in securing him his office of Secretary of War. I spoke frequently to President Grant of the growing tendency of his Secretary of War to usurp all the powers of the commanding general, which would surely result in driving me away. He as frequently promised to bring us together to agree upon a just line of separation of our respective offices, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... his most faithful servant, and promises ever to be a gracious Sovereign to you, but he will never further your projects of becoming an independent ruler, and will not assist you to effect the Elector's ruin, that you may usurp his place. He rather wishes you to remain what you are—Stadtholder in the Mark—and to exert all your energies in maintaining that position, since the Emperor relies upon your good offices for securing him an ally in the Elector. The Mark is to remain Frederick William's ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach

... reign, when flush'd Lancastrian roses Of York's pale blossoms had usurp'd the right;[3] As wine drives Nature out of drunkards' noses, Till red, triumphantly, eclipses white;— In Harry's reign—but let me to my song, Or good king Harry's ...
— Broad Grins • George Colman, the Younger

... race of strangers, and with maddening despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered. I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant west, this great valley of the Hesperides; and I determined to assist in extirpating the red man, and to usurp the land of his fathers. Among the men who were at the village, I found one who for magnanimity and undaunted courage merits a wreath which should hang high in the temple of fame, and yet, like hundreds of others, he has passed away unhonored, unsung. His name was Ralph Watts, a sturdy Virginian, ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... found to have altered; but in some of these cases, the awakening must be the greater nightmare. The unfamiliarity, even horror, of the situation can be imagined. Yet many such cases exist; and the two Selves alternately usurp and manipulate a common body; the Real Self and the Stranger. Who and what is this Stranger? Apparently it is an alien spirit—another soul, perchance, entangled miserably in the body of some equally unhappy mortal! Yet modern psychology contends that such cases represent, for ...
— The Problems of Psychical Research - Experiments and Theories in the Realm of the Supernormal • Hereward Carrington

... man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... little consequence that the officer who usurps the power of others may design only to advance the public interest and to govern well. The system which permits an honest and well-meaning man to do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish ambition to usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power concentrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully observed and jealously maintained limitations upon the power of every public officer that the workings of free institutions ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... Teutonick etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborn to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and ...
— Preface to a Dictionary of the English Language • Samuel Johnson

... change however, had been wrought in the course of the last few hours, upon the thoughts and feelings of our two fair captives, a change which had caused reality to usurp for a time at least, the place of romance, and constrained them to gaze with a vacant look upon the superbly natural beauties of the island glen. Therefore with thoughts concentrated upon their immediate personal prospects and fruitless conjectures as to the complexion of their coming ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker

... leading clause of her creed of life; but she had always understood that this difference vanished in some miraculous way after marriage. She knew that Oliver had to work, of course—how otherwise could he support his family?—but the idea that his work might ever usurp the place in his heart that belonged to her and the children would have been utterly incomprehensible to her had she ever thought of it. Jealousy was an alien weed, which could not take root in the benign soil of ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... native land again was to be found in the support of Ferrante, King of Naples, the sworn foe of the Medici. This monarch looked on Simonetta as a traitorous villain who had taken advantage of Bona's weakness to usurp the supreme power in Milan, and wrote to King Louis XI, begging him to come to his kinswoman's help and assist in restoring the Duke of Bari and his brother to their rights. But the French king had no wish to be drawn into the quarrel, and when Ferrante endeavoured to obtain ...
— Beatrice d'Este, Duchess of Milan, 1475-1497 • Julia Mary Cartwright

... harrowing letters she had wept long and bitterly, accusing herself continually of her unworthiness in allowing another image to usurp the throne where the missionary should have reigned supreme; and the only consolation afforded was in the reflection that Douglass had died believing her faithful, happy in the perfect trust reposed in her. He had been buried on a sunny slope of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson

... "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the pan." Presently after another assured ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... can usurp this height," return'd that shade, "But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest." * * * * * "Are there not thousands in the world," said I, Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, "Who ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... smoked his pipe in lordly silence; nor did it ever enter his brain that the active, restless Yankee, whom he saw through his half-shut eyes worrying about in dog day heat, ever intent on the main chance, was one day to usurp control over these goodly Dutch domains. Already, however, the races regarded each other with disparaging eyes. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... a Duty incumbent on me to impart it to you, in Hopes of a Reformation, which is only to be effected by a Restoration of the Latin to the usual Dignity in your Papers, which of late, the Greek, to the great Displeasure of your Female Readers, has usurp'd; for tho the Latin has the Recommendation of being as unintelligible to them as the Greek, yet being written of the same Character with their Mother-Tongue, by the Assistance of a Spelling-Book its legible; which Quality the Greek wants: ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... punishments, let him show himself a father, not a hangman; and, in case of doubt, let him incline rather to mildness than to severity. Let him hear quarrels and discussions with the alcaldes, but let him not allow them to fleece his sheep. Let him defend his own jurisdiction, but not usurp that of another. Let him not become an alcalde unless the alcalde tries to become a cura. If he is unable to settle the quarrels of the Indians satisfactorily, he shall allow them to go to the alcalde, who will quickly render them harmonious by laughing ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various

... which, while it keeps to its proper subject—the investigation of the relations which prevail in the phenomenal world—is self-sufficient, and can receive nothing on external authority. Still less can the adept usurp Divine powers, and bend the eternal laws of the universe ...
— Christian Mysticism • William Ralph Inge

... position to favor conferred by your Majesty upon her father or husband, for services rendered, or to special favor on your Majesty's part. It is not right that some trader or transient resident, who has rendered no service, but who has rather been unserviceable to your Majesty, should usurp and enjoy these benefits by unjust means. The governor should be instructed not to allow, on any account, marriages to take place with any creditor or servant; but he should have, as his sole object, reward and honor to worthy persons who have served ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union with each other.... Soon inequality of strength is displayed among neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak, and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service. Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first instituted it, to take a ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... sort: Good Jove! what sense hast thou to be a sense! Since from the first foundation of the world, We never were accounted more than five. Yet you, forsooth, an idle prating dame, Would fain increase the number, and upstart To our high seats, decking your babbling self With usurp'd titles ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... had been bury'd in 'em. However, unpleasant as it was, she could not forbear gazing after this miserable Spectacle; and the more she beheld it, the more she was confirmed it was Gracelove, or something that had usurp'd his Figure. In short, she could not rest 'till she call'd to one of her Servants, who rode by the Coach, whom she strictly charg'd to go to that poor Traveller, and mount him on his Horse, 'till they ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... with whom you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... requires of us. Some of us have been called by God's providence to give up the light of our eyes, the joy of our homes, to Him. Some of us have had to make the choice between earthly and heavenly love. All of us have to throne God in our hearts, and to let not the dearest usurp His place. In our weakness we may well shrink from such a test. But let us not forget that the trial of Abraham was not imposed by his own mistaken conceptions of duty, nor by a sterner God than the New Testament reveals, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren

... lui."[32] He somewhat redeemed himself in 1715 with le Triomphe de Bilboquet, ou la Defaite de l'Esprit, de l'Amour et de la Raison, a fancy inspired by the game of cup and ball, so much in vogue at that period that it threatened to usurp the time and rights of conversation, and had even made its way upon the stage, in which simple matter Marivaux ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux

... give them power to elect their own governor. A charter was drawn up by Penn and confirmed in 1681, and he became proprietor. No man ever assumed such a trust with less of personal ambition or desire for gain than he. "You shall be governed by laws of your own making," said he; "I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person." He had already made inroads on his estate by fighting the cause of his brethren in England in the courts; but when a speculator offered him six thousand pounds down and an annual income for the monopoly ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne

... believe, be accused of ever having attempted to usurp a superiority over many men of genius, my contemporaries; but, in point of popularity, not of actual talent, the caprice of the public has certainly given me such a temporary superiority over men, of whom, in regard to poetical fancy and feeling, I scarcely thought myself worthy to ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various

... Puritans especially resented in Prince Rupert was his insistence on regimental prayers. They could pardon his raids, his breathless charges, his bewildering habit of appearing where he was least expected or desired; but that he should usurp their own especial prerogative of piety was more than they could bear. It is probable that Rupert's own private petitions resembled the memorable prayer offered by Sir Jacob Astley (a hardy old Cavalier who was both devout and humorous) before the battle of Edgehill: "Oh, Lord, Thou knowest ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier

... this position we do not know, any more than we know the origin of the Greek gods; indeed, in this respect and others there are parallels between the Greek and the Northern mythology. Wotan goes in fear lest the powers of the nether world usurp his domination, which he wants to make absolute. He makes a pact with the giants—the Titan forces of the earth—that be will give them Freia if they build him a castle, Valhalla, which he intends to fill with slain warriors in sufficient numbers ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman

... 'If I do not usurp a priviledge reserved for some one more happy in your acquaintance, may I presume, Madam, to entreat (for a while) the favour of your Conversation, at least till the arrival of whom you expect, provided you are not tired of me before; for then upon the least intimation of uneasiness, ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve

... that hapless hour, Usurp'd a tyranny which men Have deem'd, since I have reach'd to power; My innate nature—be it so: But, father, there liv'd one who, then, Then—in my boyhood—when their fire Burn'd with a still intenser glow, (For passion must, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... be allowed to minister to them: and the less we cling to these earthly affections, the less we grasp them as sources of personal happiness the better; as they may be withdrawn from us, and God, whose place they too often usurp in our souls, be the one Friend who shall supply ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... perswaded had His Majesty's Com'ds to the other Colonies been duely obey'd, and the necessary Assistance given by them, the Fr. wou'd have long ago have been oblig'd entirely to have evacuated their usurp'd Possession of the King's Lands, instead of w'ch they are daily becoming more formidable, whilst every Gov't except No. Caro. has amus'd me with Expectations that have proved fruitless, and at length refuse to give any Supply, unless in such a manner ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner

... woman who is shocked at the thought of sex is the little girl who reacted too strongly to early impressions. The man of forty who is disgruntled because he is not made manager of a business created by others is the little boy who was jealous of his father and wanted to usurp his place of power. The man who suffers from a sense of inferiority because his friend has a handsomer or more intellectual wife is the same little boy who strove with his father for possession of the mother, the most desired object in his childish environment. The measure ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury

... mistake was attended soon with difficulties. The old courtiers recovered their influence. Dion was calumniated and slandered, as seeking to usurp the sovereign powers, and that Plato was brought to Syracuse as an agent in the conspiracy. Plato tried to counterwork this mischief, but in vain. Dionysius lost all inclination to reform, and Dion was hated, for he was superior to his nephew ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... law's mouth is stopped, which had stopped our mouth, and the sinner is absolved, who was found guilty. Thus you see the salvation and absolution of believers is wonderfully secured, for there is a sentence for it in the court of the gospel, pronounced by the Son. But lest you think he should usurp such an absolute power, then hear, that he is an advocate to plead out the equity and justice of it, before the very tribunal of the law, that the law itself being the rule, the Father himself, who made the law, being the Judge, the poor ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning

... a good horse for the occasion, I had the honor of riding beside her carriage till some better-mounted acquaintance came to usurp my place and her attention; after which I was forced to drop behind and bear the eclipse of my glory as philosophically ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... fifth of the versifier. At times it is very delicate and hard to perceive, and then perhaps most excellent and winning (I say perhaps); but at times again the elements of this literal melody stand more boldly forward and usurp the ear. It becomes, therefore, somewhat a matter of conscience to select examples; and as I cannot very well ask the reader to help me, I shall do the next best by giving him the reason or the history ...
— The Art of Writing and Other Essays • Robert Louis Stevenson

... artist and annalist of the two busts and the two lives of Protus, the baby emperor of Byzantium, born in the purple, gently nurtured and cherished, yet fated to obscurity, and of John, the blacksmith's bastard, predestined to usurp his throne and save the ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... Khandawar. It was then that I knew him. He was continually dissatisfied, however, and after a year or two disappeared. It was rumoured that he'd struck a bargain with his prime-minister, one Salig Singh. At all events Salig Singh contrived to usurp the throne, Government offering no objection. Rutton turned up eventually in Russia and married a woman there who died in childbirth—twenty years ago, perhaps. The child did not survive its mother...." Labertouche paused deliberately, his glance searching Amber's face. ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... to dance with me, sing with me, golf with me, talk with me, consult with me about his affairs, write letters to me; and more than that, he doesn't like to have other men usurp these privileges; but I am not prepared to say that he would pine away if circumstances removed me altogether from his path. At any rate, these perplexities have been too much for my peace of mind, and when Richard Morton announced that he had business which would keep him in Philadelphia ...
— Ladies-In-Waiting • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... free by it. There are times when Nature permits no rivalry; she claims every thought and gives herself to us only as we give ourselves to her. She effaces us and takes complete possession of our souls. Not so, however, does she usurp the throne of our own personal life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration. Then it is, perhaps, that ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... is one of those matters about which we ought not to legislate at all; one of those matters which settle themselves far better than any government can settle them. Now it is most important that this point should be fully cleared up. We certainly ought not to usurp functions which do not properly belong to us: but, on the other hand, we ought not to abdicate functions which do properly belong to us. I hardly know which is the greater pest to society, a paternal government, that is to say a prying, meddlesome government, ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... grandfather apart. You have doubtless correctly gauged my motive. Isobel's mother was my father's favourite child. If he had an idea that her child was alive, he would receive her without a word. She would completely usurp the place of Adelaide, my own daughter, in his affection—and in ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... entertained suspicions in consequence of the Prince's excesses, and the great recourse of people unto him, of which his court (p. 306) was at all times more abundant than his father's, that he would presume to usurp the crown; so that, in consequence of this suspicious jealousy, he withdrew in part his affection and singular love from the Prince.[292] He was accompanied by a large body of lords and gentlemen; but those he would not suffer to advance beyond the fire in the hall, in order ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler

... mandate of the Constitution, had no power to decide the result of the elections in the States, but that power was committed to State tribunals, how was it possible that any member of either House of Congress, who had sworn to support the Constitution, could usurp that power without being forsworn? Beside, it must be conceded by everybody to be utterly impossible that the power of investigating disputed questions, as to the choice of presidential electors by the States, should be exercised by Congress. There is no time for such an investigation by Congress. ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar

... usual, for he was one of the most diligent men I have ever known. But his face was gloomy, and I thought or fancied that the old scorn had begun once more to usurp the expression of it. Young Tom ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald

... is the fortune of war. Eclipsed behind the skirts of a woman waving her upraised hands, with, 'Back, pray!'—no, that ignominy is too horribly abominable! Be sure, the situation will certainly recur in some form; will constantly recur. She will usurp the lead; she will ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... of Cuba as a Republic. The Message meant war, but a war that no longer could be averted, and there was nothing left for any high-minded statesman and loyal party man to do but to defend the President from those who would usurp his authority and tie his hands, to demonstrate to the world their belief in a statesmanship which was being attacked at every point by those whom his Message had disappointed, and to provide against one future embarrassment ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... Thenceforward I held my peace, and set myself to watch, and now after much watching—alas! I must say it to my shame—I have discovered that they are no true gods, but wicked liars who have sought to usurp the places of ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... binding laws; but circumstances are so delightfully blended when a girl is rich, good-looking, clever—and disengaged, it is the chance of a lifetime, and were it not that such "chances" as these, usurp the opportunites of Ottawa's patient and less endowed girls, there would be fewer of these old young ladies, who haunt the drawing rooms and public balls of our city, year after year with the same result. Two or three years ought to satisfy any girl of ...
— Honor Edgeworth • Vera

... door-bell. He was come. His mother filled the teapot from the urn, she drew nearer the hearth the stuffed and cushioned blue chair—her own chair by right, but I saw there was one who might with impunity usurp it. And when that one came up the stairs—which he soon did, after, I suppose, some such attention to the toilet as the wild and wet night rendered necessary, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... mind whom this building belongs to, and see so many red-coated gentry stalking at ease through dormitory, refectory and cloisters, I think of rooks who have fled the rookery, before a flock of flamingoes who usurp their place." ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen

... as when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no title to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this (Kosmos, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The subject ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... generically. In the natural object it indicates any species of useless weed that occupies the ground and injures the growing crop: in the spiritual application it points to the worldly cares, whether they spring from poverty or wealth, which usurp in a human heart the place due to ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot

... possession of it. Those who have most warrantably declaimed against evil constitutions, have been among those who were least given to assume to themselves a title to power;—they have been found to defend themselves, but not rashly to usurp authority. If there were but one individual who could avenge bloodshed, and were his mind in a proper state, he would seem to have a call addressed to him to do so; failing to attend to it he would err. Were a community under an ...
— The Ordinance of Covenanting • John Cunningham

... last to allow the study of psychism to usurp the legitimate place in life of intellectual and spiritual pursuits, and I look with abhorrence upon the flippant use made of the psychic faculties by a certain class of pseudo-occultists who serve up this kind of thing ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial

... amidst A World devote to universal rack. No sooner hee with them of Man and Beast Select for life shall in the Ark be lodg'd, And shelterd round, but all the Cataracts 820 Of Heav'n set open on the Earth shall powre Raine day and night, all fountaines of the Deep Broke up, shall heave the Ocean to usurp Beyond all bounds, till inundation rise Above the highest Hills: then shall this Mount Of Paradise by might of Waves be moovd Out of his place, pushd by the horned floud, With all his verdure spoil'd, and Trees adrift Down the great ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton

... perpetual presidents in the councils of each province was conferred on the bishops of the principal city; and these aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above the college of presbyters. [120] Nor was it long before an emulation of preeminence and power prevailed ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon

... prince's favorite. Later we behold in him a papal nepot-prince in whom the Pope endeavored to embody all mundane power and honor; he made him his condottiere, his warder, his body-guard, and, finally, his worldly heir. Calixtus allowed him to usurp every position of authority in the Church domain and, like a destroying angel, to overrun and devastate the republics and the tyrannies, for the purpose of founding a family dynasty, the Papacy being of only momentary tenure, and not ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... their own stupid families, the faithful husband and wife sitting opposite to each other in their own chimney corners, yawning models of constancy. And this they call virtue! How the meanest vices usurp the name of virtue! Leonora's is a jealousy of the most illiberal and degrading species; a jealousy of the temper, not of the heart. She is too cold to feel the passion of love.—She never could be ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... the same features as that of the Rhine, but there is a great difference between the French wines, which are mostly red, and the German, which are mostly white. Among the latter hundreds of spurious, horrible concoctions for the foreign market usurp the name of Mosel wine. It is hardly necessary even to mention the pretty names by which the real wines are known, and which may be found on any wine-card at the good, unpretending inns that make Mosel travelling a special delight. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... likings, dislikes, preferences, antipathies, fancies, whims, and even impertinencies, must be officiously attended to, flattered, and, if possible, guessed at and anticipated by a well-bred man. You must never usurp to yourself those conveniences and 'agremens' which are of common right; such as the best places, the best dishes, etc., but on the contrary, always decline them yourself, and offer them to others; who, in their ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield

... confer Just title on the conqueror; 1005 Though dispensations were not strong Conclusions, whether right or wrong, Although out-goings did confirm, And owning were but a mere term; Yet as the wicked have no right 1010 To th' creature, though usurp'd by might, The property is in the Saint, From whom th' injuriously detain 't; Of him they hold their luxuries, Their dogs, their horses, whores, and dice, 1015 Their riots, revels, masks, delights, Pimps, buffoons, fiddlers, parasites; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... had been appointed governor by Baltimore, plotted to make himself independent of his master, and, with the connivance of the assembly, proceeded to usurp the authority which was lawfully vested in the proprietary. But the attempt was a miserable failure. Philip Calvert was immediately made governor by the now all-powerful proprietary, who had the favor and ...
— History of the United States, Vol. I (of VI) • E. Benjamin Andrews

... made bonfires of in England during the reign of Henry the Fourth, who permitted the abomination in order to please certain bishops he was under obligation to for assisting him to depose Richard the Second and usurp his throne. But that the practice of committing heretics to the flame prevailed in England long after Popery ceased to be the dominant religion is notorious. If heretics were thus sacrificed by Henry the Fourth to please Popish Bishops, they were also sacrificed ...
— An Apology for Atheism - Addressed to Religious Investigators of Every Denomination - by One of Its Apostles • Charles Southwell

... the ladder, notwithstanding what 'Blackstone says' about their legal position. There is, doubtless, a good deal of abuse of authority on the part of husbands, but the women get their share of the good that is going in the world, as a general thing. If the law is against them, they manage to usurp full an even amount of privilege and authority, and keep along about in line with the other sex. I never knew an out and out controversy between a man and his wife, in which the former did not get the worst of ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond

... itself in power, in consolidating that power, and in acting as a powerful unity, according to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. The CONSTITUTION—bear that word well in mind—the Constitution which suffers no State to usurp a single power belonging to the General Government, and which was expressly framed for the purpose of making all its freemen the citizens of one great nation. Let the reader consult the Constitution, study its unmistakable plan of national integrity and of state subordination, and then reflect ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... yet wet with those yesterday rains), These roses and lilies, and—what? let me see! Then was off in a moment, but turned with a glee, That lit her sweet face as with moonlight, to say, As 't was almost too late for a lesson to-day, She meant to usurp, for this morning at least, My office of Tutor; and instead of a feast Of such mouthfuls as 'poluphloisboio thalasses', With which I fed her, I should study the grasses (Love-grasses she called them), ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod

... all progress for Cornelia, and she well knew it, and yet she was not at ease nor satisfied. She began to find out that it was no such light matter to usurp the place of such a woman as Sophie, though the latter was laboring under the great disadvantage of being ignorant of the plot against her. In most cases, indeed, the attempt would have been wellnigh hopeless, but Cornelia had two exceptionally powerful allies—her own supreme beauty, and Bressant's ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne

... education becomes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present age; we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books: for strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... king's departure. It would appear as though it felt the weight of the whole empire resting on it, and it sustained its attitude in order to bear it with dignity. It accepted the power without desiring either to usurp or to retain it. It covered with a respectful fiction the king's desertion—called the flight a carrying off, and sought for the guilty around the throne—regarding the throne itself as inviolable. The man disappeared, for it, in Louis XVI.:—in the irresponsible ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... necessities are its best laws. But if it were possible, in the nature of things, that the young should direct the old, and the inexperienced instruct the knowing,—if a board in the state was the best tutor for the counting-house,—if the desk ought to read lectures to the anvil, and the pen to usurp the place of the shuttle,—yet in any matter of regulation we know that board must act with as little authority as skill. The prerogative of the crown is utterly inadequate to the object; because all regulations ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... disdain, to see The palm usurp'd without a victory, Reproach'd Entellus thus, who sate beside, And heard and saw, unmov'd, the Trojan's pride: "Once, but in vain, a champion of renown, So tamely can you bear the ravish'd crown, A ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... stones be made bread,' etc. Why Christ fasted forty days and would not exceed the same, without sense and feeling of hunger, is before touched upon, that is, He would provoke the devil to battle by the wilderness and long abstinence, but He would not usurp or arrogate any more to Himself in that case than God had wrought with others, His servants and messengers before. But Christ Jesus (as St. Augustine more amply declares), without feeling of hunger, might have endured the whole year, or to ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Volume I - Basil to Calvin • Various

... this affecting subject, does not this text seem to give a comfortable hope to a good woman, who shall thus die, of being happy in the Divine mercies? For the Apostle, in the context, says, that he suffers not a woman to teach, nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.—And what is the reason he gives? Why, a reason that is a natural consequence of the curse on the first disobedience, that she shall be in subjection to her husband. "For," says he, "Adam was ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... of joy she had known. She had been hard and wild enough at first, but just now, when she slipped down upon the door-step with her back turned to the wretched man within—when it came upon her that, traitor as he was, she herself had given him the right to take her bright-faced lover's place, and usurp his tender power—when the fresh sea-breeze blew upon her face and stirred her hair, and the warm, rare sunshine touched her, even breeze and sunshine helped her to the end, so that she broke down into a sharp sob, as any other woman might have done, only that the repressed strength of her poor ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... in Ili. After the death of Galdan II., son of Arabtan, an attempt was made by one, Amursana, to usurp the principality. He was, however, driven out, and fled to Peking, where he was favourably received by Ch'ien Lung, and an army was sent to reinstate him. With the subsequent settlement, under which he was to have only one quarter of Ili, Amursana was profoundly dissatisfied, ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles

... clutch, procure, clasp, catch; confiscate, appropriate, usurp, arrogate; deprehend, apprehend; require, need; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming

... ambition and the desire of domination should in time usurp the place of those laborious, enthusiastic, and pious missionaries who, so happily for the natives, had managed to revolutionize their minds, and so spared their country those scenes of blood which blot with a fearful ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... broke out more violently than ever. Whom shall we blame, Sejanus or Agrippina? Tacitus says that it was the fault of Sejanus, whom he accuses of having tried to destroy the descendants of Germanicus, in order to usurp their place: but he himself is forced to admit in another passage (Annals iv., 59) that virtually a little court of freedmen and dependents gathered about Nero, the leader of the sons of Germanicus, ...
— The Women of the Caesars • Guglielmo Ferrero

... the blood of the lamb. But the printers and the public are very different personages. The former may lead the latter a little out of their track, while the deviation is insensible: but the moment they usurp their direction and that of their government, they will be reduced to their true places. The two last Congresses have been the theme of the most licentious reprobation for printers thirsting after war, some against France, and some against England. But the people wish for peace with both. ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... they felt more sleepy than ever. They would have encamped among them, but there was no water; and without water they could not remain. There was no grass, either, for their animals; as, strange to say, upon these flower-prairies grass is seldom met with. The flower-stalks usurp the soil, and no turf is ever found about their roots. The travellers, therefore, were compelled to ride on, until they should reach some spot having grass and water—two of the necessary requisites of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... deliverances of the former Assembly had ever been. Even the Executive Council had begun to exhibit an impatience of being indirectly dictated to by unsworn advisers who were permitted by the Lieutenant-Governor to usurp the functions peculiarly belonging to themselves. His Excellency's popularity was evidently waning throughout the land. There was a decided reaction against him, and thousands of Reformers who had voted for Government candidates at the election were now ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... vicinity had probably invented, or at least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon Mac-Dingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth Mac-Dingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that, being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... be compelled to record that out of a quarrel, originating in a servile endeavour on the part of the two principal nobles of a great nation to usurp the functions of a maitre-d'hotel, grew an attempt at civil war, which, had not the treachery of Richelieu nipped it in the bud, might have involved France in a sanguinary and unnatural series of conflicts that would have rendered that country ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines which had lifted them ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... primeval forest has been cleared off by man, gigantic grasses usurp the clearances. None of the sylvan vegetation can stand the annual grass-burnings except a species of Bauhinia, and occasionally a large tree which sends out new wood below the burned places. The parrots ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... only her way,' put in Agatha; 'she does not realize what a sting her words have. She told me last Sunday, when I unfortunately gave an order to some of my Sunday class in front of her, that however much I might try to slight her and usurp her place in the vicarage and parish I would not be successful, for the vicar was proof ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... of the black man's past in no wise serves to usurp the functions of present duties. Notwithstanding the fact that there are lowering clouds and muttering thunders, yet there is every indication of a day, to express it boldly, that is coming that will outshine the ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various

... pupil, of course, and she had only come in response to the heart promptings of motherhood, white, black, or brown, to talk about her offspring to the strange woman who was to usurp a mother's place with her so many hours of each day. She was quite as voluble as American mothers are, and her daughter was quite embarrassed by her volubility. The child sat stealing frightened glances at me and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... an address of thanks to Mr. Pitt, and given instructions to their members; the chief articles of which are, to promote an inquiry into the disposal of the money that has been granted, and to consent to no peace, unless we are to retain all, or near all, our conquests. Thus the city of London usurp the right of making peace and war. But is the government to be dictated to by one town? By no means. But suppose they are not -what is the consequence? How will the money be raised? If it cannot be raised without them, Mr. Pitt must again be minister: that ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... has perhaps upon his conscience some readers confined in asylums for the deranged, but the far more perilous hallucinations of Poe must account for greater harm. The distance is great between imagination and sentiment, and should be so regarded. This extravagance should surely not be allowed to usurp the place of morality, but this is what is done, and greatness is not ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various

... I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labors or usurp their honors, but that I might spare perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to strike terror by an appalling exhibition ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... "King's Law," of November 14, 1665, a state paper which has been declared to have "the highly dubious honor of being the one written law in the civilized world which fearlessly carries out absolutism to its last consequences."[779] In the Kongelov it was made lese-majeste in any manner to usurp or infringe the king's absolute authority; it was asserted that the moment the sovereign ascends the throne crown and scepter are vested in him by his own right; and the sole obligation of the king was affirmed to be to maintain the indivisibility ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg

... never disparage making the people truly better. It is to the tone of those who usurp the aim, you should apply my critique. The men who lip these terms are none other than the evil geniuses of history. It is the Jesuits who would make us poor and miserable,—who have wrecked French America, past and future. Without them we should have welcomed to our dominions from ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair

... this view, are inclined to take the opposite view. At Athens there was a great tribunal composed of men learned in, and competent to interpret, the law. The people could not tolerate such an institution, so laboured to destroy it and to usurp its functions. The crowd reasoned thus. "We can interpret and carry out laws, because we make them." The conclusion was right, but the minor premise was disputable. The retort can be made: "True, you can interpret and carry out laws because you ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet

... affecting subject, does not this text seem to give a comfortable hope to a good woman, who shall thus die, of being happy in the Divine mercies? For the Apostle, in the context, says, that he suffers not a woman to teach, nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.—And what is the reason he gives? Why, a reason that is a natural consequence of the curse on the first disobedience, that she shall be in subjection to her husband. "For," says he, "Adam was NOT deceived; but the woman, ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson

... Quatorze dress on a stage crowded with spectators; but we require different conditions for the enjoyment of his art. Perfect accuracy of detail, for the sake of perfect illusion, is necessary for us. What we have to see is that the details are not allowed to usurp the principal place. They must be subordinate always to the general motive of the play. But subordination in art does not mean disregard of truth; it means conversion of fact into effect, and assigning to each detail ...
— Intentions • Oscar Wilde

... Ind.) We have listened to much excited eloquence upon this question. It is too manifest that Congress, moving on with that impetus which is ever the result of excessive political power. seeks to usurp those powers which are by the Constitution vested in the other Departments of the Government. I do not propose to discuss this subject or answer the speech of the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Logan] with any words of my own. I have before me a paper which is full of mature wisdom ...
— History of the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson, • Edumud G. Ross

... drink, 140 Even as thy beauties did the foul black seas; I must describe the hell of thy decease, That heaven did merit: yet I needs must see Our painted fools and cockhorse peasantry Still, still usurp, with long lives, loves, and lust, The seats of Virtue, cutting short as dust Her dear-bought issue: ill to worse converts, And tramples in the blood of all deserts. Night close and silent now goes fast before ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe

... must know what they mean by "feeding." "Feeding," in the Roman sense, means to burden Christendom with many human and hurtful laws, to sell the bishoprics at the highest possible price, to extract the annates[70] from all benefices, to usurp authority over all foundations, to force into servitude all the bishops with terrible oaths, to sell indulgences, to rob the whole world by means of letters, bulls, seals and wax, to prohibit the preaching of the Gospel, to appoint knaves from Rome to ...
— Works of Martin Luther - With Introductions and Notes (Volume I) • Martin Luther

... the devil when we have the Divine Scripture": Besides, it is dangerous, since the demons frequently mix falsehood with truth. Or, as Chrysostom [*Cyril of Alexandria, Comment. in Luc.] says: "It was not meet for them to usurp the prerogative of the apostolic office. Nor was it fitting that the mystery of Christ should be proclaimed by a corrupt tongue" because "praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner" [*Cf. Theophylact, Enarr. in Luc.]. Thirdly, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... reason," he answered smiling. "Perhaps I am a little jealous lest this new-comer to whose arrival you look forward with so much interest should usurp more of your time and attention than we less-favoured ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... now committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and a citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm themselves for ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the power which belongs to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham

... foe Taught Albion's high-born Saxon sons to bow 'Neath victor-pride and insolence—learn to feel What earth's dark woes—when abject vassals kneel; And worse the hour when his remorseless heir, Alike uncheck'd by heaven, or earthly prayer, With lusts ignoble, fed by martial might, Usurp'd man's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various

... and his claim to intelligence well supported by his messages, the medium will do well to rely on his or her own good judgment and intuition. As a writer has well said: "The medium must keep a level head and proceed cautiously. He should never allow any spirit, in or out of the body, to usurp his right of private judgment or exercise any undue authority over him. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; you must use your own discretion and try the spirits before you ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita

... would detect at once. Let her make her ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding us in a death-struggle ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... let a bigot criticaster Come and usurp a tyrant's power here? And shall we never dare amuse ourselves Till this fine ...
— Tartuffe • Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Moliere

... much in the wrong to put in the number of those who had an aversion to wine the duke of Clarence. His brother, Edward the Fourth, prejudiced with the predictions of Merlin, as if they foretold, that one day that duke should usurp the crown from his children, resolved to put him to death, he only gave him the liberty to choose what death he would die of. The duke being willing to die a merry death, chose to be drowned in a butt of Malmsey. Not unlike him on whom ...
— Ebrietatis Encomium - or, the Praise of Drunkenness • Boniface Oinophilus

... as infidels themselves allow,[81] a state of freedom from responsibility dangerous at all times, it must be peculiarly so in that season of temptation, youth, when the passions are sufficiently disposed to usurp a latitude for themselves, without taking a licence also from infidelity to enlarge their range. It is, therefore, fortunate that, for the causes just stated, the inroads of scepticism and disbelief ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore

... of the youth of our land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, may usurp the place in life which ...
— Christianity and Ethics - A Handbook of Christian Ethics • Archibald B. C. Alexander

... there comes a break in the middle, and the tale is practically in two divisions. In the first James More and the M'Gregors, and Catriona, only show; in the second, the Appin case being disposed of, and James Stewart hung, they rule the roast and usurp the interest - should there be any left. Why did I take up DAVID BALFOUR? I don't know. A ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson

... as they pass The javelin pointed with a star of brass), They reach'd the dome; the dome with marble shined. His seat Ulysses to the prince resign'd. "Not so (exclaims the prince with decent grace) For me, this house shall find an humbler place: To usurp the honours due to silver hairs And reverend strangers modest youth forbears." Instant the swain the spoils of beasts supplies, And bids the rural throne with osiers rise. There sate the prince: the feast Eumaeus spread, And heap'd the shining ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... her intense charm was the ready tact with which she was careful never to usurp the place of any one else. She put aside the muslin that was to form covers for the boxes, and slipped her scissors ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... a mired horse that struggles at first with all his might and main to get out, but when he sees no remedy, that his beating will not serve, lies still, I have laboured in vain, rest satisfied, and if I may usurp ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior

... a papal nepot-prince in whom the Pope endeavored to embody all mundane power and honor; he made him his condottiere, his warder, his body-guard, and, finally, his worldly heir. Calixtus allowed him to usurp every position of authority in the Church domain and, like a destroying angel, to overrun and devastate the republics and the tyrannies, for the purpose of founding a family dynasty, the Papacy being of only momentary tenure, and ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius

... theory of it, there must be other men who take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary writer, "is free men, rather than liberators ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville

... This reaction brought him up against the encroachments of the church, and the untoward incident of Becket's murder impaired the success of Henry's efforts to establish royal supremacy. But this supremacy must not be exaggerated. Henry did not usurp ecclesiastical jurisdiction; he wanted to see that the clerical courts did their duty; he claimed the power of moving them in this direction; and he hoped to make the crown the arbiter of disputes between the rival spiritual and temporal jurisdictions, ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... to be eclipsed in my honors by a mortal girl? In vain then did that royal shepherd, whose judgment was approved by Jove himself, give me the palm of beauty over my illustrious rivals, Pallas and Juno. But she shall not so quietly usurp my honors. I will give her cause to repent of so ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... sailors on a wreck—of the debasement and moral ruin of a people endowed by God with surpassing resources for the attainment of human happiness and human dignity. I cannot be loyal to a system of meanness, terror, and corruption, although it usurp the title and assume the form of a 'government.' So long as such a 'government' presumes to injure and insult me, and those in whose prosperity I am involved, I must offer to it all the resistance in my power. But if I despaired of successful ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various

... for it is not right that this religious should place these forts in the condition in which he left Cagayan. For with authority as judge-provisor, while my predecessor was exercising the duties of this government, he did his utmost to usurp the royal jurisdiction—arresting and punishing soldiers and other persons without asking the royal aid, or fulfilling his obligation and his Majesty's command. Will your Lordship be pleased to relieve this condition as the occasion demands, by sending a secular cura as judge-provisor with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXV, 1635-36 • Various

... every body, Trinitarian or Unitarian, except Mr. Foxton. He accounts for it by the 'wild sublimity of human emotion, when the rapt spirit first feels the throbbings of the divine afflatus,' &c. &c. A singular afflatus which teaches a man to usurp the name and prerogatives of Deity, and a strange 'inspiration' which inspires him with so profound an ignorance of his own nature! This interpretation, we believe, ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers

... owning himself, he may not destroy himself. But, leaving this metaphysical argument for what it is worth, we observe that man has a Master, Owner, Proprietor, and Sovereign Lord, God Almighty. To take your own life is to usurp the dominion of God. It is wronging the Lord of life and death. But none is wronged against his will: God is willing that murderers should be hung, may He not also be willing that men in misery should hang themselves? To this query suffice it for the present to reply, ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... humbly thank ye, Sir, and do beseech you to tell the dear Creature that writ this, that I love her more than Life or Fortune, and that I wou'd sooner have kill'd the Man that usurp'd my place last Night, than ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume IV. • Aphra Behn

... a little perplexed, as if she could not understand how it could be otherwise than wrong for a girl to usurp her seat. ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott

... in the sharpest sort: Good Jove! what sense hast thou to be a sense! Since from the first foundation of the world, We never were accounted more than five. Yet you, forsooth, an idle prating dame, Would fain increase the number, and upstart To our high seats, decking your babbling self With usurp'd titles of our dignity. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various

... no. As God is just, it could not be. Yet, oh, my love, be happy in the days I may not share, with her whose present lips Usurp the rights of my lost sovranty. I would not have thee think—save now and then As in a dream that is not all a dream— On her whose love was sunshine for an hour, Then died or e'er its beams could blast thy life. Be ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... Naturally, he persuaded others, and perhaps himself, that he acted purely with the patriotic intention of devoting to the public benefit the power which, for that purpose only, it became his duty to usurp. Moved by the ambition to aggrandize Greece, he felt at liberty to use whatever means might conduce to so desirable an end. The sole question that troubled him was, whether this old ladder would serve him as faithfully as in the past. And once again the answer depended on the attitude ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott

... Latinus, father of the bride so fair, I, Turnus, I, in prowess past compare, Devote this life. AEneas calls but me, So let him, rather than that Drances bear The smart, if death the wrathful gods decree, Or, if 'tis glory's field, usurp the victor's fee." ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil

... despair, they grasped their falling power, and daily grew more desperate as they became more endangered. I among the rest had now a view of this exuberant west, this great valley of the Hesperides; and I determined to assist in extirpating the red man, and to usurp the land of his fathers. Among the men who were at the village, I found one who for magnanimity and undaunted courage merits a wreath which should hang high in the temple of fame, and yet, like hundreds ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell

... one class of citizens can be deprived of the rights and immunities guaranteed by the organic law of the nation, what is to prevent any other class from sharing the same fate? If less than one fourth of the male citizens of Mississippi can usurp the right to exclusively manage the local government, what is to prevent a smaller proportion from doing the same? If it is possible for a minority of the people of Alabama to disfranchise one class of citizens on account ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love

... of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines which had lifted ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck

... Yes. The holy brothers in assembled synod to elect a brother holier than themselves. Nay, I do forbid. I, the Abbot who have loved ye all, refuse permission to your meeting. Disperse, disperse. Do ye not hear? Is there no charity alive? Who dares usurp my chair, and I not yet entombed? What! is justice driven out where heavenly men should dwell? I see it. I mark it. The leaven of pride is kneaded in the brotherhood. Intriguing hypocrites usurp the House of God. What! brother John, the fat, the corpulent, the lazy! of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various

