"Despot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... think of Scattergood Baines as an astute and perhaps tricky business man, or as the political despot of a state. Because this is so it has overlooked or neglected many stories about the man much more indicative of character, and more fascinating of detail than those well-known and often-repeated tales of his sagacity ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... her answer at the time, so I can let you know what it was. 'Your young King will turn out a despot.' That is what Madame la Presidente said to ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... doubt," she thoughtfully remarked, "would finally convince the Emperor Hadrian that where a warlike despot is sown as the seed, a fortress and a prison ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... such schools are, are they not?" cried Oscar. "Were I a despot, I should immediately establish schools for the lower education of women. That's what they need. It usually takes ten years living with a man to complete a ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... easy-tempered King for your graceful despot," said Fareham. "Pride is the mainspring that moves Louis' self-absorbed soul. His mother instilled it into his mind almost before he could speak. He was bred in the belief that he has no more parallel ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... land! There points thy Muse to stranger's eye[cq] The graves of those that cannot die! 'Twere long to tell, and sad to trace, Each step from Splendour to Disgrace; Enough—no foreign foe could quell Thy soul, till from itself it fell; Yet! Self-abasement paved the way 140 To villain-bonds and despot sway. ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... of the end," one of the students exclaimed. "Paris will assert herself, France will come to her assistance, and the Germans will find that it is one thing to fight against the armies of a despot, and another to stand before a ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... military despot, and, despising the feeble Senate, assumed both the legislative and the executive power. The jurisconsults, in fact, from this reign, begin to treat the emperor as the source of all law, the Senate and the people being no longer considered in the ...
— A Smaller History of Rome • William Smith and Eugene Lawrence
... obeying him, every good would follow. He would receive my tardy submission with warm affection, and generous pardon would follow my repentance. Profitless words for a young and gentle daughter to use to a man accustomed to make his will law, and to feel in his own heart a despot so terrible and stern, that he could yield obedience to nought save his own imperious desires! My resentment grew with resistance; my wild companions were ready to add fuel to the flame. We laid a plan to carry off Juliet. At first it appeared to ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... do not believe that saying, because I believe another one to the effect that hell is paved with benevolence, which most people, the proverb being too deep for them, misinterpret as unfulfilled intentions. As if a benevolent despot might not by any error of judgment destroy his kingdom, and then say, like Romeo when he got his friend killed, 'I thought all for the best!' Excuse my rambling. I meant to say, in short, that though you are benevolent and judicious you are none ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... Saint-Germain, so full of charm and of personal advantages, that they united in forming a little court round the overbearing Emilie. This treaty between interest and pride was not, however, so firmly cemented but that the young despot was, not unfrequently, the cause of revolts in her little realm. Scenes, which the highest circles would not have disowned, kept up a sarcastic temper among all the members of this powerful family; and this, without seriously diminishing the regard ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... grinding, weaving, cooking, baking, sewing, spinning; with such objects as corn, flesh, meat, vestment; with wild animals common to Europe and Asia, as the bear and the wolf. So, too, of words connected with social organization, despot, rex, queen. The numerals from 1 to 100 coincide in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic; but this is not the case with 1000, a fact which has led comparative philologists to the conclusion that, though at the time of the emigration a sufficient intellectual ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Hermione, as well as her aunt, knew that this top held four teaspoonsful of tea. Lady John filled it once, filled it twice, and turned the contents out each time into the gaping pot. Then, absent-mindedly, she paused, eyeing the approaching party,—that genial silver-haired despot, her husband, walking with Lord Borrodaile, the gawky girl between them, except when she paused to practise a drive. The fourth person, a short, compactly knit man, was lounging along several paces behind, but every now and then energetically ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... As Colonel Moore observes, if a landlord threatened his tenants with disfavour, which meant eviction, that was "only a legitimate exercise of their rights of property"; but if a priest told his flock that a man would imperil his soul by selling his vote or prostituting it to the use of a despot, the candidate whom that priest supported would lose his seat ...
— Irish Books and Irish People • Stephen Gwynn
... revive the genius of Phidias and Lysippus, surpassed indeed the power of a Roman emperor; but the immortal productions which they had bequeathed to posterity were exposed without defence to the rapacious vanity of a despot. By his commands the cities of Greece and Asia were despoiled of their most valuable ornaments. The trophies of memorable wars, the objects of religious veneration, the most finished statues of the gods and heroes, of the sages ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the Government is despotic, the doctrine still holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form. Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very much swayed by general opinion—by precedent, by the feeling of his nobles, his priesthood, his army—are in part immediate results of the national character; and when they are out ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... and that law and morality are mere conventions. The implications of this doctrine are of supreme importance. If Justice is frank despotism, then the Eastern type of civilisation is the best, wherein custom has once for all fixed the right of the despot to grind down the population, while the sole duty of the latter is to pay taxes. The moral reformation of law becomes impossible; no adjustment of an unchanging decree to the changing and advancing standard of public ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... The reader was finally allowed to resume. "You mean to send an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis. Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America to free ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... to govern the country of Ireland in the same way. The reign of the despot. Well, THAT is nearly over too—even as woman's degrading position to-day ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... satisfaction of being wounded, at which she presented an orange and a cigar to each of us in turn. Among the females on board, I remarked one, very large, angular, and sanguine, who sat at a small table, dispensing luxuries with the manners of a despot and the charity of a child. She had a large vessel of boiling coffee, from which she drew spicy quantities at intervals; and when the troops thronged around eagerly, she rebuked the more forward, and called up some emaciated, bashful fellows, giving them the preference. Every ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... and fierce, On the land its terror smites; Till its flames the tyrants pierce, Till the dust the despot bites! ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... the Polar regions. He afterwards followed him to St. Petersburg, and there, after some vicissitudes of fortune, Morok became one of the imperial couriers—these iron automata, that the least caprice of the despot hurls in a frail sledge through the immensity of the empire, from Persia to the Frozen Sea. For these men, who travel night and day, with the rapidity of lightning there are neither seasons nor obstacles, ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... the whole Ottoman system of government and administration? Or must the causes be sought deeper, and, if so, was it the palsy of an unbridled and malevolent despotism which in itself produced the result, or did the sudden downfall of the despot, by the removal of a time-honoured, if unworthy, symbol of government, abstract the corner-stone from the tottering political edifice, and thus, by disarranging the whole administrative gear of the Empire at a critical ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... period had it been made in vain. The scholars had heard of the glorious feats of their forefathers in their boyish years, when they set the lash of the master at defiance for days together. Now, alas! all was changed; the master, in the opinion of the boys, reigned a despot absolute and uncontrolled; the merciless cruelty of his rod, and the heaviness of his tasks, were insupportable. The accustomed holidays had been rescinded; the usual Christmas feast reduced to a non-entity, and the ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... himself. Although the disorders assumed such dimensions that foreign intervention was narrowly escaped, the upshot was that the Nanking Delegates were completely cowed and willing to forget all about forcing the despot of Peking to proceed to the Southern capital. Yuan Shih-kai as the man of the hour was enabled on the 10th March, 1912, to take his oath in Peking as he had wished thus securing full freedom of action during the succeeding years. [Footnote: The ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale
... democratic rule could be so organized and conducted that it would not degenerate into license and result in the tyranny of absolutism, without saving to the people the power so often found necessary of representing or destroying their enemy, when he was found in the person of a single despot." ...
— The Writings of Thomas Jefferson - Library Edition - Vol. 6 (of 20) • Thomas Jefferson
... a great misfortune if, from a confusion of ideas, men come to think that, because Parliaments are imperfect, there is no reason why there should be self-government. The grounds for advocating self-government are very familiar: first, that no benevolent despot can be trusted to know or pursue the interests of his subjects; second, that the practice of self-government is the only effective method of political education; third, that it tends to place the preponderance of force on the side of the constitution, and thus to promote order and stable government. ...
— The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism • Bertrand Russell
... your mind! Despot!" roared Razumihin; but Raskolnikov did not and perhaps could not answer. He lay down on the sofa, and turned to the wall, utterly exhausted. Avdotya Romanovna looked with interest at Razumihin; her black eyes flashed; Razumihin positively started ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... strangely enough, the very people over whom this despot tyrannised were devotedly attached to him; and many trading captains had told me that he was "a real good sort when you got to know him." One of these men a few years later conveyed Apinoka and five hundred of his fighting-men ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... X—— to which our friends set off was in the jurisdiction of a governor who was a young man, and at once a progressive and a despot, as often happens with Russians. Before the end of the first year of his government, he had managed to quarrel not only with the marshal of nobility, a retired officer of the guards, who kept open house and a stud of horses, but even with ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... hero of all time, and Shallow and Slender from the fat pastures of English rural life, come all together, each as true as if on him alone the poet's eye had fixed. And Scott is like him, setting before us with unerring pencil the old superstitious despot of mediaeval France, the bustling pedant of St. James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country lying under a natural illumination, without ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... pouring wine over the animal slain by them in the hunt. The act is intended to secure divine favor towards a deed which involved the destruction of something that by all ancient nations was held sacred, namely, life. Even a despot of Assyria felt that to wantonly destroy life could not be safely undertaken without making sure of the consent of the gods. Significantly enough, Ashurbanabal offers his libations after the lion or bull hunts to Ishtar as the "goddess of battle."[1494] The animal ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow
... everywhere and always her silent worshipper and faithful champion. They soon learned that the way to secure his help in anything was to get Vashti Mills to ask it, and the little girl quickly discovered her power and used it as remorselessly over her tall slave as any other despot ever did. They were to be seen any day trailing along the plantation paths which the school-children took from the district, the others in a clump, and the tall boy and little calico-clad girl, who seemed in summer mainly sun-bonnet and bare legs, ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... families. Foremost among these conflicting elements were the rival houses of Colonna and Orsini, and, as in those days each nobleman kept an armed retinue within a fortified enclosure in town, he soon became a despot. Fearing no one, consulting only his own pleasure and convenience, he daily sallied forth to plunder, kidnap, and murder at his will. Such being the state of affairs, the streets daily flowed with blood; the merchants no longer dared open their shops and expose their wares lest ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... endowments; whilst, probably, amongst all the fair-haired Angle- Saxons youths whom I now saw gathered near me, there was not a single one of noble ancestry, nor of proud and haughty name; and certainly, so far from having been selected to flatter the pride and add to the pomp of a despot, they had been taken indiscriminately from a mass of ardent aspirants for military glory, and sent on their country's service to a remote and unhealthy colony. Nevertheless, they were such as their country might be proud of, for gallant boys they looked, ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... Hormayer, "Plutarch," vol. xii., p. 271.] The Empress of Russia dares do any thing; for she knows how to take things easily, and believes in her own foresight. Despots are grasping, and Catharine is a great despot. We must make haste to secure her good-will, that when the time comes we may all ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... it could not well be worse. The rulers fully understand that they are under no obligation to the people for the power they exercise, nor for the submission which it commands. The despotism which prevails is unmodified even by the hereditary despot's natural desire to secure the throne to his descendants by cultivating the good will of his people. The Pope is nominally sovereign, and all regard him as personally a pure and good man; but he exerts no actual power in the State, his time ...
— Glances at Europe - In a Series of Letters from Great Britain, France, Italy, - Switzerland, &c. During the Summer of 1851. • Horace Greeley
... Marathon and Salamis. In the Persians he has, in an indirect manner, sung the triumph which he contributed to obtain, while he paints the downfall of the Persian ascendancy, and the ignominious return of the despot, with difficulty escaping with his life, to his royal residence. The battle of Salamis he describes in the most vivid and glowing colours. Through the whole of this piece, and the Seven before Thebes, there gushes forth a warlike vein; the personal inclination of the poet for a soldier's life, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... where he perished in exile from his subjects and family after ten months' miserable endurance of the hardships wrongfully imposed on him, almost causes a feeling of exultation at the downfall of a despot, who, aiming at the sovereignty of the world, scrupled not to sacrifice virtue and good faith at the shrine of ambition. The fate of both chiefs was similar, for both perished in captivity—the one the victim, perhaps, of inordinate ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... people not only legislate, but, when in a state of irritation or excitement, they defy even legislation, that they are not to be compared to restricted sovereigns, but to despots, whose will and caprice are law. The vices of the court of a despot are, therefore, practised upon the people; for the people become as it were the court, to whom those in authority, or those who would be in authority, submissively bend the knee. A despot is not likely ever to hear the truth, for moral courage fails ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... man alive May yet be studious of his nails; What boots it with the age to strive? Custom the despot soon prevails. A new Kaverine Eugene mine, Dreading the world's remarks malign, Was that which we are wont to call A fop, in dress pedantical. Three mortal hours per diem he Would loiter by the looking-glass, And from his dressing-room would pass Like Venus when, capriciously, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... for the grievous humiliation and distress of his generous friends. That he had not brought them to utter ruin seemed to have been owing to no want of resolute purpose on his part to advance himself as the congenial instrument of a despot. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... may 'crystallize into a military despotism.' Would supplies be granted by Congress; or, if granted, would not the people of a country which has sprung to arms only to defend a free government, be strong enough to resist any single military despot? Let the history of the present rebellion, in which a population of only eight millions, and that in the least defensible States of the Union, has resisted for nearly three years the combined power of all ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... companies stationed at Fort Laramie ruled with an absolute authority. They were as potent in their sway as the veriest despot, for they had no one to dispute their right to lord it over all. The nearest army outposts were seven hundred miles to the east, and, like the viceroys of Spain after the conquest of Mexico, they were ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the significance of the reference to tribute and he admired the clever diplomacy of Teuxical while, at the same time, he wondered if the earth and all of those who dwelt upon it were doomed to fall under the sway of some remote and unseen despot. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... the most thoroughly detested, the most hated man in Bartlesville. And those who hated feared him as they hated and feared the incendiary, the creeping thief, the midnight assassin; for he used their methods to attain his ends, along with a despot's power. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... reflected disgrace on those who got it up, and those who consented to be honoured by it. Even if the Howes had been uniformly victorious and had finished the war by brilliant exploits, the pageantry was of such a nature as would have been better fitted for some inglorious Eastern despot; how much more then was it misplaced when all the work they had been commissioned to execute was left undone. The enemy had still the sword in their hands, and were daily increasing in courage, in skill, in strength, and in numbers. Such was the state of America when Sir William Howe returned ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... yet now she would have given vast sums could she have seen her antechamber full again. She knew that Friedrich Wilhelm's visit would terminate on the morning following the wild-boar sticking in the Kernen forest. Would he go, this rough, virtue-loving despot? She remembered how he had tarried four whole weeks at Dresden when he had paid a visit to Augustus the Strong some years before. And this in spite of his disapproval of the reigning favourite, the Countess Orzelska, and the many lesser stars of that licentious court. Good ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... a proof you give How oft you've heard me say, I would not even his empress live Who idles life away, Without one effort for the land In which my fathers' graves Were hollowed by a despot hand To darkly ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the most exquisite building ever erected by the hands of man, and is a romance as deftly wrought in marble as any writer ever fashioned in words. It marks a great man's love for a woman—Arjamand Banu Begum, his wife. Shah Jahan was a Mohammedan despot who led a magnificent life, and had other wives; but in his eyes the peer of her sex was Arjamand. When she died in giving birth to a child, he declared he would rear to her memory a mausoleum so perfect that it would make men marvel for all time. And this he accomplished. More poetry and prose ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... made one effort to please him, once concealed a dislike, once affected a preference, the spell might have been broken. Had she been his slave, he might have become a very unyielding or a very heedless despot. Making him her slave, she kept him at the very height of bliss. This king of railways and purchaser of statesmen, this man who made or wrecked the fortunes of others by his whim, was absolutely governed by a reckless, passionate, ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Chaldeans, themselves so famous for it. The inspired Jew had divined a dream or vision which puzzled 'the magicians, and the astrologers, and the sorcerers, and the Chaldeans,' and immediately was rewarded with the greatest gift at the disposal of a capricious despot. Most of the apologetic writers on witchcraft, in particular the authors of the 'Malleus Maleficarum,' accept the assertion of the author of the history of Daniel that Nebuchadnezzar was 'driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen,' in its apparent sense, expounding ...
— The Superstitions of Witchcraft • Howard Williams
... provokingly calm. General Cushing, infringing the patent-right of the late Mr. James, the novelist, has seen a solitary horseman on the edge of the horizon. The exegesis of the vision has been various, some thinking that it means a Military Despot,—though in that case the force of cavalry would seem to be inadequate,—and others the Pony Express. If it had been one rider on two horses, the application would have been more general and less obscure. In fact, the old cry of Disunion has lost its ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... corner-stone, and in her first address as president she said: "I have often thought that to the successful teacher the words must be full of hope and promise, which a great writer uses of education: 'It is a companion which no misfortune can distress, no crime destroy, no enemy alienate, no despot enslave; at home a friend, abroad an introduction; in solitude a solace, in society an ornament. It chastens vice, it guides virtue, it adds a grace to genius. Without it what is man?'—and I would add with emphasis, Without an education, ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... continent. Its interests lay in the east. It began to forget its western origin. Gradually the Roman language was given up for the Greek. The Roman alphabet was discarded and Roman law was written in Greek characters and explained by Greek judges. The Emperor became an Asiatic despot, worshipped as the god-like kings of Thebes had been worshipped in the valley of the Nile, three thousand years before. When missionaries of the Byzantine church looked for fresh fields of activity, they went eastward and carried the civilisation of Byzantium into ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... gory shroud To tyrants, and the slaves that yield' Eternal honor calls aloud For courage in the battle-field. Who loves or fears a conquered land That bows beneath the despot's hand? ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... only from the idea of a work to be accomplished ... Both the Fuehrer and his following are subject to the idea which they serve; both are of the same substance, the same spirit, and the same blood. The despot knows only subjects whom he uses or, at best, for whom he cares. But the first consideration of the Fuehrer is not his own advantage nor even, at bottom, the welfare of the people, but only service to the mission, the idea, and the ...
— Readings on Fascism and National Socialism • Various
... satisfied with all you tell me about my friend. My intention is certainly to see her again, if I am able; but I am too old to lay plans, especially when it depends on the despot gout to register or cancel them. It is even melancholy to see her, when it will probably be but once more; and still more melancholy, when we ought to say to one another, in a different sense from the common, au revoir! ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... me. Abjectly I take my key, and creep off up stairs after the call-boy, and try to give myself the genteel air of one who has not been stepped upon. But I think homicidal things all the same, and I rejoice that in the safety of print I can cry out against the despot, whom I have not the presence to defy. "You vulgar and cruel little soul," I say, and I imagine myself breathing the words to his teeth, "why do you treat a weary stranger with this ignominy? I am to pay well for what I get, and I shall not ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... They only know that one is free; but on this very account, the freedom of that one is only caprice; ferocity—brutal recklessness of passion, or a mildness and tameness of the desires, which is itself only an accident of nature—is mere caprice like the former. That one is therefore only a despot, not a free man. The consciousness of freedom first arose among the Greeks, and therefore they were free; but they, and the Romans likewise, knew only that some are free, not man as such. Even Plato and Aristotle did not know this. The Greeks, therefore, had ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... not then call your Frederick a despot?" whispered the English traveller to the young Pole, as they entered the china-works at Berlin. "This is a promising manufactory, no doubt," continued he; "and Dresden china will probably soon be called Berlin china, by which the world in general will certainly be much benefited. But in the meantime ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... the Blue Star despot presently, "all I've got to say to you, Mike Murphy, is that you're certainly a hell of a seaman to stand idly by and see that young Joey do me up like this. Give ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... sure, but it is part of the past. While South Africa still wrestles with a serious native problem, Rhodesia has settled it once and for all. It would be impossible to find a milder lot than the survivors and sons of the cruel and war-like Lobengula who once ruled here like a despot of old. His tribesmen—the Matabeles—were put in their place by a strong hand and they ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... is called upon to look up, he can adore devoutly and ardently; but when it is his chance to look down on a fair head, he is, if not worse, a sentimental despot. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... absolute king than the King of a free people. Algernon Sydney, on the other hand, would gladly have aided France in all her ambitious schemes, and have seen England reduced to the condition of a province, in the wild hope that a foreign despot would assist him to establish his darling republic. The King took the money of France to assist him in the enterprise which he meditated against the liberty of his subjects, with as little scruple as Frederic of Prussia or Alexander of Russia accepted our subsidies ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... influence upon their political institutions. Conquest, which forces nations of different habits, characters, and languages into unity, is at last the parent of degrading servitude. These nations are only held together, as in the Roman empire, by the iron hand of military power. The despot, surrounded by a foreign soldiery, appears in the conquered provinces, simply to enforce tribute, and compel obedience to his arbitrary will. But the small Greek communities, protected by the barriers of their seas and gulfs and mountains, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... must give it up because, as a wise man once said many centuries before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people. ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... wearisome in time, besides involving heavier, more intolerable forms of bondage; although she did not perceive that Maxwell Davison's dislike to her being a slave was only a dislike to her being somebody else's slave. He was a despot at heart and had accustomed himself to a frank despotism over women. Mildred's power over him, the uncertainty of his power over her, maddened him. But Mildred did not know what love meant. At one time she had fancied her affection for ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... do with actual conscious gestures or expression. In the matter of these merely temporary movements, the man appeared to be rather worried and inquisitive, but he was inquisitive with the inquisitiveness of a despot and worried as with the responsibilities of a god. The men who lounged and wondered behind him followed partly with an astonishment at his brilliant uniform, that is to say, partly because of that instinct ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... course of time, grew to be very proud of her master, the despot of Power-house Gully. She revealed her pride every time she fell in with acquaintances on the way to church. In reply to an oft-repeated question as to why Mr. Fry did not go to church with her any longer, she invariably gave the supercilious reply that nowadays when ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... sufficed him to gain and to retain the affection of men in whose eyes he was not so much a prince, a feudal lord, as an indulgent and doting father. He was the ideal despot, a man of wide culture and simple tastes. "A smile," he used to say, "will sway the Universe." Simplicity he declared to be the keynote of his nature, the guiding motive of his governance. In exemplification whereof he would point to his method of collecting taxes—a marvel of simplicity. ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... is the despots' Despot. All must bide, Later or soon, the message of his might; Princes and potentates their heads must hide, Touched by the awful sigil of his right; Beside the Kaiser he at eve doth wait And pours a potion in his cup ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... board La Ralieuse shall wear the livery of a despot—one of those hateful things, a King. Bah!" The Captain and his second in command, having thus vented their rage and spite, ordered the men to carry off their prisoners. The Captain and the young officers were therefore again unceremoniously dragged out of the cabin and forced ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... is a violent, brutal barbarian, an upstart despot of the most intolerable and dangerous type, ugly, lazy, and disgusting in his personal habits. Yet ambassadors report him the ablest man in Russia, and the one who can do most with the still abler Empress Catherine II, who is not a ...
— Great Catherine • George Bernard Shaw
... Repudiates the Ten Commandments 19. Luther's Invisible Church 20. Luther on the God-given Supremacy of the Pope 21. Luther the Translator of the Bible 22. Luther a Preacher of Violence against the Hierarchy 23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One 24. Luther the Destroyer of Liberty of Conscience 25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage" 26. Luther an Advocate of Polygamy 27. Luther Announces His Death 28. Luther's View ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... looked pale and a little wearied, and I remembered I wished I did not know every change of her face as I did. It was a symptom that alarmed my selfishness—it galled me with the sense that I was no longer my own despot. ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... to one of equality,—if our forefathers had acted after this wild fashion, we should not only think that the Revolution they achieved was altogether unjustifiable, but we should blush at the thought of being descended from such despot-demagogues. This is a very feeble statement of the case which would connect the Revolt of the American Colonies with the Revolt of the American Liberticides; and Earl Russell is too well-informed a statesman not to know that his parallel ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... Baron was too much upset to answer his own question. Beauty is the greatest of human gifts for power. Every power that has no counterpoise, no autocratic control, leads to abuses and folly. Despotism is the madness of power; in women the despot ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... one of the survivors, with Egypt, China and India, of the infancy of mankind. It is at the mercy of the cruel despot of the North. With a lineage unrivalled for purity, a religious sentiment and ethics drawn out of the glory and greatness of Mount Sinai ... with an eternal influence from its law-givers, prophets, and psalmists never vouchsafed to any language, race or creed, It outlives the philosophies ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow
... a death-blow to the hopes of the English, for the bravery of the Americans appeared to be invincible; they were in truth fighting for Liberty, for themselves and their country, and not for any despot or any despotism. This fine spirit gained them a peace, which it may fairly be said they fought for, bled for, and ultimately obtained by conquest; and James Madison remained, in spite of all the threats of deposing him, President of the only free people upon the habitable globe. Thus, as I hope ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... happiness and fortune to their confederates, so was he soon distinguished and raised, step by step, to the rank of prime-minister of the kingdom; whilst I, neglected, despised, and unknown, remained stationary. The proud despot exerted his utmost to bring me over to his party by bribery and promise of place; but I saw that he only wished to make me thereby more deeply feel his power, and that he felt nothing more was wanting to complete his triumph than ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... here,' I says to Liverpool, 'you scum of a despot limited monarchy, and have another dose of Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr. Pendergast,' says I, 'said we were to observe the day in a befitting manner, and I'm not going to see ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... the people, had had 'the testimony' placed in his hands, and been anointed by the high-priest. So 'they made him king.' The three parts of the ceremony were all significant. The delivering of 'the testimony' (the Book of the Law—Deut. xvii 18, 19) taught him that he was no despot to rule by his own pleasure and for his own glory, but the viceroy of the true King of Judah, and himself subject to law. The people's making him king taught him and them that a true royalty rules over willing subjects, and both guarded the rights of the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Reville says, no one in France regretted the Batavian Republic when it was stricken from the roll of history by the will of a despot; or, rather, the Parisians, in their occasionally exaggerated infatuation, fancied that the Dutch would be overjoyed to have ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... distributing among a few the privileges and delights that are procured by the toil of the many, will seem just as wasteful, as morally hideous, and as scientifically indefensible, as that older system which impoverished and depopulated empires, in order that a despot or a caste might have no least wish ungratified, for which the lives or the hard-won treasure of others ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... lore, its 'mysteries,' and its social rights. The seamen, merchants, and artisans of the Netherlands had made their country the richest in Europe. They ranged the seas and learned the value of the land; and while they fed the great despot of the Middle Ages, the light of intelligence, born of energy and nurtured by activity, cast its benignant gleams from the central island of the Rhine, and drove from their mountain nooks the owls and bats of tyranny and superstition. They fought first, these lords of the soil, among themselves, ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... air of authority that swept away all opposition, and held, at times, even Aunt Patty McNab at arms' length. Yes, it must be confessed that the young lady was in the habit of queening it over the people; but they were perfectly willing to have it so, and both loved and were proud of their little despot. ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... blood. Trees and crops all trampled down: the country-side a miserable waste. No less revolting to all human feeling was the stretch of road which the people of Cremona had strewn with laurel-leaves and roses, erecting altars and sacrificing victims as if in honour of an Oriental despot.[384] The rejoicings of the moment soon turned to their destruction.[385] Valens and Caecina were in attendance and showed Vitellius over the battle-field: this was where their legions had charged: the cavalry took the field from here: this was where ...
— Tacitus: The Histories, Volumes I and II • Caius Cornelius Tacitus
... English gentleman was to be cooped up for an indefinite time, as it seemed, by order of the black despot who ruled over the Barolong ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... strongest prop of the throne. Logically the kings ought to say, 'I am king because I have the power, because I am supported by the army.' But no, senor, they prefer to continue the old farce and say, 'I, the king, by the grace of God.' The little tyrant cannot leave the lap of the greater despot; it is impossible to them to maintain themselves ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the British stage, Great Anarch! spread thy sable wings; Not fired with all the frantic rage, With which thou hurl'st thy darts at kings. As thou in native garb art seen, With scattered tresses, haggard mien, Sepulchral chains and hideous cry By despot ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... of the next. He regarded his daughter with the greatest respect, and left in her hands everything that he decently could. And, to do her justice, Jenny was a very benevolent, as well as capable, despot. In short, the Rector plays no great part in this drama beyond that of a discreet, and mostly silent, Greek chorus of unimpeachable character. He disapproved deeply, of course, of Frank's change of religion—but he disapproved with that same part of him ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... luxuriated in the summers of long ago. This potentate declared that he would rather lose all the rest of his vast and affluent empire than Kashmir. It furnished a place of refreshing retreat for his energies and his conscience, the load of the latter being fully up to the average of an Eastern despot's. By these lulling waters and under this embowering verdure he could shut out from the sight and memory such spectacles as that to which he had treated his rebellious son Khosrou—a long row of seven hundred of the latter's accomplices seated in solemn gravity, but not returning his salute ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... sought, his table is pounced upon by ladies with backgammon in the morning, by gentlemen with decks of cards at night. Always handsome, sunburnt, and with unaffected good-breeding, he is the king of his delicious realm, the beloved despot of his domain. We have left ourselves, in sketching the general character, no space to descend to particulars on Mr. Dailey; but he was all the time before us as a sitter when we made the portrait. A stroll with him around ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... iron-heeled despot was least of all suited to Curly or desired by him, but having momentarily adopted it, he had to continue it. He dared not take the frown from his face for a moment; intimidation ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... been open to Louis for his wars. There was a total population at this juncture (1712) of three hundred and eighty souls, about one half of whom were "in the king's pay." Crozat, the king's deputy despot, finds no better fortune than the king, and soon (1717) resigns his charter, to be succeeded in his anxieties and privileges by that famous Scotch adventurer John Law, who organized the Mississippi Company in order to enjoy the varied monopolies assembled in its charter—monopolies which would ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... and more alarming, when the poor lady started with a little scream at a noise behind her, and turning round, saw her maid, severe as a pursuing Fate, standing at the door. "After giving me your word as you wouldn't come no more?" said the reproachful despot who swayed Miss Dora's soul. After that she had to make the best of her way indoors, thankful not to be carried to her room and put into hot water, which was the original intention of Collins. But it would be ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... the heavy hand, and his The service of the despot blade; His the soft answer that ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... play enslaved the mind Where erst no common chains confined? Has tender dalliance power to kill The wild, indomitable will? No more must love thus paralyze And crush thine iron energies; No more must maudlin passion stay Thy despot soul's remorseless sway; Henceforth thy lips shall cease to smile Upon the beauties of this Isle; Henceforth thy mental glance shall roam, O'er the Mediterranean foam, Toward thy far-off Tuscan home! Alarms for young Francisco's weal, And doubts into thy breast steal; While retrospection ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... put through. If Eudemius had changed, Marius was changing also. For no man can look on power well-nigh as limitless as any man below a sovereign may wield, knowing that power between his own hands for good or ill, and not become either a despot or a chastened man. And there comes a moment in the transition when it is doubtful which role will fit. Marius, in the natural course of events, had reached this stage. He was sobered at the prospect opening before him; withal his ambition ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... he didn't wait long enough. He was too impatient. But don't you fret. I have come to Yankeedom to make my fortune. The despot's heel is on your shore, and it means to remain there until he hears of something greatly ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... beautifully. And these are not the only gloomy thoughts which this spectacle gives me. Look there! over yonder at the other end of the street they are unveiling a monument to Friedrich Wilhelm III., and the festival of victory is spoiled by homage paid to a despot who during twenty-seven years never redeemed his pledge to give the people a constitution. I am forty-eight years old, and yet I have not forgotten my youthful ideas. My generation looked forward to a united as well as to a free Germany, ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... With death and danger, heaven and earth and sea; When men's belief grows wild, seeing alone The dreadful black abominable sin, Forgetful that the light still shines beyond; And doubting last the very truth of God, They hate their fellow creatures and themselves; Groaning beneath a Despot, who thinks less Of precious human blood, than shipwrights count Of water in the dock, so many feet Will bear so many tons, if it but aid One little step his brutalising aims, Who as an armed thief sacks his ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... fresh gathered from the trees and vines.—Old Morelli was by no means ambitious of this honor; he was too firm a friend to his degraded, but still redeemable country, to desire any intimacy with the military myrmidons of her Austrian despot; so that, notwithstanding the grave and correct moral deportment which is said to be the general characteristic of the Austrian officers, and of which he was aware, he saw their approach to his humble dwelling with a vague feeling ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... by informing his hearers that the despot who had brought Russia to the brink of ruin would either abdicate of his free will, or be deposed. He added that the Grand Duke Michael would be ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... artfully put, soon elicited from the savage the information that the travellers were now in the country belonging to M'Bongwele, a fierce, cruel, and jealous despot, so suspicious of foreigners that the most stringent orders were in force to allow none such to cross his borders upon any pretence whatever. This king had been duly apprised, through the medium of the curious voice-telegraphic mode of communication already described, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... aspirations, acquisitions, in his virtues, in his vices; perhaps more French than any other man;—and intrinsically such a mass of manhood too. Mark him well. The National Assembly were all different without that one; nay, he might say with the old Despot: "The National Assembly? I ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... wretch!" Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed, "what a wicked old despot you were, in your day! How we all bowed down before you! 'Maggie,' she used to say, 'if it hadn't been for me, where would you be now?' And it was true; she brought them together, you know. She said to my father, 'Marry her,' and he did; and she ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... attractions. Impressionable and easily led, they become, according to the surroundings which hold them and the destiny which urges them, heroines or saints, courtesans or nuns, but invariably martyrs of that blind despot, their heart. ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... Cyrus the Persian rose up and made himself master of the Medes and Persians, and Croesus, fearing his power, was fain to go up against him, being deceived by an oracle; but first he sought to make alliance with the chief of the states of Hellas. In those days, Pisistratus was despot of Athens; but Sparta was mighty, by the laws of Lycurgus. Therefore Croesus sent envoys to the Spartans to make alliance with them, which was done very willingly. But when Croesus went up against Cyrus, his army was put to flight, and Cyrus besieged him in the city of Sardis, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... after his return to Italy, he was engaged by Napoleon as chapel-master; for that despot ruled the art and literature of his times as autocratically as their politics. Though Paisiello did not wish to obey the mandate, to refuse was ruin. The French ruler had already shown his favor by giving him the preference over Cherubim in several important musical contests, for ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... that egotism, which all superiority, mental or worldly, is apt to inspire, Justice, the father of all the more solid virtues, softened by Charity, which is their loving mother. Thus accompanied, knowledge, indeed, becomes the magnificent crown of humanity—not the imperious despot, but the checked and tempered sovereign ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... and somnolent—Anne Charteris and Rudolph Musgrave sat upon the lawn before Matocton, and little Roger Musgrave was with them. In fact, these two had been high-handedly press-ganged by this small despot to serve against an enemy then harassing his majesty's equanimity and by him, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... compelled to buy in order to secure his downfall. His great gifts as a lawgiver and statesman are little known or spoken of. Nelson's views of him were of a rigid, stereotyped character. He only varied in his wild manner of describing him as a loathsome despot, whose sole aim was to make war everywhere and to invade England ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... it? To this point he charged himself lightly—as men will in justifying themselves before the finger of an hoary accusation. Gessner cared neither for God nor man. His only daughter had been at once his divinity and his religion. Let men call him a rogue, despot, or thief, and he would shrug his shoulders and glance aside at his profit and loss account. But let them call him "fool" and the end of his days surely was ...
— Aladdin of London - or Lodestar • Sir Max Pemberton
... her deserted halls The fire on Freedom's shrine is dead, Tho' o'er her darkened, crumbling walls, Stern Desolation's pall is spread; Is not the second better part, To that which rends the despot's chain, To wear it with a dauntless heart, To feel yet shrink not ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... as they remained complaisant, and violent and implacable to all who thwarted him.—His uncontrollable temper alienated him from nearly all his family in his latter years. In private life he was an immovable despot." ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... manner was wistful and deprecating even to pathos, and I longed for one burst of passion, one evidence of self-will, to prove to myself that I, like others he had been recently thrown with, was not the meanest of all created creatures—a baby's despot! ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... the order received from Rome that 300 clerks of Roman families should be "provided" to benefices in England in order that Gregory might obtain the support of their relatives against Frederick. Both as feudal suzerain and as spiritual despot, the pope lorded it over England as fully ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout
... dominion of Rome, occupy the Free Cities and conquer us Helvetians. Rouse Linden; rouse your neighbors to action. He is a fool who builds upon the friendship of a tyrant. Long ago Demosthenes observed, that nothing is so hated by such a despot, as the freedom of the cities." Ever since the Marburg Conference, his connection with the Landgrave Philip was very intimate. Their correspondence, relating more to politics than to articles of faith, was carried on partly by signs mutually agreed upon, the name Pharoah being used ...
— The Life and Times of Ulric Zwingli • Johann Hottinger
... came to him and said that he wished to become a Christian and would burn his idols. He proved himself to be sincere, for, as we have seen, he persuaded all his people to do likewise. I use the word "persuaded" advisedly, for, like all the other Feejee chiefs, Tararo was a despot, and might have commanded obedience to his wishes; but he entered so readily into the spirit of the new faith that he perceived at once the impropriety of using constraint in the propagation of it. He set the example, therefore; and that example ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... subdued. The first panic was over, but they were crazed by the fear that had gripped them for days; they believed that the ship was soon to sink beneath their feet; safety lay not more than a hundred yards away,—and it was being denied them by this heartless, unfeeling despot. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... he said heavily, seeming to sink more deeply into his chair. "Very clever." He shifted his eyes to the women who stood about him. "You may go," he said indifferently. His tone was exactly that of a despot dismissing his slaves. Two of them colored with instinctive resentment. His eyes lingered an instant on the third. Her face had showed only a passionate relief. "You, Senhora," he ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... truth, unlimited, Nothing kept back. For when a man is blind To starlight, will he see the rose is red? A bondsman shivering at a Jesuit's foot— "Vae! mea culpa!"—is not like to stand A freedman at a despot's and dispute His titles by the balance in his hand, Weighing them "suo jure." Tend the root If careful of the branches, and expand The inner souls of men before you ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... men exert themselves to restrain this corresponding right of their fellow men? Not by going to the magistrate to inform, or to the spiritual despot to obtain ecclesiastical penalties, but he resorts to methods, which, if successful, are in effect the most severe pains and penalties that can restrain ...
— An Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism - With reference to the duty of American females • Catharine E. Beecher
... thereby expressing the idea of a free and equal civitas, which is to be convinced, not forced, and to be governed by magistrates chosen by itself, and not by a despotic ruler. The word importunus properly characterises the rudeness and unbearableness of a despot or tyrant. [19] 'Even if you have the power, and intend to punish actual crimes in the state'—whereby Sallust intimates that a tyrannical government may actually introduce improvements, as history proves to have been the case at all times. The subjunctive is used with quamquam, because the ...
— De Bello Catilinario et Jugurthino • Caius Sallustii Crispi (Sallustius)
... sixty chiefs of the Pawri Desh, the Bhuiya Highlands. A knotted string passed from village to village in the name of the sixty chiefs throws the entire country into commotion, and the order verbally communicated in connection with it is as implicitly obeyed as if it emanated from the most potent despot." This knotted string is known as Ganthi. The Pabudias say that their ancestors were twelve brothers belonging to Keonjhar, of whom eight went to an unknown country, while the remaining four divided among themselves all the territory of which they had knowledge, this being ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... should be betrayed," said Brissot, "because then we shall destroy the traitors." And Vergniaud, whose dignity and elevation of language have made him a classic, pointed to the Tuileries and said, "Terror has too often issued from that palace in the name of a despot. Let it enter, to-day, in the name of the law." They suspected, and suspected truly, that the menacing note from Vienna was inspired at Paris. They formed a new ministry, with Dumouriez at the Foreign Office. Dumouriez gave Austria a fixed term to renounce its policy of coercing ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... part, accustomed to descend at will into the plains that lay between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and to enrich themselves by frequent raids, could not make up their minds to change the habits of centuries, until they had at least crossed swords with the new despot, and put his mettle to the test. The Ninevite King of Babylon was thus in duty bound to protect his subjects against the same enemies that had ceaselessly harassed his native-born predecessors, and as the unaided resources of Karduniash no longer enabled him ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Blue Ridge in 1712. Jefferson's daring consummation of the purchase without government authority showed his community of purpose with the majority of the people. Peter the Great's location of his capital at St. Petersburg, usually stigmatized as the act of a despot, was made in response to natural conditions offering access to the Baltic nations, just as certainly as ten centuries before similar conditions and identical advantages led the early Russian merchants to build ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... all who travel in America are subjected is the brushing atrocity. Twenty minutes before a train arrives at its destination, the despot who has taken no notice of any one up to this moment, except to snub them, becomes suspiciously attentive and insists on brushing everybody. The dirt one traveller has been accumulating is sent in clouds into the faces of his neighbors. When he is polished off and ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... Oscar to hear. He had been accustomed to have his own way pretty much, and had been used to order round his father's servants and slaves like a little despot. The idea of being told by a boy who had to work for a living that he did not talk like a gentleman, did not suit him at all. His black eyes flashed and he clenched ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... has warned—now it will destroy. The day of judgment is at hand. The battleship Maryland is at anchor in the Hudson River at New York. No more shall it be the weapon of a despot government. It will be destroyed at twelve ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... whom dastard fears abash, He was born to be a slave— Let him feel the despot's lash, And sink inglorious to the grave. ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... sovereign, monarch, president, king, potentate, dynast, lord, satrap, rajah, emir, caliph, burgrave, procurator, Pharaoh, interregent, despot, regent, dominator, arbiter, viceroy, vicegerent, autocrat, oligarch, liege lord, protector, kaiser, czar, dey, doge, mogul, pasha, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... orders thundered out by a red-faced young man of desperate aspect, the word MARCH coming each time with a punch that hit you over the heart. This red-faced young man was the very incarnation of the military despot as Jimmie had pictured him; watching with hawk-like eye, scolding, pounding, driving, with no slightest regard for the feelings of the slaves he commanded, or for any of ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... to protect you, for, had he seen the familiarity of that despot yesterday, he would in all probability have lost ...
— Prince Eugene and His Times • L. Muhlbach
... enough,—the money,— When the weather's fierce and blue And the blankets of its comfort Come and warm the heart of you! But it soon demands the minutes Every hour and day and week, With the gall of angry despot And a most unmeasured cheek; So I'm reconciled to leave it and its tyrannies resign For the ways of love and laughter with the baby's hand ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... with an hereditary descent in his family. At each successive revolution the people were courted—were flattered—were promised transcendent felicity. The people swore eternal hatred to Monarchy, and eternal fidelity to Constitutions, till, heaven, weary of their perjuries, sent them a despot in ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... "God," which has always meant such a being, should be dropped. I would have no objection to the current use of the word "God" if that use were harmless, but it is very far from that. It is a word that every despot conjures with to keep the people in ignorance and subjection. It is a word that crafty politicians use in carrying out their schemes of ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... age remember that it was a young Austrian general, and a good soldier too, who showed a most extraordinary want of energy in 1809, immediately after the French under Napoleon had met with the greatest reverse which their arms had then experienced since Bonaparte had been spoiled into a despot. Prince Schwartzenberg, who had nominal command of the Allied Armies in 1813-14, was of the same age as the Archduke Charles, but it would be absurd to call him a great soldier. He was a brave man, and he had seen considerable service; but as a general ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various
... understand the essential aim of society, and then urge it forward, and at the same time keep it well in hand on the roads that lead thereto, and such a man will soon seize and exercise the personal power almost of a despot, and people will not only make him welcome, but even celebrate his praises, for they do not quit the substance for the shadow, or sacrifice the end to the means. Such was the empire of Charlemagne. Among annalists ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... even more desperate than before," exclaimed Li-loe. "Know now that the repulsive-featured despot who has just left us is Ming-shu, he who takes down the Mandarin Shan Tien's spoken word. By admitting that you are from Loo-chow, where disaffection reigns, you have noosed a rope about your neck, and by proclaiming yourself as one whose habit it is to call together a company to listen to your ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... shock Of rational discussion, that a man, Compounded and made up like other men Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust And folly in as ample measure meet, As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules, Should be a despot absolute, and boast Himself the only freeman of his land? Should when he pleases, and on whom he will, Wage war, with any or with no pretence Of provocation given, or wrong sustained, And force the beggarly last doit, ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper
... nothing. The patricians were still the kings who ruled them. And among no people can there be liberty where slavery exists—liberty, I mean, properly so called. He who holds slaves cannot, in the nature of things, be a republican; but, in the nature of things, he is on the other hand a despot. I am one. And a nation of such individuals is an association of despots for despotic purposes, and nothing else nor better. Liberty in their mouths is a profanation of the sacred name. It signifies nothing but their liberty to reign. I confess, it is to those who happen to be the kings a very ...
— Aurelian - or, Rome in the Third Century • William Ware
... land that they remember the place of their nativity. Miscreants would they be if, while they have some of their windows open to take in the free air of America and the sunlight of an atmosphere which no kingly despot has ever breathed, they forgot sometime to open the ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... of policy may have combined with the designs of pleasure. In all ages the despot has sought to blind and dazzle the people by a display of power and magnificence; and the princes and nobles around, from distant provinces, have swelled the retinue ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... days of his power was that of a despot. He was doing great things for ministers, and took care that they should know it. He was proud of his self-assertion, proud of being rude. Great men, and great ladies too, who wished for his acquaintance, had to make the first advances. He caused ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis
... Best Polity."—Every student who has access to Mills' Representative Government should read the chapter with the heading at the beginning of this paragraph. He combats the proposition, "if a good despot could be insured, despotic monarchy would be the best form of government." Granting that much good might be done, he shows that the very passivity of the people must result in deterioration, "that is, if the nation had ever attained ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... anti-Semitic spirit was fully developed. One of Antiochus's chief ambitions was also to hellenize all his subjects, and the Jews alone offered opposition to the realization of this ambition. Hence they could expect no mercy at the hands of this selfish, capricious despot. ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... in motion by His touch. His death, says this text, redeems us from iniquity and purifies us. That points to its power in delivering us from the service and practice of sin. He buys us from the despot whose slaves we were, and makes us His own in the hatred of evil and the doing of righteousness. Moved by His death, we become capable of heroisms and martyrdoms of devotion to Him. Brethren, it is ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... false and sensuous claimant, and asserts his divine birthright of wholeness [holiness] the body as a correspondence falls into line and gradually expresses health on its own plane. Normally and logically, that which is higher should rule the lower. The body, instead of being the unrelenting despot, then becomes the docile and useful servant. In its subordinate position, where it rightfully belongs, it grows beautiful and harmonious. Men live mainly in their bodily sensations. Such living, though apparently real, is a false sense of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... religion, ethics, and constitutional government, any counterfeit could impose on them. Any atheist could pass himself off on them as a bishop, any anarchist as a judge, any despot as a Whig, any sentimental socialist as a Tory, any philtre-monger or witch-finder as a man of science, any phrase-maker as a statesman. Those who did not believe the story of Jonah and the great fish were all the readier to believe that metals can be transmuted and all diseases ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... victims and the savage yells of the trampling dastards?—yells which rang in triumph over women and babes and weaponless men! And shall there be no vengeance? Yes, it shall fall, not upon the tools, but the master; not upon the slaves, but the despot. Yet," said he, suddenly pausing, as his voice sank into a whisper, "assassination!—in another hour perhaps; a deed irrevocable; a seal set upon two souls,—the victim's and the judge's! Fetters and the felon's cord before me! the shouting mob! the stigma!—no, no, it will not be the ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... however were clouded by the intrigues of his court, by treason and conspiracies, in consequence of which his sons, favorites with the people on account of their accomplishments and their Asmonean blood, were executed by the suspicious and savage despot. Antipater, another son, by his first wife, whom he had chosen as his successor, conspired against his life, and the proof of his guilt was so clear that he also was summarily executed. In addition to ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... may be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step backward a thousand years because our present ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... please, and welcome; but while you are under my command you must obey my orders or else stand the chances of a court-martial. I don't think that the miners agree with you," the military despot continued, after a moment's consultation with the commissioner; "I desire that you take command of the escort which is about to start for Melbourne with the prisoners. You will lose not a moment, but report yourself ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... report himself by night, and received him without one word of commendation. Had his life been prolonged he would undoubtedly have perished, like so many of the best of the Roman aristocracy, by the despot's hands; but just before the unrestrained outbreak of tyranny, he suddenly died—"felix opportunitate mortis"—to be immortalized by the love and genius of his daughter's husband. And he left Britain, as it had never been before, truly ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... a flashing glance; something that gazes like the eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, association with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey, the despot going so far as even to tyrannize over the battle-field; faith in a star, blended with strategic science, heightening, but troubling it. Wellington was the Bareme of war, Napoleon was its Michelangelo, and this true genius was conquered by ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VII (of X)—Continental Europe I • Various
... that might have guided the people in their desire for power. As it was, the city became divided into classes, each anxious to gain power at the expense of others, the result being an oligarchy, continually a prey to schism, merely waiting for a despot to declare himself. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... dinner," the despot on the other side of the counter coldly replied, and his tone implied that he didn't think the great author would relish being disturbed by an individual who didn't even know the proper time to call. However, I produced my letter of introduction ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... to the oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to the hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count Vergennes to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but never could obtain his consent. The fact was that Count Vergennes was an aristocratical despot at home, and dreaded the example of the American Revolution in France, as certain other persons now dread the example of the French Revolution in England, and Mr. Burke's tribute of fear (for in this light his book must be considered) runs parallel with Count Vergennes' refusal. But to return ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... subjection and sorrows of our early years. She was not the favourite either of her father or mother. Her father was a man of a quick, impetuous disposition, subject to alternate fits of kindness and cruelty. In his family he was a despot, and his wife appears to have been the first, and most submissive of his subjects. The mother's partiality was fixed upon the eldest son, and her system of government relative to Mary, was characterized ...
— Memoirs of the Author of a Vindication of the Rights of Woman • William Godwin
... us only remember the late King THEBAW of Burma as a bloodthirsty and dissipated despot. It has been reserved for Sir JOHN REES to find a redeeming feature in his character. Among all his crimes, he never, it seems, prohibited the consumption of drink in his realm, though I fancy that his own ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... her beauty that she could not breathe without seeming to sigh; and her most ordinary poses used to throw me into the deepest ecstasies of admiration. Whenever I gazed at her I fully agreed with Monsieur de Lessay that Jupiter had once reigned as a despot-king over the mountainous regions of Thessaly, and that Orpheus had committed the imprudence of leaving the teaching of philosophy to the clergy. I am not now quite sure whether I was a coward or a hero when I accorded al this to the obstinate ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... powers. It is the same with all the powerful of to-day; it is the same, for instance, with the high-placed and high-paid official. Not only is the judge not judicial, but the arbiter is not even arbitrary. The arbiter decides, not by some gust of justice or injustice in his soul like the old despot dooming men under a tree, but by the permanent climate of the class to which he happens to belong. The ancient wig of the judge is often indistinguishable from the old wig of ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton |
