"Figurehead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was to be only the English party governing Ireland in the interests of England. It was the beginning of a government which led to the appointment of such a man as Primate Boulter, who simply ruled Ireland behind the Lord Lieutenant (who was but a figurehead) for and on behalf of the King of England's advisers. Irish institutions, Irish ideas, Irish traditions, the Irish Church, Irish schools, Irish language and literature, Irish trade, manufactures, commerce, agriculture—all were to be subordinated to England's needs and England's demands. At any ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... Griswold interrupted, shortly. "And, besides, you have told me yourself that Atherton is only a figurehead. Grierson's ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... Service KING ALBERT AT THE HEAD OF THE HEROIC SOLDIERS OF BELGIUM It is universally agreed that the Belgian monarch was no figurehead general but a real leader of his troops. It was these men, facing annihilation, who astonished the world by opposing the German military machine successfully enough to allow France to get her armies into shape and prevent the immediate taking ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... payed over with a black pitch-like substance. This gunwale is open at the stern, the ends not being connected, but the bow is closed by a raised end-board fancifully carved and painted in front of which a crest-like wooden ornament fits into a groove running along the beak. This figurehead, called tabura, is elaborately cut into various devices, painted red and white, and decorated with white egg-shells and feathers of the cassowary and bird of paradise. The bow and stern also are more or less profusely ornamented with these shells, which besides are strung about other parts ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... with his sledge-hammer, bringing to mind the rougher side of industry. In the left corner a woman with her spindle - a lamb standing near - recalls the making of textiles. Commerce occupies the right corner, holding the prow of a vessel with its figurehead. ...
— Palaces and Courts of the Exposition • Juliet James
... only child, and felt a secret pride in being in some indefinable way her protector. Buzzby philosophized about her, too, after a strange fashion. "You see," he would say to Fred, "it's not that her figurehead is cut altogether after a parfect pattern—by no means, for I've seen pictur's and statues that wos better—but she carries her head a little down, d'ye see, Master Fred? and there's where it is; that's the way I gauges the worth o' young women, jist accordin' as ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... the olden times the crocodiles used to speak to his people, warning them of danger, but that now they never speak, and he supposes that their silence is due to the fact that his people have intermarried with other tribes. The Long Patas frequently carve a crocodile's head as the figurehead for a war-canoe. ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... arrival of Amoagos, at the head of his miners, decided the question. The safety of his friend, the Duc de Christoval, was the reward of his interference. Between ourselves, the Emperor Iturbide, my master, is no more than a figurehead; the future of Mexico is entirely in the ...
— Vautrin • Honore de Balzac
... There was no division of powers in the new frame of government. Legislative, executive, and judicial powers were thrown together in true Bourbon fashion. Apparently it was Colbert's plan to make of the governor a distinguished figurehead, with large military powers but without paramount influence in civil affairs. The bishop was to have no civil jurisdiction, and the intendant was to be the director of details. The Council, according to the edict of 1663, was to be the real pivot of ...
— Crusaders of New France - A Chronicle of the Fleur-de-Lis in the Wilderness - Chronicles of America, Volume 4 • William Bennett Munro
... only embargo that I lay upon you is—haul off, and mind you don't let your figurehead go by the board. Meanwhile, here comes the boat. Now, Nigel, none o' your courtin' till everything is settled and the wind fair—dead aft my lad, and blowin' stiff. You and the hermit are goin' off ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... not. That's why some one who is simply a figurehead goes on taking all the credit for tricks turned by a smart fellow who is working for him. Now, if you lived in the dear old land of ready money, where the accident of birth doesn't give any man the right to sit on somebody ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade
... "extinguished" for "out-doo." At the beginning I have substituted "dummy" for "figure" because we are told that the figure is "put for" (that is, put instead of) Shakespeare. In modern English we frequently describe a chairman who is a mere dummy as a figurehead. Then "wit" in these lines means absolutely the same as "mind," which I have used in its place because I think it refers to the fact that upon the miniature of Bacon in his 18th year, which was painted by Hilliard in 1578, we read:—"Si tabula daretur digna animum mallem." This line ...
— Bacon is Shake-Speare • Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence
... to arrest Quilp at a dingy dwelling on a wharf in the river where he often slept with the object of terrifying his wife by his long absences. Here he had set up the battered figurehead of a wrecked ship and, imagining that its face resembled that of Kit whom he so fiendishly hated, he used to amuse himself by screwing gimlets into its breast, sticking forks into its eyes and beating it ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... 'Exonerated'. Bossard never even should have come to trial," the senator said. "He was a popular, buddy-buddy sort of guy who managed to get himself involved as an unwitting figurehead. Bossard simply wasn't—and isn't—very bright. But he was a friendly, outgoing, warm sort of man who was able to get elected through the auspices of the local city machine. Remember ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... that, sir. I'll show my figurehead there first thing in the mornin'. No fears o' any one getting theer afore me, if they've not ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... was by an idea both pregnant and ingenious, naturally bethought himself that if the enterprise failed, the blame must fall upon somebody. For which reason, it occurred to him to put forward a figurehead director in charge of his commercial machinery. At this day you know the secret of the firm of Claparon and Company, founded by du Tillet, one ...