... perplexed, as if she could not understand how it could be otherwise than wrong, for a girl to usurp her seat. ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott

... laws to be shewed to you and many Precedents also in the case. Much is to be offered to you in that; according to the laws of the nations, that was a due Parliament. Those Commissions were issued forth, and what was done was done by their power; and whereas it hath been said we did assume and usurp an authority, I say this was done rather in ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various

... not mind finding fault with Christopher herself; in fact, she found such fault-finding absolutely necessary to her well-being; but she resented any attempt on the part of another to usurp this, her peculiar prerogative. "He is very good, all the same," she said, "and extremely clever; and he ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... to get the upper hand in the city and a firm footing out in the country. Several of the old leaders were already in parliament and brought forward their practical experience in the debate; their aim now was nothing less than to usurp the political power. This was bold enough: they must have been successful, after all. He still possessed his old quickness of hearing as regards the general feeling, and perceived a change in the public tone. It had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo

... was absent so long that the gods began to think that they would not see him in Asgard again. This encouraged his brothers Vili and Ve, who by some mythologists are considered as other personifications of himself, to usurp his power and his throne, and even, we are told, to espouse ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber

... I perchance been duped? Thenceforward I held my peace, and set myself to watch, and now after much watching—alas! I must say it to my shame—I have discovered that they are no true gods, but wicked liars who have sought to usurp the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard

... right to dwell in the midst of false images, even though these are known to be false. The time will come when the illusory image will usurp the place of the just idea it has seemed to represent. We shall not reduce the part of the infinite and the mysterious by employing other images, by framing other and juster conceptions. Do what we may, this part can never be lessened. It will always be found deep down in the heart of men, at ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck

... appeared that Mr. Curling had some knowledge of Philip Hadwin, and that the latter had acquired the repute of being obdurate and profligate. He employed all means to accomplish his selfish ends, and would probably endeavour to usurp the property which his brother had left. To provide against his power and his malice would be particularly incumbent on us, and my new friend readily promised his assistance in the measures which we should take to ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown

... silence in church, for "it is not permitted unto them to speak." Having written this line, Paul must have got up and strutted round the room like a ruffled cock. "Let the woman," he says, "learn in silence with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence." Hear, hear! from the males in the body of the synagogue. Evidently Paul could bray on occasion as lustily as Balaam's ass. If the women "will learn anything," which he clearly thought problematical, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote

... still was, in many respects, a singular exception to this rule, for his heart was so sensitive and his passions so ardent, that the world of reality never ceased to hold a large place in his sympathies; that for the rest, his imagination could never usurp the place of reality, neither in his feelings nor ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... him good to have it? If he were stretched upon a bed of sickness, and it were hung where he could see it, it must help him. It would bring diversion of thought, cheer him, suggest bright memories—perhaps give him brave dreams that would usurp the place ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... her interest to the point not only of obliterating remembrance of the ill-timed advent of her ex-lover, but of inducing something as closely akin to self-forgetfulness as was possible to her self-centred nature. She grew hotly anxious to obtain, to charm—if it might be, to usurp the whole field of Richard's ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet

... rest of my neighbours. No better specimen can be adduced than the extravagant action of which he now stands accused, and the absurd tale by which he attempts to apologise for the commission of it. That madness may no longer usurp the palace of reason, to revel upon the ruins of his mind, deliver him to the sons of ingenuity, the preservers and restorers of health; let them purify his blood by sparing diet, abridge him of his daily potations, and by the force of medicinal beverage recall him from the precipice ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston

... in this matter his mother was to be supported, whilst his detestation of this adventurer who threatened to usurp the place that should rightly be his own spurred him to mad ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... victim, offered to the manes of his murdered father, had to some extent the effect of appeasing the vengeful passion of Don Rafael. At all events his spirit became calmer; and other sentiments long slumbering at the bottom of his heart began to usurp their sway. He perceived the necessity of justifying his conduct—which he knew must appear inexplicable—to the inhabitants of the hacienda Las Palmas. Had he done so at that moment all would have been well; but unfortunately a certain spirit of pride interfered to hinder him. A son who ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... right to existence to the people's will; when its life must be prolonged by artificial stimulants it is fit that it should die. It is not the people's master, but the people's servant; if it should usurp the oppressor's place, it must die ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon MacDingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth MacDingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott

... quieter social customs. But my position in the troupe afforded me certain privileges of isolation, while my necessities compelled me to persevere. As a result, the dormant art-spirit within apparently came to life; ambition began to usurp the place of indifference; I became more and more disgusted with mediocrity, and began an earnest struggle toward higher achievements. I had little to guide me other than my own natural instincts, yet ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... can no longer rock people to sleep with religious lullabys, or satisfy them with the lifeless form, then he comes as an angel of light, probably in the person of some professor or teacher of religion, and seeks to usurp the place of the Holy Spirit; but instead of leading "into all truth," he leads the unwary soul into deadly error; instead of directing him on to the highway of holiness, and into the path of perfect peace, where no ravenous beast ever comes, he leads him into a wilderness where ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle

... to be a Frenchman, Sir Norman! And what if the lady herself, finding her dazzling suitor drop his barnyard feathers, and soar over her head in his own eagle plumes, may not give you your dismissal, and usurp the place ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming

... they had stood like a rampart when the kingdom was invaded by the levelling doctrines of Republicanism and equality. And though the Kalonays were men of stouter stuff than their cousins of Artois, they had never tried to usurp their place, but had set an example to the humblest shepherd of unfailing loyalty and good-will to the King and his lady. The Prince Kalonay, who had accompanied the Dominican monk to Messina, was the last of his race, and when Louis IV. had been driven off the island, he ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis

... course should ever be thought of in our country, it will not be by those who seek redress of wrongs, by exercising the right of petition, but by those only who deny that right to others, and seek to usurp the whole power of the Government. If the ballot box fail them, the bayonet may be their resort, as mobs and violence now are. Does the Senator believe that any portion of the honest yeomanry of the country ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... changes, will restore the balance,—such a conception of the situation is less than half true. No doubt, the "plain people" of the United States have been morally indifferent, and have allowed unscrupulous special interests to usurp too much power; but that is far from being the whole story. The unscrupulous energy of the "Boss" or the "tainted" millionaire is vitally related to the moral indifference of the "plain people." Both of them have been encouraged to believe by the nature of our traditional ideas and institutions ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... himself was not quite the 'prentice lad I had known. His legs indeed were no less bowed than of yore; nor was his hair less red; but the round face appeared rounder than ever by reason of a thick fringe of whiskers. His body had filled out, and he moved with a rolling gait that caused him to usurp more than one man's share ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... are disregarded. Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but like other beautiful works of His, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers. I wish we could be brought to consider this, and remembering natural obligations a little more at the right time, talk about them a little less ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... woods. The brushing of branches and pounding of hoofs preceded his appearance. In some remarkable manner he had gotten a bridle on Marc, and from the way the big stallion hurled his huge bulk over logs and through thickets, it appeared evident he meant to usurp Jim's ambition and kill the Navajo. Hearing Emett yell, the Indian turned Marc toward camp. The horse slowed down when he neared the glade and tried to buck. But Navvy kept his head up. With that Marc seemed to give way to ungovernable rage and plunged right through camp; he knocked over the ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey

... brief moment before its rays broke into the amazing splendour which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... rekindlings in men's bosoms, but by out-of-door reflections without inward kindling. Saying is the royal son of Seeing; but there is many a pretender to the throne; and when these supposititious people usurp, age after age, the honors that are not theirs, the throne and government ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... citizen, vote, not only for my own dispossession, my own forfeiture, my own abdication, but for the abdication of universal suffrage for ten years, by the coming generations, over whom I have no right, over whom you, an usurper, force me to usurp power, which, by the way, be it said in passing, would suffice to nullify that monstrous ballot, if all conceivable nullities were not already piled, heaped and welded upon it. What! is that what you would have me do? You make me vote that all is finished, that ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... a blank atheism, but in a disbelief of the existence of the world. And though it may be said that these were only the isolated results of special schools, it is not to be forgotten that they were of schools the most advanced. The time had now arrived when the name of a master was no more to usurp the place of reason, as had been hitherto the case; when these last results of the different methods of philosophizing were to be brought together, a criticism of a higher order established, and conclusions of a ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper

... United States, array themselves in hostility against any of the powers at war, or enter upon military expeditions or enterprises within the jurisdiction of the United States, or usurp and exercise judicial authority within the United States, or where the penalties on violations of the law of nations may have been indistinctly marked, or are inadequate—these offenses can not ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... prospect of a fair field and no favor to every newcomer. There it is not possible to keep in thraldom the fear less heart and the active intellect. There, no petty circle of society can fetter the energies or enfeeble the endeavors. No mocking, stale conventionalities can usurp the place of natural laws, and put genius and talent into the accursed strait-jacket of routine! Thither will I go. I remembered the late conference with my friend Kingsley, and the whole course of my reasoning on the subject of my removal was despatched in half an ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms

... here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry "some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... led the young man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue her from ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... is, the United States will protect each state against one man or a few men who may try to usurp the functions of the state government. By inference, the United States could insist upon a republican form of government even if the people of the state desired some other. Happily, no necessity for the exercise of this power ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... High Gods have spoken, and I will do their bidding!" Then, extending her white, jewelled arms toward the mummy, she cried in a deeper, harsher tone: "O Nefer, my Prince and my love! There lives no man in Khem who shall take thy place beside me, or usurp the throne that should have been thine. I have sinned, but I repent me of the wrong. Lo, now I come and bring thee a goodly sacrifice to cheer thine angry heart—my ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... among us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar possession of the present age: we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books: for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful, or necessary, to-day: whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper ...
— Sesame and Lilies • John Ruskin

... stars where God placed him on the cherubims; he had a kingly office, and was always before God's seat, to the end he might be the more perfect in all his being; but when he began to be high-minded, proud, and so presumptuous, that he would usurp the seat of God's Majesty, then was he banished out from amongst the heavenly powers, separated from their abiding, into the manner of a fiery stone, that no water is able to quench, but continually burneth until the end of ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... the desire of domination should in time usurp the place of those laborious, enthusiastic, and pious missionaries who, so happily for the natives, had managed to revolutionize their minds, and so spared their country those scenes of blood which blot with a fearful stain the history of Spanish power in America. But the influence of churchmen, ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking

... from early morning till late evening; only as twilight came on did a new thought begin to keep me awake, a thought to which as yet I had paid no attention: "What kind of a child could it be, for whom I was now being exchanged? Who was to usurp my place at table, in my bed-room, and in my mother's heart? Was she small or large? beautiful or ugly? obedient or contrary? had she brothers or sisters, to whom I was to be a brother? was she as much afraid of me as I was ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai

... your married belles like to have men about them younger than themselves—it makes them appear younger, or at least they think so; and besides, such youths are more easily managed and more subservient. But, still worse, the more these boys usurp the place of men in society, the more boyish and retrograde will the few men become who continue to divide the honors of society with them. When Plato enumerated among the signs of a republic in the last stage of decadence, that the youth imitate and rival old men, and the old men ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... to inform your lordship that I cannot obey the command which you have laid upon me with reference to the services of my church in this parish. I cannot permit Mr Thumble, or any other delegate from your lordship, to usurp my place in my pulpit. I would not have you think, if I can possibly dispel such thoughts from your mind, that I disregard your high office, or that I am deficient in that respectful obedience to the bishop set over me, which is due to the authority of the Crown as the head ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope

... the world. It can make its way under ground, faster than the spade can follow it, and faster than any badger. In size, habits, and the form of many parts of its body, it bears a striking resemblance to its South American cousin the "tamanoir," which of late years has become so famous as almost to usurp ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... the Spanish-American republics. It is of little consequence that the officer who usurps the power of others may design only to advance the public interest and to govern well. The system which permits an honest and well-meaning man to do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish ambition to usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power concentrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully observed and jealously maintained limitations upon the power of every public officer that the workings of free institutions ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root

... indulgences and graces must take (purchase) and retain this summary of them, printed, sealed, and signed with our seal and name, in order that no one can err touching the graces to them conceded, nor any one usurp them, and that every one may be able to show by what faculty he uses them. And inasmuch as you, John Doe, contribute the alms of three reales de vellon (about 7.5d.), being the amount which, in virtue of apostolical ...
— Roman Catholicism in Spain • Anonymous

... when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no title to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this (Kosmos, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The subject has also been very carefully treated by Major, Life of Prince ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench

... continually recurring sensation of the touch of the mother which forms the basis of the first conception of the mother. After that, the gradually discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three senses, as medium of correspondence and ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence

... keenly and accurately his master's brain took up the lost threads again. 'A grand fellow!' he thought to himself, 'a splendid man! He lives in both worlds at once, yet never gets confused, nor lets one usurp his powers to the detriment of the other. If only I were equally balanced and effective. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood

... better than he. And yet you permit him to elbow you aside, as it were, and to thrust you into a false position, if not into obscurity. If Miss Loring is the woman God has created for you, in the name of all that is holy, do not let another man usurp your rights. Do not let one like Dexter bear her off to gild a heartless home. Remember that Jessie is young, inexperienced, and unskilled in the ways of the world. She is not schooled in the lore of ...
— The Hand But Not the Heart - or, The Life-Trials of Jessie Loring • T. S. Arthur

... bury'd in 'em. However, unpleasant as it was, she could not forbear gazing after this miserable Spectacle; and the more she beheld it, the more she was confirmed it was Gracelove, or something that had usurp'd his Figure. In short, she could not rest 'till she call'd to one of her Servants, who rode by the Coach, whom she strictly charg'd to go to that poor Traveller, and mount him on his Horse, 'till they came ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... Lambeth, should sit on the throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only true Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... e'er England's grief began, When every rood of ground maintain'd its man; But times are alter'd: Trade's unfeeling train Usurp the land and ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje

... millions of people, on account of a few half-mawkish, half- blasphemous phrases in a convention speech, can bear witness to the necessity of a reform in this particular—a reform which will forbid a sensation-seeking city mob to usurp the function of the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... Province, without contributing anything material for its welfare, credit, or safety." And he declares that unless Parliament takes them in hand he can do nothing for the service of the King or the good of the province, [Footnote: Clinton to the Lords of Trade, 30 Nov. 1745.] for they want to usurp the whole administration, both civil and military. [Footnote: Remarks on the Representation of the Assembly of New York, May, 1747, in N. Y. Col. Docs., VI. 365. On the disputes of the Governor and ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman

... pleasure, are no less misleading than the philosophies which oppose flesh to spirit, or matter to mind, calling the one "good" and the other "evil." Such philosophies have permitted that basic attribute of the complex vision which we call conscience to usurp the place occupied, in the total rhythm, by imagination; with the result of a complete falsifying ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys

... Mansur, drove back the Castilians to the northern mountains and raided the inmost recesses of the Christian territories. Somewhat later the Wild Berber hordes of the Almoravides and the Almohads, crossing from Africa to usurp the Ommeiad dominions and carry on the holy war with greater energy, aroused new fears and provoked in the threatened kingdoms a fanaticism equal to their own. The Spanish Christians appealed for help to their northern neighbours; armies of volunteers from Normandy, ...
— Medieval Europe • H. W. C. Davis

... integrity, without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles

... His wish was realised—but not as he had hoped—for his daughter Isabel married her cousin Charles V. and so was the mother of Philip II., who, when Cardinal King Henry died in 1580, was strong enough to usurp ...
— Portuguese Architecture • Walter Crum Watson

... have chosen to believe thy lies. They have fallen with thee from before the face of God. Thus hast thou used the power given thee. Thou hast said in thy heart, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.... I will be like the Most High! Thou hast sought to usurp power, to take a kingdom that does not belong to thee. God holds you all as in the hollow of His hand; yet He has not restrained thine agency. He has been patient and longsuffering with you. Rebellious ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson

... no country, however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though that chief had revived ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... Gordon as Governor-General of the Soudan, it is to him more than any one that the present Khedive is indebted for having lost the whole of the Soudan. By his tyranny, following after Gordon's kindness, the province was stirred into revolt, and the Mahdi enabled to usurp authority. We ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... xxvi. 16. None of these being priests, yet presuming to meddle with the priest's office. A rule for all persons, being not church officers, yea, though they be princes or supreme magistrates, that they are hereby warned by the divine law, not to usurp church authority or offices to themselves. God rewarded the Corinthians with the judgments of weakness, sickness, and death, for unworthy receiving of the Lord's supper, 1 Cor. xi. 30. So that this is a divine warning for all ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London

... That right was not given to the king by Divine institution: rather was it foretold that kings would usurp that right, by framing unjust laws, and by degenerating into tyrants who preyed on their subjects. This is clear from the context that follows: "And you shall be his slaves [Douay: 'servants']": which is significative of tyranny, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I-II (Pars Prima Secundae) - From the Complete American Edition • Saint Thomas Aquinas

... "Man doth usurp all space, Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in the face. Never thine eyes behold a tree; 'Tis no sea thou seest in the sea, 'Tis but a disguised humanity. To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan; All that interests a man, ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald

... of happiness and is so engrossed in the big elemental things of life that she can laugh at the incidental pin-pricks that others call troubles. She differentiates major from minor and never permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life, her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole nature and her whole life. She does not read ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson

... their devastations, are rifling the ocean: stimulated by avarice, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor; unsatiated by the East and by the West: the only people who behold wealth and indigence with equal avidity. To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, ...
— The Germany and the Agricola of Tacitus • Tacitus

... "It is proper to kings, princes, and magistrates to be callit lordis and dominators over their subjectis, whom they govern civilly; bot it is proper to Christ onlie to be callit Lord and Master in the spirituall government of the kirk, and all utheris that beiris office therein aucht not to usurp dominion therein, nor be callit lordis, bot onlie ministeris, disciples, and servantis. For it is Christis proper office to command and rewll His kirk universall, and every particular kirk, throw His Spirit and Word, be the ministrie of men."[265] But it is not made sufficiently ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell

... Characters, I leave the Reader to judge and compare 'em with Thomaso, to whom I recommend the great Entertainment of reading it, tho' had this succeeded ill, I shou'd have had no need of imploring that Justice from the Critics, who are naturally so kind to any that pretend to usurp their Dominion, they wou'd doubtless have given me the whole Honour on't. Therefore I will only say in English what the famous Virgil does in Latin: I make Verses ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... motive shall excite a man to long-continued diligence, where such notions prevail as give mastership no hope of preference, and where the praise of his ingenuity and the reward of his labour must needs be inconsiderable, till some honoured compiler usurp them both, and bring his "most useful matter" before the world under better auspices? If the love of learning supply such a motive, who that has generously yielded to the impulse, will not now, like ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown

... distinguish nothing further. On reaching the door it paused, and I felt it was eyeing him—or rather his material body—anxiously. Perhaps it feared lest some other shadow, equally baleful, equally sly and subtle, would usurp its home. Its hesitation was, however, but momentary, and, passing through the door, it glided across the dimly lighted hall and out into the freedom of the open air. Picture succeeding picture with ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... looked prettier, she had never felt more embarrassed, as she entered her own house. During her rapid ride she had already framed a speech of apology to Major Van Zandt, which, however, utterly fled from her lips as that officer showed himself respectfully on the threshold. Yet she permitted him to usurp the functions of the grinning Caesar, and help her from her horse; albeit she was conscious of exhibiting the awkward timidity of a bashful rustic, until at last, with a stammering, "Thank ye," she actually ran up stairs to hide her glowing face and ...
— Thankful Blossom • Bret Harte

... ambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the pan." Presently after another assured the company of the illness of my lord ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... their name 'Turk' had any self-assertive existence before then, and until that year they were the 'iron-working slaves' of the Jou-jan. The Khakhan of those last-named Tartars naturally would not allow the petty tribe of Turk to usurp his exclusive and supreme title. But even a century and a half before this, the ruler of the T'u-kuh-hun nomads had already borne the title of Khakhan, which (the late Dr. Bretschneider agreed with me in thinking) was originally of Tungusic and not of Turkish origin. ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... the prayer meeting, either to pray or testify. The privilege has been withdrawn as one perniciously against the tenets of the church. For Paul says in first Timothy, 'I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence;' also I give you Paul's further command, 'Let the deacons be the husband of one wife, ruling their children and their ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White

... there must be a Singing one alone must sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the Church by way of propounding questions though under pretence ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... name was powerfuller than the heart in her bosom. But to what end had the true heart counselled her of late? It had been a home of humours and languors, an impotent insurgent, the sapper of her character; and as we see in certain disorderly States a curative incendiarism usurp the functions of the sluggish citizen, and the work of re-establishment done by destruction, in peril of a total extinction, Aminta's feverish anger on behalf of her name went a stretch to vivify and give her dulled character ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Almighty. Their first offence, the attack of Zara, had been severely punished by the reproach of their conscience and the censures of the pope; nor would they again imbrue their hands in the blood of their fellow-Christians. The apostle of Rome had pronounced; nor would they usurp the right of avenging with the sword the schism of the Greeks and the doubtful usurpation of the Byzantine monarch. On these principles or pretences, many pilgrims, the most distinguished for their valor and piety, withdrew from the camp; and their retreat was less pernicious than the open ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon

... [Fr.]; hold a loose rein; give the reins to, give rope enough, give a loose to; tolerate; relax; misrule. go beyond the length of one's tether; have one's swing, have one's fling; act without instructions, act without authority, act outside of one's authority; act on one's own responsibility, usurp authority. dethrone, depose; abdicate. Adj. lax, loose; slack; remiss &c (careless) 460; weak. relaxed; licensed; reinless^, unbridled; anarchical; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... page of a boy who answered the summons, 'tell John Watson to go down to the Railway Tavern directly, and desire them to get a three-stalled stable ready for a gentleman's horses that are coming to-day—a gentleman of the name of Sponge,' added he, lest any one else should chance to come and usurp them—'and tell John to meet the express train, and tell the gentleman's groom ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees

... these ignorant men are so preposterous that they can scarcely be credited. The merchant no longer owns his business or directs it. The laborer tells him what to pay, how to pay it, when and how long the hours shall be—in fact, undertakes to usurp entire control. If the owner protests, the laborers all stop work, strike, appoint guards, who attack, kill, or intimidate any one who attempts to take their place. In this way it is said that one billion ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... inevitable dissensions arising during the long minority of an infant king, convened the popular assembly known as the Thing, and bade the people set her own child's claims aside in favor of Beowulf. This proposal was hailed with enthusiasm; but Beowulf refused to usurp his kinsman's throne, and raising Hardred, Hygelac's infant son, upon his shield, he declared that he would protect and uphold him as long as he lived. The people, following his example, swore fealty to the new king, and faithfully kept this oath ...
— Legends of the Middle Ages - Narrated with Special Reference to Literature and Art • H.A. Guerber

... necessary for the full satisfaction of their craving after the Beautiful. At such a crisis of thought and taste, it was natural that the classical scholar, the man who knew old Rome, and still more old Greece, should usurp the place of the monk, as teacher of mankind; and that scholars should form, for a while, a new and powerful aristocracy, limited and privileged, and all the more redoubtable, because its power lay in intellect, and had been won by ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley

... offered sacrifice. He was indeed a bad Christian, and probably only a catechumen, an ambitious and cruel tyrant, who procured the death of Misitheus, father-in-law of Gordian, murdered Gordian himself to usurp his empire, and put to death the young prince, son of the king of Persia, of the Parthians, left a hostage in his hands: circumstances mentioned by St. Chrysostom. Having reigned something upwards of five years, he was slain with his son Philip, his colleague in the empire, by ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... ourselves in Egypt as we do at Homburg, to dress and dine and sleep and sniff contempt on all things but ourselves, to such an extent that we have actually got into the habit of calling the natives of the places we usurp "foreigners." WE are the foreigners; but somehow we never can see it. Wherever we condescend to build hotels, that spot we consider ours. We are surprised at the impertinence of Frankfort people ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli

... familiar to children. Mr. Horne Tooke is bitter in his contempt for it, and will scarcely admit it into civilized company. "The brutish inarticulate interjection, which has nothing to do with speech, and is only the miserable refuge of the speechless, has been permitted to usurp a place amongst words, &c."—"The neighing of a horse, the lowing of a cow, the barking of a dog, the purring of a cat; sneezing, coughing, groaning, shrieking, and every other involuntary convulsion with oral sound, have almost as good a title to ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth

... he answered smiling. "Perhaps I am a little jealous lest this new-comer to whose arrival you look forward with so much interest should usurp more of your time and attention than we less-favoured ones ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various

... white silk robes. Decima, with her wondrous beauty, and the hectic on her cheeks again. Many an envious pair of eyes was cast to her. "That dreadful old maid, Decima Verner!" was amongst the compliments launched at her. "She to usurp him! How had my Lady Verner ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... abhorrence to the great comic genius; and Thucydides, a born aristocrat, of strong oligarchical sympathies, looked with cold scorn and aversion on the coarse mechanic, [Footnote: Cleon was a tanner by trade.] who presumed to usurp the place, and ape the style, of ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell

... woollen, linen, silk, and hardware manufactures, there is even less to create astonishment in the multitude and variety of the products, than in the exquisite perfection of the machinery employed—machinery, such in kind, that it seems almost to usurp the functions of human intelligence. No one can conceive its completeness, who has not witnessed the workings of the power-loom, or seen the mechanism by which the brute power of steam is made to effect the most minute and delicate processes of tambouring. Nor can any one adequately comprehend ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 333 - Vol. 12, Issue 333, September 27, 1828 • Various

... buy the cloves at Manila, and take them to Malaca. Only what is needed there it shipped to Nueva Espaa, and the rest is conveyed to various parts and kingdoms of the Orient which are convenient to Manila and the Malucas. The Dutch have again attempted to usurp that trade, as will be ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various

... sure but that Belle will soon usurp your place in his regard, nor would I object, for I am very anxious about the child. I know that her present life seems dull to her, and the temptations of the city to a girl with a nature like hers are legion. He can be a very useful friend to ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe

... enough on several points of importance, it was truly said. But in the pulpit and out of it, on one point it had been full, clear, and definite. A man must rule (well) his own household. "The husband is the head of the wife," who is not suffered "to usurp authority over the man," but who is to listen in silence, being "the weaker vessel"—and ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson

... of these ignorant men are so preposterous that they can scarcely be credited. The merchant no longer owns his business or directs it. The laborer tells him what to pay, how to pay it, when and how long the hours shall be—in fact, undertakes to usurp entire control. If the owner protests, the laborers all stop work, strike, appoint guards, who attack, kill, or intimidate any one who attempts to take their place. In this way it is said that one billion dollars have been lost in the last few years. Contracts have been broken, men ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... an unchangeable decree was appointed to happen; and that, therefore, it was their duty to acquiesce. OMAR then beckoned with his hand for audience a second time, and told them, that ALMORAN had not only practised the arts of sorcery to deprive HAMET of ALMEIDA, but that he meditated a design to usurp the sole dominion, and deprive him of the share of the government to which he had a right by the will of Solyman his father. This also they heard with the same sentiments of wonder and acquiescence: If it is decreed, said they, that ...
— Almoran and Hamet • John Hawkesworth

... seeing an eye, warns you that watchful enemies are seeking the slightest chance to work injury to your business. This dream indicates to a lover, that a rival will usurp him if he is ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller

... characterization, it is his best. But it is confession that whatever he wrote bore that incommunicable touch which gives him a unique position—a position no American playwright thus far has been able to usurp. ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: The Moth and the Flame • Clyde Fitch

... "I am not greatly given to overtalkativeness," he said shortly. "I have no desire to usurp woman's prerogative." ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory

... late to fly, for every way is closed. The High Gods have spoken, and I will do their bidding!" Then, extending her white, jewelled arms toward the mummy, she cried in a deeper, harsher tone: "O Nefer, my Prince and my love! There lives no man in Khem who shall take thy place beside me, or usurp the throne that should have been thine. I have sinned, but I repent me of the wrong. Lo, now I come and bring thee a goodly sacrifice to cheer thine angry heart—my ...
— The Mummy and Miss Nitocris - A Phantasy of the Fourth Dimension • George Griffith

... the congregation were threatened to such an extent that vigorous measures must be taken. The congregation demanded a fuller control of its own affairs, Handschuh and his elders sternly resisted the demand, and were convinced that the world would fall if the whole congregation were allowed to usurp the control which could only be wisely exercised by a few selectmen. The peril and strife grew so great, that after a long struggle it became an unavoidable necessity that Muehlenberg should be recalled to his office as chief pastor, and a new constitution ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker

... forth the felon's bar; the daring burglar eyeing with confidence the counsel learned in the law's defects, fee'd by its produce to defend its quondam owner. The effigies of Pride, Extravagance, honest Distress, and reckless Plunder, all by turns usurp the scene. In my last waking sleep, just as I had composed myself in delicious indolence, a parcel fell with more than ordinary force on one beneath. These were two of my talking friends. I stirred not, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various

... upon earth in the form of a man. His twin-brother Set was jealous of his popularity, and hated him to such a degree that he contrived a plan whereby he succeeded in putting Osiris to death. Set then tried to usurp his brother's kingdom and to make himself sole lord of Egypt, and, although no text states it distinctly, it is clear that he seized his brother's wife, Isis, and shut her up in his house. Isis was, however, under the protection ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge

... nothing to the understanding of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the Alexandrian times; it realizes how a philosophy made up of words only may create a deep and widespread enthusiasm, how the forms of logic and rhetoric may usurp the place of reason and truth, how all philosophies grow faded and discoloured, and are patched and made up again like worn-out garments, and retain only a second-hand existence. He who would study this degeneracy of philosophy and of the Greek mind in the original cannot do better ...
— Timaeus • Plato

... was in the house, no one else thought of answering the telephone. Mrs. Waddington would have been the last to usurp the prerogative. For that instrument was the tap root of her spy system over her daughter. By it, she picked up things; learned what this irresponsible responsibility of hers was doing. Mrs. Waddington had her mental lists of Kate's telephonic friends. She imagined that she could ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin

... then, is genial, soul-begetting, and love-creating; and Life is nowhere, save in the imaginations of the children of the grave. Whence, then, oh! whence came those their imaginations? Death, thou art not my father! Grave, thou art not my mother! I come of another kind, nor shall ye usurp dominion over me." ...
— Miracles of Our Lord • George MacDonald

... stage, though the author's original bent was "scenical dancing," or ballet dancing, by representations of historical incidents with graceful motion. In his "History of Pantomimes" the author is careful to distinguish between those entertainments where "Grin and grimace usurp the passions and affections of the mind," and those where "A nice address and management of the passions take up the thoughts of the performer." "Spectators," says Weaver, in 1730, or thereabouts, "are now so pandering away their applause on interpolations ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent

... toleration would impair their power; not only because the congregations would divide, but because these sectaries listened to "John Russell the shoemaker." [Footnote: Ne Sutor, p. 26.] Obviously, were cobblers to usurp the sacerdotal functions, the superstitious reverence of the people for the priestly office would not long endure: and it was his crime in upholding this sacrilegious practice which made the Rev. Thomas Cobbett cry out in his pulpit "against Gorton, that arch-heretick, ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams

... the latter I recognised that a girl who meant nothing to my better self had grown of a sudden painfully yet exquisitely desirable. But even during the ascendancy of the latter physical mood, she had only to seat herself beside the harp and sing, for the former state to usurp its place, I watched, I listened, and I yielded. Her voice, aided by the soft plucking of the strings, completed my defeat. Now, strangest of all, I must add one other thing, and I will add it without ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood

... you any good in the end, Peter. Thrashing me won't give you and your father the right to usurp rights at ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... of beasts as if they were troubled by the human face on which rests the reflection of Jehovah. It is said, 'Thou shalt worship neither stone nor wood nor metal.' Within these temples cemented with the blood of oppressed races grin and crouch the hideous, foul demons which usurp the libations, the offerings, and the sacrifices. One only God, infinite, eternal, formless, colourless, fills the immensity of the heavens which you people with a multitude of phantoms. Our God has created us; you ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier

... of Gallantry, I thought it a Duty incumbent on me to impart it to you, in Hopes of a Reformation, which is only to be effected by a Restoration of the Latin to the usual Dignity in your Papers, which of late, the Greek, to the great Displeasure of your Female Readers, has usurp'd; for tho the Latin has the Recommendation of being as unintelligible to them as the Greek, yet being written of the same Character with their Mother-Tongue, by the Assistance of a Spelling-Book its legible; which Quality the Greek wants: And since the Introduction of ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele

... happiness, Thou wouldst not find it hard to guess What hell may be his punishment For those who doubt if God invent Better than they. Let such men rest Content with what they judged the best. Let the unjust usurp at will: The filthy shall be filthy still: Miser, there waits the gold for thee! Hater, indulge thine enmity! And thou, whose heaven self-ordained Was, to enjoy earth unrestrained, Do it! Take all the ancient show! The woods shall wave, the rivers ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke

... young man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue her ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Columbus and of Vasco di Gama open out new tracks. Suddenly commerce is revolutionised. France, England, Spain, become nearer to America and India than Italy; so Italy declines; while the Atlantic states usurp the first place ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... hung over Europe, to be dispelled at last by the new growth of learning, and the consequences following upon it. The best intelligence of the time was confined to the clergy, who used it skilfully to maintain their authority. By every device they sought to usurp to themselves the sole power of ministering to popular wants. Nothing which could strike the mind through the senses was neglected. They offset tournaments by religious shows and pageantry, rivalled the attractions of the harp by sacred music, and to wean their flocks from the half dramatic entertainments ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... people have the fancy for these odd names, but they seduce in all nations, and they who feel the triviality of them, imitate them. It is true that the titles of Count and Marquis have fallen into the dust because of the quantity of people without wealth, and even without land, who usurp them; and that they have become so worthless, that people of quality who are Marquises or Counts (if they will permit me to say it) are silly enough to be annoyed if those titles are given to them in conversation. It is certain, however, that these titles emanated from landed ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon

... led the way, followed close by old Betsy, Billy following her close and next in order. The young claybank horse, which made Moise so much trouble, now undertook to usurp a place just back of Betsy instead of falling to the rear of the train where he belonged. But as he approached meek-looking old Billy, the latter laid back his ears and kicked violently at the claybank, hitting him in the shoulder ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough

... the anger of the Skillful Fisher, for he had a bad disposition, and had always hated his brother because of his virtues, and now with the excuse of the lost fishing hook he planned to kill him and to usurp his place as ruler of Japan. The Happy Hunter knew all this full well, but he could say nothing, for being the younger he owed his elder brother obedience; so he returned to the seashore and once more began to look for the missing ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki

... attempted to seize her cousin's crown. As the attempt to seize this crown failed, mankind consider her technically guilty. If it had succeeded, Mary, instead of Jane, would have been the traitor who would have died for attempting criminally to usurp ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott

... splendour which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life of the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer

... "None can usurp this height," return'd that shade, "But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest." * * * * * "Are there not thousands in the world," said I, Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh

... the best narrative poems in modern literature. It rises from calm to the fiercest and most tumultuous passions that usurp the throne of reason. Love, jealousy, hate, revenge, murder, succeed in cumulative force. Then the calm of unmitigated and hopeless woe returns, and we leave the widow in a solitude peopled only with memories. It is melodrama elevated into poetry. The mastery of the artist is shown in ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps

... saintly Legitimists, not one of whom attained kingship so honourably and legitimately as the man whom they had sworn to destroy, even though the whole of Europe were to be drenched in blood by the process of it. They set themselves to disfranchise and usurp the rights of the French people, who had only just again ratified by millions of votes his claim to the throne, and the gallant and heroic response to their requisition that he should leave Elba and become their ruler again. ...
— The Tragedy of St. Helena • Walter Runciman

... the head of the woman, but the head of the man is God;" "Man is the glory of God, but woman is the glory of man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man." The Apostle likewise declares, "I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve." This position of the Apostle was based on the Hebrew account of the creation of the first woman from the rib of the first man, and of the sentence of God upon her in consequence ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger

... threatening storm. The chief menace to the general peace was Lodovico Maria Sforza, surnamed Il Moro,(1) who sat as regent for his nephew, Duke Gian Galeazzo, upon the throne of Milan. That regency he had usurped from Gian Galeazzo's mother, and he was now in a fair way to usurp the throne itself. He kept his nephew virtually a prisoner in the Castle of Pavia, together with his young bride, Isabella of Aragon, who had been sent thither by her father, the Duke of Calabria, heir ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini

... but not with a wife at his side. Oh, yes; they would be happy at first. Then Elsa would begin to miss the things she had so gloriously thrown away. The rift in the lute; the canker in the rose. They were equally well-born, well-bred; politeness would usurp affection's hold. Could he save her from the day when she would learn Romance had come from within? No. All he could do was to help her find ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath

... again, however, recur to the fact that what our Reformers did in this matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they had shown the same wise moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the Latin side of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it to encroach upon and usurp those of the Teutonic part of the language. It would be difficult not to believe, even if many outward signs said not the same, that great things are in store for the one language of Europe which thus serves as connecting link between the North and the South, between the languages spoken ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... retorted, laughing. "I notice you're doing your best to usurp Mrs. Mackintosh's place in ...
— His Lordship's Leopard - A Truthful Narration of Some Impossible Facts • David Dwight Wells

... from the devil when we have the Divine Scripture": Besides, it is dangerous, since the demons frequently mix falsehood with truth. Or, as Chrysostom [*Cyril of Alexandria, Comment. in Luc.] says: "It was not meet for them to usurp the prerogative of the apostolic office. Nor was it fitting that the mystery of Christ should be proclaimed by a corrupt tongue" because "praise is not seemly in the mouth of a sinner" [*Cf. Theophylact, Enarr. in Luc.]. Thirdly, because, ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... than his own. The simulated affection was now changed into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the childless Henry ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... salvation, and bids me speak and labor in His cause, shall I not thankfully obey the heavenly voice? Shall I carry my humility to the extreme of disobedience? Shall I not rather arise, and, with a cheerful and joyous heart, do my Saviour what service I can? I will not presume to usurp the prerogative of God, even to judge and punish myself. I will leave myself to Him, the merciful and all-knowing, and He shall do with me what He sees best. I will not reject His mercy. I will not resist His will. Let Him do what seemeth to Him good, whether it be in ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker

... The party owes its right to existence to the people's will; when its life must be prolonged by artificial stimulants it is fit that it should die. It is not the people's master, but the people's servant; if it should usurp the oppressor's place, it ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow

... been, on my part, to keep Isobel and her grandfather apart. You have doubtless correctly gauged my motive. Isobel's mother was my father's favourite child. If he had an idea that her child was alive, he would receive her without a word. She would completely usurp the place of Adelaide, my own daughter, in his ...
— The Master Mummer • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Thor's own city of Bayeux, John Bull may find good meat and good vegetables, and plenty of them to boot. Then look at those strong, well-fed horses—what a contrast to the poor, half-starved, flogged, over-worked beasts which usurp the name further south! Look at those goodly cows, fed in good pastures, and yielding milk thrice a day; they claim no sort of sisterhood with the poverty-stricken animals which, south of the Loire, have ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman

... creatures, all of them no doubt infinitely varied in their nature, their structure and faculties, yet to view the whole scheme with an undoubting persuasion of its truth. It is however somewhat in opposition to the ideas of piety formed by our less adventurous ancestors, that we should usurp the throne of God, ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin

... or rather Zoraida Castelmar who sought to usurp destiny's prerogatives here, ruled otherwise. There came a quiet rap at the door, then the voice of one of ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructers and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson

... her position to favor conferred by your Majesty upon her father or husband, for services rendered, or to special favor on your Majesty's part. It is not right that some trader or transient resident, who has rendered no service, but who has rather been unserviceable to your Majesty, should usurp and enjoy these benefits by unjust means. The governor should be instructed not to allow, on any account, marriages to take place with any creditor or servant; but he should have, as his sole object, reward and honor to worthy persons who have ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume VIII (of 55), 1591-1593 • Emma Helen Blair

... that in this matter his mother was to be supported, whilst his detestation of this adventurer who threatened to usurp the place that should rightly be his own spurred him ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini

... part of your tragedy presently, by way of dessert, for instance. That will be sugared roast meat,—mordioux! Ah! pardon me, monsieur, that was a little oath which escaped me, because it is a habit with my lord and master. I sometimes allow myself to usurp that little oath, as it seems in pretty good taste. I take this liberty only in his absence, please to observe, for you may understand that in his presence—but, in truth, monsieur, this cider is abominable; do you not ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... the United States will protect each state against one man or a few men who may try to usurp the functions of the state government. By inference, the United States could insist upon a republican form of government even if the people of the state desired some other. Happily, no necessity for the exercise of this power has ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary

... beloved! what to be slighted! what to be contended with in point of house-rule who shall be the head; not for any parity of wisdom, for that were something reasonable, but out of female pride! 'I suffer not,' saith St. Paul, 'the woman to usurp authority over the man.' If the Apostle could not suffer it," he naturally remarks, "into what mold is he mortified that can?" He had a sincere desire to preserve men from the society of unsocial and unsympathizing women; and that was his ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... What, he asked, did the jury think? They were men of the world. Candidly, had they ever seen such a chauffeur and footman before? Did they look like servants? Of course they had Mr. Bumble's—their master's—confidence. But had they the jury's? He did not wish to usurp the functions of the cinema or the stage, but it was his duty to remind them that sometimes Truth was stranger than Fiction.... Here were two servants, who were obviously not servants at all, giving such overwhelming satisfaction that they were allowed ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... a nest-builder, but will usurp the nest of the crow or some other large bird. If a deserted nest can be found, the sparrow-hawk will immediately take possession; but if no such presents itself, this bad-hearted, quarrelsome bird does not hesitate to depose the rightful owner, and proceed to occupy a home ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... him as the child of a martyr to the highest cause on earth; and the love of the whole family encompassed her. One of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she was yet very little, and she had grown up among them as their youngest sister; but the doctor, from a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place of his brother in her childish thought, would not let her call him father, and in obedience to the rule which she soon began to give their love, they all turned and called him Uncle Jack with ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells

... are less fitted for abstract reasoning, whereas those who excel in intellect and its use keep their imagination more restrained and controlled, holding it in subjection, so to speak, lest it should usurp the ...
— A Theologico-Political Treatise [Part I] • Benedict de Spinoza

... may usurp That honoured swinging seat; His seasons pass with pipe and glass Until ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till the lady has finished; then take her back to the ball-room, and repeat the process, ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost

... leave the loathed stage, And this more loathsome age, Where pride and impudence, in faction knit, Usurp the chair of wit! Inditing and arranging every day ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... the conqueror; 1005 Though dispensations were not strong Conclusions, whether right or wrong, Although out-goings did confirm, And owning were but a mere term; Yet as the wicked have no right 1010 To th' creature, though usurp'd by might, The property is in the Saint, From whom th' injuriously detain 't; Of him they hold their luxuries, Their dogs, their horses, whores, and dice, 1015 Their riots, revels, masks, delights, Pimps, buffoons, fiddlers, parasites; ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... ambition led him to usurp a power to which the Romans were not willing to submit, it appears that he used it with unexampled moderation. He was beloved and revered by the people, honoured and almost adored by his friends, and esteemed ...
— Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Rome • Oliver Goldsmith

... There are times when Nature permits no rivalry; she claims every thought and gives herself to us only as we give ourselves to her. She effaces us and takes complete possession of our souls. Not so, however, does she usurp the throne of our own personal life in those early hours when the sun, the master artist, whose touch has coloured every leaf and tinted every flower, demands her adoration. Then it is, perhaps, that ...
— Under the Trees and Elsewhere • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... in any one of several ways. Often the statesman, no less than the soldier, plays an all-important part in winning the new land; nevertheless, it is usually true that the diplomatists who by treaty ratify the acquisition usurp a prominence in history to which they are in no way entitled by the real worth of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt

... Educated for the magistracy, he became a Maitre des Requetes (say Master in Chancery) at twenty, and at thirty-five Procureur-General (or Attorney-General) of the Parliament of Paris, which was only a court of justice, although it frequently attempted to usurp legislative, and even executive functions. During the rebellious troubles of the Fronde, the Procureur and his brother, the Abbe Fouquet, remained faithful to Mazarin and to the throne. The Abbe, in the ardor of his zeal, once offered the Queen his services ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... evening she could not read the book she had in hand; its phrases seemed to fall into triviality. Yet—she reasoned at a later time—it should not have been so; the haggard gaze of fate should not daunt one; pity is but an element in the soul's ideal of order, it should not usurp a barren sovereignty. It is the miserable contradiction in our lot that the efficiency of the instincts of beauty-worship waits upon a force of individuality attainable only by a sacrifice of sensibility. Emily divined this. So it was that she came to shun the thought of ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing

... sanctioning polygamy, but prevents the administration of justice through ordinary instrumentalities of law." He expressed the opinion that Congress should prohibit polygamy, and not allow "any ecclesiastical organization to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and power, of the national government." President Arthur, in his message in December, 1881, referred to the difficulty of securing convictions of persons accused of polygamy—"this odious crime, so revolting to the moral and religious ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn

... religion takes up that place in the mind which superstition would usurp, and so leaves little room for it; and likewise lays us under the strongest ...
— Painted Windows - Studies in Religious Personality • Harold Begbie

... physiognomy, and induce the belief, either to his credit or discredit, that he entertained one of those personal philosophies which are peculiar to our century, which sometimes spring up in solitary spirits, and there take on a form and grow until they usurp the place of religion, we insist upon it, that not one of those persons who knew Monseigneur Welcome would have thought himself authorized to think anything of the sort. That which enlightened this man was his heart. His ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... that I am guilty. Impious and rash! thus to usurp the prerogatives of your Maker! to set up your bounded views and halting reason, as the ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown

... very pleasant; there was no question. He did not at all usurp her office, nor interfere with it. But when he saw her getting weary of a parliamentary discussion, or a long discourse on politics or parties, his hand would gently draw away the paper from hers and his voice carry on the reading. And his voice was ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner

... Progress is the optimistic name, compel "Progress" too to fall from the commanding position in which it is now, with apparent security, enthroned? [words in Greek]... A day will come, in the revolution of centuries, when a new idea will usurp its place as the directing idea of humanity. Another star, unnoticed now or invisible, will climb up the intellectual heaven, and human emotions will react to its influence, human plans respond to its guidance. It will be the criterion by which ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury

... the strengthless dead find friends, it was possible that questions would be asked, questions hard to answer. Before Heaven he could justify himself for all that he had done, but before King Henry, who would usurp the powers of the very Pope, if the truth should chance to reach the royal ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard

... Sunday, having hired a good horse for the occasion, I had the honor of riding beside her carriage till some better-mounted acquaintance came to usurp my place and her attention; after which I was forced to drop behind and bear the eclipse of my glory ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards

... black demons, seem trying to engulf the earth and make even the rocks tremble—all have a weird and uncanny influence. In their presence the imagination runs riot and the ghostly and supernatural usurp reason. Spectral shapes crawl out of dark fissures and leap from rock to rock and hideous sea monsters creep in the verge of shadows. To be alone on a small island of evil repute and many miles ...
— Pocket Island - A Story of Country Life in New England • Charles Clark Munn

... its existence or from the influence of designing men diverting their attention from the quarter whence it approaches to a source from which it can never come. This is the old trick of those who would usurp the government of their country. In the name of democracy they speak, warning the people against the influence of wealth and the danger of aristocracy. History, ancient and modern, is full of such examples. Caesar became the master of the Roman people and the ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various

... accessible by the same line of railway, but he always travelled first class; the same train thus presenting the anomaly of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. "Well," said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently thinks it becoming to adopt, "I don't know how you manage to ride first-class, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various

... plotted this that you might succeed to the throne of Baaltis; now hear your fate: You shall live to sweep the huts and bear the babes of savages. You, priest," and he pointed to the Shadid, "I read your heart; you design to murder this apostate whom you greet as your successor that you may usurp his place. I show you yours: it lies in the bellies of the jackals of ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard

... that a mother-state should trust large bodies of mercenary troops in her colonies, at so great a distance from her; lest, in process of time, when the spirits of the people shall be depressed by the military power, another Caesar should arise and usurp the authority ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... It was then that I knew him. He was continually dissatisfied, however, and after a year or two disappeared. It was rumoured that he'd struck a bargain with his prime-minister, one Salig Singh. At all events Salig Singh contrived to usurp the throne, Government offering no objection. Rutton turned up eventually in Russia and married a woman there who died in childbirth—twenty years ago, perhaps. The child did not survive its mother...." Labertouche paused deliberately, his glance searching Amber's ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance

... hate her," she said, with a lift of her sleek brown head, "didn't she usurp my prerogatives at the wedding? The best man belongs, for that evening alone, to the maid of honour—he can't escape it—it is his fate. Common civility should have chained him to my chariot wheels, but with that white-headed Lilith at work on him, with her half-shut ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... this rabble of poor and low-class clergy it was no doubt a welcome relaxation, and one can hardly wonder that they let themselves go in burlesquing the sacred but often wearisome rites at which it was their business to be present through many long hours, or that they delighted to usurp for once in a way the functions ordinarily performed by their superiors. The putting down of the mighty from their seat and the exalting of them of low degree was the keynote of the festival. While "Deposuit potentes de sede: et exaltavit humiles" was ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles

... scribe Nor arithmaticion Ever able to decide The usurp'd base ambition, Which in truth I shall declare, Traytors here which lately were, Who wanted ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay

... without objection or dissent, they crowned him emperor of Greece. But it was not long before Alexander learned that Alis was emperor. Then he took leave of King Arthur, unwilling to let his brother usurp his land without protest. The King makes no opposition to his plan, but bids him take with him so great a company of Welshmen, Scots, and Cornishmen that his brother will not dare to withstand him when he sees him come with such a host. Alexander, had he pleased, might have led ...
— Four Arthurian Romances - "Erec et Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and "Lancelot" • Chretien de Troyes

... proud transgressor to spoil One right of our homes, or one foot of our soil, One privilege pluck from our keeping, or dare Usurp one blessing ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various

... instantly. Part of her intense charm was the ready tact with which she was careful never to usurp the place of any one else. She put aside the muslin that was to form covers for the boxes, and slipped her scissors back into ...
— The Princess of the School • Angela Brazil

... should manifestly be that of reinstating itself in power, in consolidating that power, and in acting as a powerful unity, according to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. The CONSTITUTION—bear that word well in mind—the Constitution which suffers no State to usurp a single power belonging to the General Government, and which was expressly framed for the purpose of making all its freemen the citizens of one great nation. Let the reader consult the Constitution, study its unmistakable plan of national integrity and of state subordination, and then reflect ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... put in Agatha; 'she does not realize what a sting her words have. She told me last Sunday, when I unfortunately gave an order to some of my Sunday class in front of her, that however much I might try to slight her and usurp her place in the vicarage and parish I would not be successful, for the vicar was proof against all young ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre

... empty form should make a barrier! If I rightly understand, you are not unwilling to listen to real and advantageous counsel—but your scruple is saved—I hear them returning to ask your final resolution. Oh! take the advice of the noble Seyton, and you may once more command those who now usurp a triumph over you. But hush! I hear ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... her a saddle, and then June would usurp Miss Anne's place on a horseback-ride up through the gap to see the first blooms of the purple rhododendron on Bee Rock, or up to Morris's farm on Powell's mountain, from which, with a glass, they could see the Lonesome Pine. And all the time she worked at her studies tirelessly—and ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.

... a fellow-creature be in any respect justifiable. And although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, and the freedom of our laws and of ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... rights of woman. It is an argument against those corruptions that you have permitted to grow and fasten upon your political methods and appliances, and not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights of man. What! usurp an exclusive control—then degrade the modes of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation of the very powers of thought is that! ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... instructed by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... the people of Damascus can be made aware of the important changes in their social condition, when the Hatti Sherif of Gulhane shall be no longer to them a dead letter, when violence shall no longer usurp the place of justice, nor men endanger their lives by bearing witness to the truth. You will be able to return to Syria in a few months under better auspices, and cover the slanderers of your people ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore

... then that not merely you, the jury in this case, but the other letters also, should be on your guard against such attempts. If any one who chooses is to be licensed to leave his own place and usurp that of others, with no objection on your part (whose concurrence is an indispensable condition of all writing), I fail to see how combinations are to have their ancient constitutional rights secured to them. But my first ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... badly in his new abode, for it seemed to him as if the spectre of the man whose place he was to usurp was hovering over his couch. But with the dawn of day, and especially when the hour arrived for him to go out and give his lessons, he felt his courage return to him, though rashness perhaps would be the more correct word. And with a mien of perfect ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau

... insignia on the altar, and addressing the king and his surrounding prelates, said, "There are the crown and sceptre which Canute intrusted to my charge. To you, I neither give nor refuse them, you may take them if you please; but I strictly forbid any of my brother bishops to usurp an office, which is the prerogative ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip

... effort meeting him, his strength restored, And wing'd for flight his agile limbs anew? The son of Peleus, as he ran, his brows Shaking, forbad the people to dismiss A dart at Hector, lest a meaner hand 240 Piercing him, should usurp the foremost praise. But when the fourth time to those rivulets. They came, then lifting high his golden scales, Two lots the everlasting Father placed Within them, for Achilles one, and one 245 For Hector, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer

... excited, not because they aspired like her, like the philosophers, like the popes, like the press in our times, to a participation in the government of the world, but because they disputed her claims as one of the powers of the age. The Jesuits were scandalized that such a woman should usurp the reins of state, especially when they perceived that she mocked and defied them; and they therefore refused to pay her court, and even conspired to effect her overthrow. But they had not sufficiently considered the potency of her wrath, or the desperate means of revenge to which ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord

... would have cost the State thirty million pounds, and it would have been cheap. Do you hear that? It would have been cheap! Bakkan is one of the most vulnerable outposts of the Empire. It is a terrible danger-zone. If certain powers can usurp our authority—and, mark you, the whole blamed place is already riddled with this new pernicious doctrine—you know what I mean—before we know where we are the whole East will be in a blaze. India! My God! This contract we were negotiating would have ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... who usurp'st the sacred name of conscience, Did not thy own declare him innocent? To me declare him so? The king shall ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... to others, as a charge full of danger and expense; and sometimes, without his permission, the Romans, seeing themselves so abandoned, created an emperor for their defense, or suffered some one to usurp the dominion. This occurred at the period of which we now speak, when Maximus, a Roman, after the death of Valentinian, seized the government, and compelled Eudocia, widow of the late emperor, to take him for her husband; but she, being of imperial ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli

... forms appear? When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king, And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting, When keenest feelings at his bosom pull, And fancy tells him that the seat is full; Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place, To frighten children with his mealy face? The king alone should form the phantom there, And talk and ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... ludicrous to be compelled to record that out of a quarrel, originating in a servile endeavour on the part of the two principal nobles of a great nation to usurp the functions of a maitre-d'hotel, grew an attempt at civil war, which, had not the treachery of Richelieu nipped it in the bud, might have involved France in a sanguinary and unnatural series of conflicts that would ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... human concerns, as a heap of old exploded errors, would be no longer studied. Personal self-sufficiency and arrogance (the certain attendants upon all those who have never experienced a wisdom greater than their own) would usurp the tribunal. Of course no certain laws, establishing invariable grounds of hope and fear, would keep the actions of men in a certain course, or direct them to a certain end. Nothing stable in the modes of holding property, or exercising function, could form a solid ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke

... has much the same features as that of the Rhine, but there is a great difference between the French wines, which are mostly red, and the German, which are mostly white. Among the latter hundreds of spurious, horrible concoctions for the foreign market usurp the name of Mosel wine. It is hardly necessary even to mention the pretty names by which the real wines are known, and which may be found on any wine-card at the good, unpretending inns that make Mosel travelling a special delight. The Saar wines are included among the Mosel, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various

... booty—be alone extoll'd? Or he who, scorning safety, boldly roams Through woods and dreary wilds, to scour the land Of thieves and robbers? Is nought left for us? Must gentle woman quite forego her nature,— Force against force employ,—like Amazons, Usurp the sword from man, and bloodily Revenge oppression? In my heart I feel The stirrings of a noble enterprize; But if I fail—severe reproach, alas! And bitter misery will be my doom. Thus on my ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

... are you going? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach the word of God in all humility? And do you now presume to usurp these estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these fees? Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the Church by way of propounding questions though under pretence of desire to learn for ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... oppression, it exclaimed against arbitrary imprisonment, and demanded regularly convoked states-general. After this act of courage, it decreed the irremovability of its members, and the incompetence of any who might usurp their functions. This bold manifesto was followed by the arrest of two members, d'Epremenil and Goislard, by the reform of the body, and the establishment of a ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... Teutonic etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labors or usurp their honors, but that I might spare perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and Skinner in rectitude of understanding. Junius ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot

... bulbous multiplicity of breeches, sat on his "stoep" and smoked his pipe in lordly silence; nor did it ever enter his brain that the active, restless Yankee, whom he saw through his half-shut eyes worrying about in dog day heat, ever intent on the main chance, was one day to usurp control over these goodly Dutch domains. Already, however, the races regarded each other with disparaging eyes. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" while the latter, glorying in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... comfortable, like the buzzing of bees, some of them strange and unusual to us. One cicada had a sustained note, in quality about like that of our own August-day's friend, but in quantity and duration as the roar of a train to the gentle hum of a good motor car. Like all cicada noises it did not usurp the sound world, but constituted itself an underlying basis, so to speak. And when it stopped the silence seemed to rush in as ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White

... original thirteen States; and these interests, corporate or otherwise, have been cherished and consolidated by a benign policy, without any one supposing the law-making power had united with the Judiciary, under the universal sanction of the whole country, to usurp a jurisdiction which did not belong to them. Such a discovery at this late date is more extraordinary than anything which has occurred in the judicial history of this or any other country. Texas, under a previous organization, was admitted as a State; but no State can be admitted into the Union which ...
— Report of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Opinions of the Judges Thereof, in the Case of Dred Scott versus John F.A. Sandford • Benjamin C. Howard

... provided a house for her, and assigned to her service a retinue of domestics. Shortly afterward he attempted to open such a correspondence with her as might favor his desires, but failing in this, he proceeded to usurp some freedoms, at which her delicacy revolted. Her rebuke, firm and noble, drove him back abashed; but his impetuous temper could not well brook disappointment, and in the ardor of his passion he subsequently attempted to ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Ocean in his deep abodes, And Tethys; both revered among the gods. They ask what brings her there: 'Ne'er ask,' says she, 'What brings me here, heaven is no place for me. You'll see, when night has covered all things o'er, 150 Jove's starry bastard and triumphant whore Usurp the heavens; you 'll see them proudly roll In their new orbs, and brighten all the pole. And who shall now on Juno's altars wait, When those she hates grow greater by her hate? I on the nymph a brutal form impress'd, Jove to a goddess has transformed the beast; This, this was ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... many years in my life I think that work has filled the place love occupies in many, perhaps in most men's lives. Everything comes second to work. I know that, because if any one attempts to interfere with my work, or to usurp any of the time that should be given to it, any regard I may have for that person turns at once ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens

... account of a few half-mawkish, half- blasphemous phrases in a convention speech, can bear witness to the necessity of a reform in this particular—a reform which will forbid a sensation-seeking city mob to usurp the function of the ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White

... children had put down their books. It was bed-time. They always waited for family prayers. When the Doctor was absent Mrs Morgan or Charles read them, but as he was momentarily expected, his wife and son were unwilling to usurp his office. At length the hall-door bell rang. It was the Doctor. He appeared unusually sad and serious. The family assembled. His voice, generally so firm, trembled ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston

... He is jealous of me. He only awaits the slightest excuse to feed me to Komal. He fears that I may some day usurp his power." ...
— Thuvia, Maid of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... disfiguring disease caused by want of exercise and excess of nourishment: the legs swell to such a degree from the knees downward, that the form of the calf and foot is entirely lost, and the thick cylinders which usurp the place of legs, and from under which the toes only project, resemble nothing but the legs of elephants; thence the name of elephantism has been bestowed on the complaint by Europeans. It does not ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue

... obeyed a limited monarch; among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and adorned the dignity of human kind. The acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard the privileges of Roman citizens. ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon

... that criticism changes its canons with the years and that Hawthorne simply adapted himself (unconsciously, as a spokesman of his day) to contemporaneous standards. His audience was less averse from the principle that the artist should on no account usurp the pulpit's function. If the artist-preacher had a golden mouth, it was enough. This has perhaps always been the attitude of ...
— Masters of the English Novel - A Study Of Principles And Personalities • Richard Burton

... her of much of that beloved society. Hitherto she had been Maulevrier's chosen companion, at Fellside—indeed, his sole companion after the dismissal of his tutor. Now this brown, bearded stranger would usurp her privileges—those two young men would go roaming over the hills, fishing, otter-hunting, going to distant wrestling matches and leaving her at home. It was a hard thing, and she was prepared to detest the interloper. Even to-night she would be a loser by his presence. Under ordinary circumstances ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... their own dismal houses, with their own stupid families, the faithful husband and wife sitting opposite to each other in their own chimney corners, yawning models of constancy. And this they call virtue! How the meanest vices usurp the name of virtue! Leonora's is a jealousy of the most illiberal and degrading species; a jealousy of the temper, not of the heart. She is too cold to feel the passion of love.—She never could be ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth

... let not Faustus rob great Koster's name Like him, who since usurp'd Columbus' fame. Pierian laurels flourish round his tomb; And ever-living roses breathe ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth

... conciliated general good will by his engaging manners,—was viewed by his father with an anxiety of love that sometimes became almost painful to witness. But this natural self-surrender to a first involuntary emotion Lord Altamont did not suffer to usurp any such lengthened expression as might too painfully have reminded me of being "one too many." One solitary half minute being paid down as a tribute to the sanctities of the case, his next care was to withdraw me, the stranger, from any oppressive feeling of strangership. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey

... some men are merely subsidiary to their lives, externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always visioning absent delights, combined with his weakness ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... she has collected or given is to be expended. In the choir, women may sing of salvation; but it is fearful presumption for her to speak of it in the body of the Church, or let her voice be heard there imploring salvation for herself or others. This might defile the sanctuary or tempt her to "usurp authority over the man." Occasionally there is to be found a denomination which will allow a woman to pray in public, or to relate her Christian experience; but even in some of these the practice does not receive a very large amount of encouragement, and her right to exhort ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... utility themselves they cannot impart the art to their pupils. As I have said, librarians contend that this is true, yet many of them with opportunities to instruct teachers in these matters lying unused before them, neglect them and coolly step in to usurp one of the school's functions and rebuke the ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine

... art thou, that usurp'st this time of night,[11] Together with that fair and warlike form In which the majesty of buried Denmark Did sometimes march? By heaven I ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare

... the word; and whose ideal is a number, more or less small, of cruisers neither fitted nor intended for combined action. Under these circumstances, the details of the internal economy of the single ship usurp in the professional mind an undue proportion of the attention which, in a rightly constituted navy, might far better be applied to the study of naval tactics, in the higher sense of that word, and of naval campaigns. Farragut could not but feel the ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan

... banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors, and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force; the frontlet on her brow would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward

... the people of the Lord as if they were bread; as it is said: "The wicked have dissipated thy law," wherein in these latter times Ireland has been well and prosperously planted and instructed. Thanks be to God, I usurp nothing; I share with these whom He hath called and predestinated to preach the Gospel in much persecution, even to the ends of the earth. But the enemy hath acted invidiously towards me through the tyrant Coroticus, who fears neither God nor His priests whom He hath chosen, and committed ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various

... comical conversation and incident. Jokes of all kinds are constantly on the wing, and no one can consider himself safe from collision with them. Ridiculous nicknames become attached—no one knows how—to the most dignified characters, and altogether usurp the places of the genuine cognomens. No person possesses the art of concealment to such a degree that all his foibles and weaknesses will escape observation in the companionship of a camp; and when discovered, the treatment of them is merciless just in proportion ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... and proportions: first the blade—then the ear—then, and not till then, the full corn in the ear; and thus, as Dr. Temple wisely says, "not to forget wisdom in teaching knowledge." If the blade be forced, and usurp the capital it inherits; if it be robbed by you its guardian of its birthright, or squandered like a spendthrift, then there is not any ear, much less any corn; if the blade be blasted or dwarfed in our haste and greed for the full shock and its price, we spoil all ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown

... saved my own, and more, you saved much more Than my poor life is worth. But, sir, think well! This man is dangerous, not to me alone, But to the King of England; for he'll yet Usurp the throne! Think well! ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... with Antonius' suit to Poppaea, which is full of passion and poetry, but is not allowed to usurp too much room in the progress of the play. Then, in fine contrast to the grovelling servility of the Emperor's creatures, we see the erect figure of the grand stoic philosopher, Persius' tutor, Cornutus, whose free-spokenness procures him banishment. Afterwards ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various

... these leaders and agitators tend more and more to usurp the place of the public authorities in proportion as the latter allow themselves to be called in question and shorn of their strength. The tyranny of these new masters has for result that the crowds obey them much more docilely than they have obeyed any government. If in consequence ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon

... a general increase of moral energy, assisted by some minor legal changes, will restore the balance,—such a conception of the situation is less than half true. No doubt, the "plain people" of the United States have been morally indifferent, and have allowed unscrupulous special interests to usurp too much power; but that is far from being the whole story. The unscrupulous energy of the "Boss" or the "tainted" millionaire is vitally related to the moral indifference of the "plain people." Both of them have been ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly

... mother. 'Oh, what am I to do! What—bring a distemper on yourself, and usurp the sacred prerogative of God, because you can't ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... oaths of allegiance did he proceed to his capital, where he arrived quite unexpectedly, so that no festivities had been prepared. After some time, he had all the Syrian emirs arrested by his Mam-luks, because they tried to usurp his powers; he then appointed a regent, and himself returned to Kerak, taking with him everything he had found in the sultan's palace, and there he remained in spite of the entreaties of the faithful emirs, and lived simply ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... is to materialise mankind, to hit upon what is expedient without heeding what is just; to acquire knowledge without faith, and prosperity apart from virtue; assuming the title of the champions of modern civilisation, and placing themselves in a station which they usurp with insolence, and from which they are driven ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al

... Heligoland. Came Paradies, the little German trader, in his finest blacks, and chose a seat off in one corner of the room. Then "Foxy Grandpa" and the "Arizona Babe" arrived, and the old maid from Zamboanga, who, when expression failed her, would usurp the conversation with a "blab, blab, blab!" And as the serpent made for old Laocooen, so she ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... It is probable that the affection of the parent for the daughter prevented him from ever thinking of marrying again, for she was a model housekeeper, and he could not bear the thought of seeing anyone come into the family and usurp, even in a small degree, her ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis









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