— The Firm of Nucingen • Honore de Balzac
... truth, for Frank's suggestion. The old schooner whose name they now discerned in faded gilt as "Molly M," seemed like a ghost of other days. Her outthrust bow, her up-cocked stern and the figurehead of a simpering woman that might have been mermaid originally but was now so worn as to make it almost impossible to tell the original intent, was, indeed, suggestive of galleons of ancient days. This figurehead jutted out beneath ...
— The Radio Boys with the Revenue Guards • Gerald Breckenridge
... to the teachings of their forefathers, sailed for the New World with the image of St. Nicholas for a figurehead on their vessel. They named the first church they built for the much-loved St. Nicholas and made him patron saint of the new city on Manhattan Island. Thanks, many many thanks, to these sturdy old Dutchmen with unpronounceable names who preserved to posterity so many delightful ...
— Yule-Tide in Many Lands • Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann
... streets.[10] Scarce one of the famous cities succeeded in retaining its republican form. Milan became a duchy. Florence fell under the sway of the Medici. In Venice a few rich families seized all authority, and while the fame and territory of the republic were extended, its dogeship became a mere figurehead. All real power was lodged in the dread and secret council of three.[11] Genoa was defeated and crushed in a great naval contest with her rival, Venice.[12] Everywhere tyrannies stood out triumphant. The first modern age of representative government was a failure. The cities ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... as if she had been explaining most fully. "You are the figurehead, the goddess of the machine. You will see that all goes right, and give Lord Wolfer his breakfast, and preside at the dinner when I'm ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... some time later they left the motor car in charge of Komatsu and went in to visit Shiba Temple in Shiba Park. These chapels are mostly the tombs of the Shoguns who for many years were powerful nobles and who really ruled Japan in place of the Emperor, a mere figurehead in those days. The magnificent tombs they built for themselves are now the very pride of Tokyo. Within the great red gates of the main temple, upheld with scarlet columns, wheeled flights of pigeons quite tame. The girls bought packages of grain from ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... a bit of old parchment, concealed in a figurehead from a sunken vessel, comes into the possession of a pretty girl and an army man during regatta week in the Isle of Wight. This is the message and it enfolds a mystery, the development of which the reader will follow ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... to wait a while, colonel; Imperial pardons have to be by the Portfolio for the Interior. Your Sovereign is an impotent figurehead." ...
— The Unnecessary Man • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Persian, we had taken great pride in the modelling and finish of the old style of cutwater and figurehead, with bowsprit and jib-boom; but in urging the advantages of greater length of hull, we were met by the fact of its being simply impossible in certain docks to swing vessels of any greater length than those already constructed. Not to be beaten, we proposed to do away with all these ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... living person as the emblem of authority, the final dispenser of justice, the hard, analytical sifter of evidence, "coldly sublime, intolerably just." Gordon had always before looked on the Chief as a figurehead, who at times would unbend most surprisingly and become a man; on the cricket field, for example, when in a master's match he had fielded cleanly a terrific cut at point, and played a sporting innings; at House suppers, and, most surprisingly of all, ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... Orange easily countered this manoeuvre by arresting the duke and opening negotiations with Matthias, who signed the second Union of Brussels, on December 10, 1577, and guaranteed liberty of conscience. The young archduke was henceforth a mere figurehead and Orange remained the real ruler of ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts
... had been hospitalities at Temple Barholm such as it had not beheld during the last generation at least. T. Tembarom had looked on, an interested spectator, as these festivities had been adroitly arranged and managed for him. He had not, however, in the least resented acting as a sort of figurehead in the ...
— T. Tembarom • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... would carry one or two doubtful Northern states and with the solid South could thus be elected. The Whig convention in Baltimore had cast but thirty-two votes for Daniel Webster and had nominated a military figurehead, General Winfield Scott. ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... covered with rude yet characteristic figures. The high-peaked prows of their boats are ornamented with masses of open filagree work, cut out of solid blocks of wood, and often of very tasteful design, As a figurehead, or pinnacle, there is often a human figure, with a head of cassowary feathers to imitate the Papuan "mop." The floats of their fishing-lines, the wooden beaters used in tempering the clay for their pottery, their tobacco-boxes, and other ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... of vows of fidelity and exaltation of sentiment in the home cramps a man's ambitions. It is perfectly natural that he should take a wife if his position calls for it, because the society in which we move has made a figurehead of that kind necessary. But that a woman should expect a man to be faithful to her, be she wife or mistress, is contrary ...
— Halcyone • Elinor Glyn
... the top of the engine-house and watched the Roma dodging among the rocks like a frightened rabbit. Dickie Lang was poised in the bow like a figurehead, one foot resting on the rail. Her hair, jerked from her cap by the fingers of the dawn-wind, streamed out behind her in a shower of dull red gold. Her eyes were shining with the joy ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton |
