"Obsequious" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... changed from hand to hand—tipping was still in style. The obsequious steward gave him further directions for finding the games and recreational rooms, and other points of ...
— Man of Many Minds • E. Everett Evans
... Where winds the road along the secret bay; By rills that tumble down the woody steeps, And run in transport to the dimpling deeps; Along the "wild meand'ring shore" to view, Obsequious Grace ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth - Volume 1 of 8 • Edited by William Knight
... in their own houses—who speak their will by a nod, and lay down the law by the motion of their eyebrow—and who attach prodigious ideas of dignity to frightening their children, and being worshipped by their wives, till you see one of these wiseacres looking as if he thought himself and his obsequious helpmate were exact personifications of Adam and Eve—' he for God only, she for God in him.' Now I am much afraid, Mary, with all your sanctity, you are in some danger of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... afternoon Noreen caught sight of Chunerbutty talking to a fat and sensual-looking native in white linen garments with a string of roughly-cut but very large diamonds round his neck and several obsequious satellites standing behind him. They were covertly watching her, but when, catching the engineer's eye, she bowed to him, the fat man leant forward and stared boldly at her. She guessed him to be the Rajah of Lalpuri, who had been pointed ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... were young, raw, and English, almost smiled. A Premier dependent on one pony! Jackson redoubled his obsequious attention. ...
— Half a Hero - A Novel • Anthony Hope
... and spoke to Him, yet never heard His voice. For penitent sinners, weeping women, prattling children, for the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the rabbis, for the perjured high priest and his obsequious and insolent underling, and for Pilate the pagan, Christ had words—of comfort or instruction, of warning or rebuke, of protest or denunciation—yet for Herod the fox He had but disdainful and kingly silence. Thoroughly piqued, Herod turned from insulting questions to acts of malignant derision. ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... to perfect her being, sharing her pleasures, lessening her woes, consoling her heart. Still, there was one office that he had failed to perform; he was not obsequious. Not that he was ever wanting in attention and deferential courtesy, or that he ever failed to betray a warmth of feeling or a generous devotion; but his manner was prosaic, thoroughly practical both in action and in expression. He spoke his thoughts directly and forcibly. He ...
— The Loyalist - A Story of the American Revolution • James Francis Barrett
... occasionally at Claybrook and sometimes at Mary Louise in a far-off, absent-minded way. And then they would ask each other whose deal it was and "How were the honours?" and then they would be at it again. Claybrook laughed at the slightest provocation, and seemed to pay a little too obsequious attention to whatever Thompson had to say, and after a while the conversation narrowed down entirely to the two men, with Mrs. Thompson contracting a glassy look in her pale-blue eyes beneath their fine-plucked brows. And at ten o'clock she stifled a yawn behind her handkerchief, ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... who had pouted sufficiently (and who whenever a stranger appeared began, from infancy almost, to play off little graces to catch his attention), her brother being now gone to bed, was for taking her place upon Esmond's knee: for, though the doctor was very obsequious to her, she did not like him, because he had thick boots and dirty hands (the pert young miss said), and because ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... without any enthusiasm for the religion she intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her father's, more political than religious. The point she made was that there must be religious uniformity, and conformity ...
— The Evolution of an Empire • Mary Parmele
... exception of Tchebu Lama, was the only Bhoteea about the Durbar who could speak Hindostanee, and who did it very imperfectly: he was our attendant and spy, the most barefaced liar I ever met with, even in the east; and as cringing and obsequious when alone with us, as he was to his masters on other occasions, when he never failed to show off his authority over us in an offensive manner. Though he was the most disagreeable fellow we were ever thrown in contact with, I do not think that he ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... double; Good Lord, good devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... though plentiful, was coarse; his liquors strong and bad; and more ale and whiskey were expended in his establishment than generous wine. He was loud and arrogant at his own table, and exacted a rich man's homage from his vulgar and obsequious guests. ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... distinguished himself so much at the siege of Maestricht, that Louis XIV. publicly thanked him at the head of his army, and promised him his powerful influence with Charles II. for future promotion. He little thought what a formidable enemy he was then fostering at the court of his obsequious brother sovereign. The result of Louis XIV.'s intercession was, that Churchill was made lieutenant-colonel; and he continued to serve with the English auxiliary force in Flanders, under the French generals, till 1677, when he returned with his regiment to London. Beyond ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... a lesson in the philosophy of intrigue, or the art of imposing on our fellow men. It is addressed to Bubb Dodington[127] as to an ambitious, obsequious, unscrupulous, and only partially successful courtier; and undertakes to show that, being (more or less) a knave, his conduct also proclaimed him a fool, and lost him the rewards of knavery. Mr. Browning does not concern himself with the moralities of the case; these, for the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... it must be Carrots, some say the Brick. The Colonel is produced, but is not at all near the thing. Whenever Mr. Snagsby and his conductors are stationary, the crowd flows round, and from its squalid depths obsequious advice heaves up to Mr. Bucket. Whenever they move, and the angry bull's-eyes glare, it fades away and flits about them up the alleys, and in the ruins, and behind ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... introduced into the complicated question of the succession one further complication, which several of his predecessors had tried to introduce in vain. The success of all, before him, had been at best only temporary. It took a Tudor will to do the deed, and it took an obsequious Tudor age to ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... few occasional deviations, a popular government, under the forms of despotism. At first sight, it may seem that the prerogatives of Elizabeth were not less ample than those of Lewis the Fourteenth, and her parliaments were as obsequious as his parliaments, that her warrant had as much authority as his lettre de cachet. The extravagance with which her courtiers eulogized her personal and mental charms went beyond the adulation of Boileau and Moliere. Lewis ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bitch that accompanied him. Whilst stopping to water his horse, he remarked how amorous the mongrel continued, and how courteous the setter seemed to her admirer. Provoked to see a creature of Dido's high blood so obsequious to such mean addresses, the doctor drew one of his pistols and shot the dog; he then had the bitch carried on horseback for several miles. From that day, however, she lost her appetite, ate little or nothing, had no inclination to go abroad with her master, or attend to ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... terrors by delay. In Europe the change will probably be wrought by revolution; in America it may be achieved by peaceful evolution if the moneyed aristocracy does not, with its checks and repressions—with its corrupted judiciary, purchased legislators and obsequious press—drive a people, already sorely vexed, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... gravitation. He is likewise protean. Banish him—he takes half a minute to change his visible form, and returns au galop. Sometimes he's an ugly little cacophonous brown sparrow; sometimes he's a splendid florid money-lender, or an aproned and obsequious greengrocer, or a trusted friend, hearty and familiar. But he 's always there; and he's always—if you don't mind the vernacular—'on ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... all that was left to be done was to rush through the voting in the Provinces. Obsequious officials returned to the use of the old Imperial phraseology and Yuan Shih-kai, even before his "election," was memorialized as though he were the legitimate successor of the immense line of Chinese sovereigns who stretch back to the mythical days of Yao and Shun (2800 B.C.). The ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
... meaning of all this. He must accept their flattery and become ridiculous, or he must appear to treat with contumely the Senate which offered it. The sinister purpose started occasionally into sight. One obsequious senator proposed that every woman in Rome should be at his disposition, and filthy libels against him were set floating under the surface. The object, he perfectly understood, "was to draw him into a position more and more invidious, that he might the sooner perish." [6] The praise and the ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... truckle-beds on the morrow of that mad day: fancy the Municipal inquiry, "How would your Majesty please to lodge?"—and then that the King's rough answer, "Each may lodge as he can, I am well enough," is congeed and bowed away, in expressive grins, by the Townhall Functionaries, with obsequious upholsterers at their back; and how the Chateau of the Tuileries is repainted, regarnished into a golden Royal Residence; and Lafayette with his blue National Guards lies encompassing it, as blue Neptune (in the language of poets) does ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbour, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestic tribulation; and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... knew; a man she had never seen, but whose shop he had once pointed out to her though he would not suffer her—and indeed she had no desire—to enter. This man—Rustam Karin—was a dealer in native charms and trinkets. The business was mainly conducted by a youth of obsequious and insincere demeanour called Hafiz. The latter she knew and instinctively disliked, but her feeling for the unknown master was one of more active aversion. In the depths of that dark native stall she pictured ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... is my maiden aunt, come over from the State of Maine to see your British institutions," Mr. Parmalee said, in fluent fiction, to the obsequious landlady. "She's writing a book, and she'll mention the Blue Bell favorably in it. Her name is Miss Hepzekiah Parmalee. Let her have your best bedroom and all the luxuries this hotel affords, and I will foot ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... a little distance from us, and stood there in a statuesque pose. To him entered Babemba crawling on his hands and knees, and other native gentlemen likewise crawling, also the burdened soldiers in as obsequious an attitude as their loads ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... trifles. Downward flies my lord, Nodding beside my lady in his carriage. Away! away! 'Fresh horses!' are the word, And changed as quickly as hearts after marriage; The obsequious landlord hath the change restored; The postboys have no reason to disparage Their fee; but ere the water'd wheels may hiss hence, The ostler pleads too ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... obsequious greetings of the landlord De Lacy gave only a short nod and ordered lodging for himself and men. Choosing a small table in the farthest corner and in the shadow of the big chimney, he slowly sipped his wine. There were eight others in the room, but ...
— Beatrix of Clare • John Reed Scott
... Mr. Dumont, I am extremely happy to serve you," replied Dalhousie, whose obsequious manners were ...
— Hatchie, the Guardian Slave; or, The Heiress of Bellevue • Warren T. Ashton
... of that kind, for me,—or I wouldn't mind paying an annual sum out of the profits of the trade for a reasonable term. If you've any influence with the young lady, perhaps you could put it to her, and get her to look at things in that light," Mr. Tulliver added, becoming quite obsequious as it dawned upon him that this interloping stranger might be able ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... His obsequious bearing was continued during the next week. In the busy hours of the day they seldom met, but they regularly encountered each other at meals, and these cheerful occasions began to have an interest for him quite irrespective of dishes and cups. When Anne entered and took her seat she was ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... my reception at Kilravock so different from the cold, obsequious, dancing-school bow of politeness, that it almost got into my head that friendship had occupied her ground without the intermediate march of acquaintance. I wish I could transcribe, or rather transfuse into language, the glow of my heart when ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... tribute to the piratical Dey, in consideration of his granting to American vessels the right of travel on the high seas. And when some slight delay occurred in making the first payment of tribute, the obsequious government presented the Barbary corsair with a frigate, to allay ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... Countess Rallowitz. Her meeting with the princess was most affectionate. There were tears, laughter and kisses. The whole atmosphere of the place suggested romance to the eager American girl. Downstairs were the royal guards; in the halls were attendants; all about were maidservants and obsequious lackeys, crowding the home of the kindly countess. At last, comfortable and free from the dust of travel, the two friends sat down ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... far from Covent Garden, with a narrow passage instead of a hall, and a long supper-room filled with tiny tables. They made their way gracefully to their own particular table at the end of the room, where they could converse unheard, and see all that was to be seen. An obsequious waiter—one of the restaurant race that has no native language—relieved them of their coats, and they sat down opposite to each other, mechanically touching their hair to feel if their hats had ...
— The Green Carnation • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Nestie, and Speug—Dunc Robertson after a brief course at Sandhurst having got his commission in his father's regiment. And it was also known that every halfpenny was going to give a big surprise to Bulldog, so the boys, during those weeks treated their fathers with obsequious respect for commercial reasons, and coaxed additional pennies out of their mothers on every false pretence, and paid endearing visits to maiden aunts, and passed Mrs. McWhae's shop, turning away their eyes and noses from vanity, and sold to grinding ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... incredible, but it is the truth. The joyful Micawber, whose very despair was exultant, and the desolate Dorrit, whose very pride was pitiful, were the same man. The valiant Micawber and the nervous, shaking Dorrit were the same man. The defiant Micawber and the snobbish, essentially obsequious Dorrit were the same man. I do not mean of course that either of the pictures was an exact copy of anybody. The whole Dickens genius consisted of taking hints and turning them into human beings. As he took twenty real persons and turned them into one ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... weeping turned From legends whispered by her Saxon nurse Of Loke, the Spirit accursed that slanders gods, And Sinna, Queen of Hell. The years went by; The last had brought King Oswy's embassage With suit obsequious, 'Let the princess share With me her father's crown.' To simple hearts Changes come gently. Soon, all trust, she stood Before God's altar with her destined lord: Adown her finger while the bride-ring ran So slid into her heart a true wife's love: Rooted in faith, it ripened day by day— ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere
... the most grievous straits, proved victorious over the man. But Hannibal was not supported as the French emperor was during the great part of his splendid career; no nation with forty millions of souls laid its youth at his feet; no obsequious senate voted him two millions of men in fifteen years; he did not march with the military strength of the half of Europe at his back. Alone, unaided, unbefriended, with the Roman legions in front, and the jealous Carthaginian senate in rear, without succour, reinforcements, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... people, and manifesting a show of chivalrous confidence which he was far from feeling. He was soon surrounded by courtiers, time-servers, noble office-seekers. They who had kept themselves invisible, so long as the issue of a perplexed negotiation seemed doubtful, now became obsequious and inevitable as his shadow. One grand seignior wanted a regiment, another a government, a third a chamberlain's key; all wanted titles, ribbons, offices, livery, wages. Don John distributed favors and promises with vast liberality. The object with which Philip had sent him to the Netherlands, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... awkward but deep and obsequious reverence, turned and went out of the door, passing Juba, who was entering with a salver laden with bread and meat and a couple of bottles. "Put down the food, Juba," said Haward, "and see this gentleman out of ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason and finds ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... with a social secretary, an obsequious but very wise little man, who took charge of all my affairs outside my chemical work. Under his guidance I was removed to more commodious quarters and my wardrobe was supplied with numerous changes all in the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... battle-scenes and cheap lithographs of the Rebel leaders. Several officers in "Secession gray" were lounging about this room, and one of them, a short, slightly-built, youthful-looking man, rose as we entered, and, in a half-pompous, half-obsequious way, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... drew up before the inn door, the host delivered his most obsequious bow, fair Rosa bade farewell to her lover, the prince and Gulielmo entered the stately vehicle, and, with a loud crack of the coachman's whip, the ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... Maeterlinck, branded her as ungrateful and perfidious. The cat of "The Blue Bird" fawns and flatters, which is something no real cat was ever known to do. When and where did M. Maeterlinck encounter an obsequious cat? That the wise little beast should resent Tyltyl's intrusion into the ancient realms of night, is conceivable, and that, unlike the dog, she should see nothing godlike in a masterful human boy, is hardly a matter for regret; but the most subtle of dramatists ...
— Americans and Others • Agnes Repplier
... maintain himself in it except by force and bribery. He must coerce and corrupt. Moreover, to rule without a rival, he must surround himself with men vastly inferior to him both in talent and in virtue: men who, in return for their obsequious servility, must be humoured and satisfied. Whenever such a usurpation occurs, all the maxims upon which the welfare and freedom of a community normally rest are annihilated, and the reign of profligacy and of tyranny inevitably supervenes: a regime born in ...
— Greece and the Allies 1914-1922 • G. F. Abbott
... prescribed to them, testify this. He instructed them by symbols, obscure and enigmatical propositions, which they were first to exercise their ingenuity to expound. The authority and dogmatical assertions of the master were to remain unquestioned; and the pupils were to fashion themselves to obsequious and implicit submission, and were the furthest in the world from being encouraged to the independent exercise of their own understandings. There was nothing that Pythagoras was more fixed to discountenance, than the communication of the truths upon which he placed ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... experience of the wastefulness of its production, the injustice of its distribution; of its sweating, its unemployment and slums. And when the attempt is made to plaster over evils, such as these with obsequious rhetoric about the majesty of economic law, it is not surprising that the spirit of many men should revolt and that they should retort by denying the existence of order in the business world, by declaring that the spectacle which they see is one of discord, confusion and chaos. And then ...
— Supply and Demand • Hubert D. Henderson
... not only the envy, but the trifling ambition of Madame Cheron, who, since she could not rival the splendour of her festivities, was desirous of being ranked in the number of her most intimate friends. For this purpose she paid her the most obsequious attention, and made a point of being disengaged, whenever she received an invitation from Madame Clairval, of whom she talked, wherever she went, and derived much self-consequence from impressing a belief on her general acquaintance, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... he commanded the obsequious young Valentine who drove the big Chambers. Mr. Vandeford was never sufficiently unoccupied of mind to pilot a car in and out of New York traffic. For half a second the ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... wine from the Hispaniola. Never, I am sure, were people gayer or happier. And there was Silver, sitting back almost out of the firelight, but eating heartily, prompt to spring forward when anything was wanted, even joining quietly in our laughter—the same bland, polite, obsequious seaman of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... obsequious Trollio speeds, And to the secret hall the soldiers leads. The youth, resign'd, bow'd down his thoughtful head, And calmly silent follow'd where they led. "Such be the fate of all," the monarch cried, "Who, born to meanness, swell with worthless pride; Who, ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker
... Augustus for quelling civil strife, for bringing glory to the empire, and giving peace, security, and happiness to his country by the power of his arms and the wisdom of his administration, the poet has been called a traitor to the nobler principles of his youth—an obsequious flatterer of a man whom he ought to have denounced to posterity as a tyrant. Adroit esclave is the epithet applied to him in this respect by Voltaire, who idolises him as a moralist and poet. But it carries little weight ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... was really laughing, as he said, fit to break his jaws. And he was no longer the timid little unctuous and obsequious provincial usher, but a well-set-up fellow, who, after reciting and mimicking the whole scene with impressive ardour, was now laughing with a shrill laughter the sound of which made Prasville's ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... Abel exclaimed one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a domineering Englishman, ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... the black figures round him stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was something in the carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisting him—to his feet. There ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... ever willing to own to a mistake and give up even his most cherished ideas if truth required them at his hands. No conception can be more wantonly inexact. I grant that if a writer was sufficiently at once incompetent and obsequious Mr. Darwin was "ever ready," &c. So the Emperors of Austria wash a few poor people's feet on some one of the festivals of the Church, but it would not be safe to generalise from this yearly ceremony, and conclude ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... services were not fully appreciated by the king, and he was obnoxious to the nobility, who envied his eminence, and to the people, because he desired the prosperity of France more than the gratification of their pleasures. He was succeeded by Louvois, who long retained a great ascendency by obsequious attention ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord
... descending the stairs, took their seats in the carriage which was in readiness at the door. A quarter of an hour's drive brought them to the superb mansion wherein the entertainment was to be given. Alighting from the carriage, they were conducted by an obsequious attendant to a small ante-room, where they deposited their cloaks, and adjusted over their faces the sort of half-mask used on such occasions. A beautiful boy, dressed as a page, then led the way up a broad marble ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... they were the iron necessity of all other nations; universal destroyers for the sake of raising at last, out of the ruins, the mausoleum of their own dignity and freedom, in the midst of the monotonous solitude of an obsequious world. To them, it was not given to excite emotion by the tempered accents of mental suffering, and to touch with a light and delicate hand every note in the scale of feeling. They naturally sought also in Tragedy, by overleaping all intervening gradations, ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... followed him into a small, dimly lighted room, and noted that the landlord came to wait on them with obsequious attention. Two peons were drinking in a corner, but they went out when the landlord made a sign. Jake thought this curious, but Don Sebastian filled his glass and gave ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss
... most tender confidence and of a respect which ended not with her life. In his Meditations he thanks the gods, who had bestowed on him a wife so faithful, so gentle, and of such a wonderful simplicity of manners. The obsequious senate, at his earnest request, declared her a goddess. She was represented in her temples with the attributes of Juno, Venus, and Ceres; and it was decreed that, on the day of their nuptials, the youth of either sex should pay their vows before the altar ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... immortalised the obsequious senators who met to decide the fate of the memorable turbot. His fourth satire frequently reminds us of the great political poem of Dryden; but it was not written till Domitian had fallen: and it wants something of the peculiar flavour which belongs to contemporary ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... all-grasping western world. The shores of the Straits of Sunda are unsupplied with those domineering fortresses which guard the entrances to the Mediterranean, the Baltic, and the Propontis. Unlike the Danes, these Orientals do not demand the obsequious homage of lowered top-sails from the endless procession of ships .. before the wind, which for centuries past, by night and by day, have passed between the islands of Sumatra and Java, freighted with the costliest ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... with all hearts Which I by lacking have supposed dead: And there reigns Love, and all Love's loving parts, And all those friends which I thought buried. How many a holy and obsequious tear Hath dear religious love stolen from mine eye As interest of the dead!—which now appear But things removed, that hidden in thee lie. Thou art the grave where buried love doth live, Hung with the trophies of my lovers ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... of his high complexion, abnormal waist measurement, expensive clothes, and domineering manner, which proclaimed him really a lord of creation, naturally commanded the first and most obsequious attention, and giving his address as "Clay's," engaged the nearest man, who then turned ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... a very helpless and insignificant object, whatever may have been the terror which he inspired while he was alive. As long as Henry continued to breathe, the attendants around him paid him great deference, and observed every possible form of obsequious respect, for they did not know but that he might recover, to live and reign, and lord it over them and their fortunes for fifteen or twenty years to come; but as soon as the breath was out of his body, all was over. Richard, his son, was now king, and ...
— Richard I - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... cab several times to buy papers. All showed the fatal date. He arrived at the palatial hotel in a cab filled with papers, from which his bewildered countenance peered forth like that of a canary-bird in the nesting-season. He was scarcely within the door, when obsequious servants seized his luggage, and vied with one another for the privilege of ...
— Double Trouble - Or, Every Hero His Own Villain • Herbert Quick
... The present private secretary,—who had been private secretary also to the late First Commissioner,—was giving up his Elysium because he could not endure the tones of Sir Raffle's voice. It was understood that Sir Raffle required rather more of a private secretary, in the way of obsequious attendance, than was desirable, and Eames almost doubted his own fitness ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... they receive at the different tables. In this important branch, she has the assistance of a lady, somewhat younger than herself, who, seated by her side, in stately silence, has every appearance of a maid of honour. A person in waiting near the throne, from his vacant look and obsequious carriage, might, at first sight, be taken for a chamberlain; whereas his real office, by no means an unimportant one, is to distribute into deserts the fruit and other et ceteras, piled up within his ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... doing any of these things, Mr. John rushed to the door to meet the arriving guest and greeted him aloud from afar in the most obliging, not to say obsequious, terms, bidding him come in without ceremony and not make a stranger of himself. And with that he passed his arm through the arm of his distinguished guest and, radiant with joy, drew him into the midst of the domestic sanctum sanctorum and ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... money. As—notwithstanding his publishing two papers in favour of Popery (and not likely to do it much service, I should think) written by the King, his brother, and found in his strong-box; and his open display of himself attending mass—the Parliament was very obsequious, and granted him a large sum of money, he began his reign with a belief that he could do what he pleased, and with a ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... judges were Roland Sefton's neighbors there had been a friendly interchange of civilities. An assize ball was still held, though it was falling into some neglect and disrepute. Whenever any cause of special local interest took place she had commanded the best seat in the court, and had obsequious attention paid to her. She had learned well the aspect of the place, and the mode of procedure. But hitherto her recollections of a court of justice were all agreeable, and her impressions those ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Silas as he helped her to her place, and going to the other side, got in and took the ribbands. Many were the glances that shot from the two edges of the road at the unknown beauty whom Silas drove by his side, and obsequious were the bows of Silas's friends as they passed. Even the groggy old man who drives the water-cart on Bellevue Avenue could scarce forbear to cheer as she ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... so Lucifer summed up, as he dismissed his obsequious devils, make all their several hearts each a warehouse, a shop, a farm, a pulpit, a library, a nursery, a supper-table, a chamber of wantonness—let it be to each man just after his own heart. ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... White Plume of Savoy." But now, in the light of Spencer's open scorn, I saw it was impudently false, childish, sentimental. My head ached, the humidity sapped my strength, at heart I felt sick, sore, discouraged. I was down and out. And seeing this, Temptation, like an obsequious floorwalker, came ...
— The Log of The "Jolly Polly" • Richard Harding Davis
... won a place in the doctor's affections, which, I like to think, I never really lost in the many changes the future brought me. My obsequious respect for dead tongues redeemed, to a great measure, the appalling ignorance I immediately displayed of the merest rudiments of geography and history; and when the time came, I believe it even reconciled him to my bodily stature, which always appeared to him to be too ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... said the Cynic, with an obsequious sneer. 'Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than in ...
— The Great Stone Face - And Other Tales Of The White Mountains • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... girl of 20, from the Conservatoire, teacher of music. Wears a fringe, and is super-fashionably dressed. Obsequious, ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... but rose to follow him, scanning the waiting-room with one quick, frightened look. An obsequious porter at the gate seized the suit-case and led them ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... and let them know in the day that is at hand, how the challenge may come from some petty authority of the time that rules not by its integrity but by its favourites. We are cursed with such authority, and many a one drives about in luxury because he is obsequious to it: he prefers to be a parasite and to live in splendour than be a man and live in straits. He has what Bernard Shaw so aptly calls "the soul of a servant." If we are to prepare for a braver future, let us fight this ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... velvet dress she sat under the shade of a sweeping cedar tree; with a crowd of obsequious relations round her, trying to anticipate her ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... With an obsequious bow the Jap withdrew; but if they could have seen his face as he turned into his small pantry, a cubby-hole for dishes and glasses, they would have noticed that it ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... the room, went down the Avenue de Messine and saw Mademoiselle enter a chemist's shop. She came out, ten minutes later, carrying two or three medicine-bottles wrapped up in white paper. But, when she returned up the avenue, she was accosted by a man who followed her, cap in hand and with an obsequious air, ...
— The Blonde Lady - Being a Record of the Duel of Wits between Arsne Lupin and the English Detective • Maurice Leblanc
... the clerk, looking superciliously at the modest attire of the poor widow, and mentally deciding that she was not entitled to much consideration. Had she been richly dressed, he would have been very obsequious, and insisted on sending home the smallest parcel. But there are many who have two rules of conduct, one for the rich, and quite a different one for the poor, and among these was the clerk who was attending ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... ring, sir?" he asked, poking his head through the curtains obsequiously. McKnight objects that nobody can poke his head through a curtain and be obsequious. But Pullman porters ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... From the obsequious manner of the maitre d'hotel I knew that her father was a person of importance. Yet the man who knows what to order in a restaurant, and orders it with instructions, is certain to receive marked attention. ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... evidently unjust. In all societies, most of those who meddle with the government of men will do so in pursuit of their own interests, and in all societies the professional politician will reveal himself as a somewhat debased type. In a despotism he will become a courtier and obtain favour by obsequious and often dishonourable services to a prince. In an old-fashioned oligarchy he will adopt the same attitude towards some powerful noble. In a parliamentary plutocracy, like our own, he will proceed in ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... development in Napoleonic ambition. The successive announcements that minor ruling dynasties had ceased to reign had all been made with the partial justification of either conquest or general expediency, or, as in most cases, of both. The Spanish Bourbons had been the Emperor's most obsequious and useful allies, obeying his behests without a question: for their degradation there was no plea either of expediency or of a right secured by conquest. The extinction of what still ranked as a great royal house was accomplished by chicane, was ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... his head sharply, as though he found some lurking mockery in the words, or some fresh affront; but in the obsequious bow of his majordomo there was no mockery, and the table beyond glistened with silver, while a pungent and convincing odor of rich food was wafted insidiously ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... little influence over her husband, and Count Stadion is no more influential than her majesty. His generous enthusiasm and fiery impetuosity are repugnant to the emperor, who will remove him so soon as he has discovered a more submissive and obsequious successor who has as much work in him as Stadion. But there is one point as to which these incessantly quarrelling parties are agreed and join hands, and that is their common hostility against the arch-dukes, the emperor's brothers; so virulent is this hatred, that the peace-party deserts ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... derider of cowards, thinkest thou that we have avenged Frode enough, when we have spent seven deaths on the vengeance of one? Lo, those are borne out dead who paid homage not to thy sway in deed, but only in show, and though obsequious they planned treachery. But I always cherished this hope, that noble fathers have noble offspring, who will follow in their character the lot which they received by their birth. Therefore, Ingild, better now than in time past dost thou deserve to be called lord of Leire ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... maid to bring the luggage, which an obsequious customs officer cleared at once, he ushered his wife into a ramshackle victoria and told the man to drive to ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... said that he would be pleased if she would accompany him to Tiffany's for the purpose of selecting a string of pearls. He made it quite clear that she was to go alone with him, playfully mentioning his desire to be the only witness to her confusion when confronted by the "obsequious salesman and his baubles from the sea." If quite agreeable to her he would make an appointment with the jeweller for 3.30 and would call for her in person. After that, he continued, the signing of a contract for life would not seem such a portentous undertaking, and they could go to ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... and the servant became as obsequious as if he had just recognized in his visitor a millionaire that had dropped in to spend a part of his ...
— Brave Tom - The Battle That Won • Edward S. Ellis
... corridor, appeared to be waiting for orders, with feverish impatience, his sword between his legs. It appeared strange to Fouquet that MM. Brienne, Rose, and de Saint-Aignan, in general so attentive and obsequious, should scarcely take the least notice, as he, the superintendent, passed. But how could he expect to find it otherwise among courtiers, he whom the king no longer called anything but Fouquet? He raised his head, determined to look every ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... her Hofcompositor to take care that 'that fair-headed blockhead,' the ringleader of them all, got 'einen recenten Schilling' (slang for 'a good hiding')." The command was only too willingly obeyed by the obsequious Reutter, who by this time had been ennobled, and rejoiced in the addition of "von" to his name. Many years afterwards, when the empress was on a visit to Prince Esterhazy, the "fair-headed blockhead" ...
— Haydn • J. Cuthbert Hadden
... Madame de Sevigne, had, with an affectionate industry, found her chief occupation and pleasure in keeping her daughters in the provinces fully acquainted with every event which interested or entertained Louis XIV. and his obsequious Court; and in the first years of the eighteenth century a noble English lady, whom we have already mentioned, did in like manner devote no small portion of her time to recording, for the amusement and information of her daughter, her sister, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... Madam, and when you are pleas'd Sadness to me's a stranger, your good pardon If I speak like a fool, I could have wisht To have ta'ne your place to night, had bold Dinant Your first and most obsequious servant tasted Those delicates, which by his lethargie As it ...
— The Little French Lawyer - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont
... while as a study, from the little, bald-headed waiter, Heme, and the big, imposing waiter, August, to the "Herr Doctor" who comes to forget the serious surgical case that has been worrying him at the hospital. Here you do not find obtrusive waiters brushing imaginary crumbs from your chair with obsequious hand, nor over zealous stewards solicitous of your food's quality. It is all perfect because it is made perfect by good management. Here are German families, from Grossfader and Grossmutter, down to the newest grandchild, sitting and enjoying their beer and listening ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... who now commenced his chief life-work, the task of guiding Napoleon. "The mere name of Bonaparte is an aid which ought to smooth away all my difficulties"—these were the obsequious terms in which he began his correspondence with the great general. In reality, he distrusted him; but whether from diffidence, or from the weakness of his own position, which as yet was little more than that of the ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... Christine did not put her feet into Cousin Kitty's bandbox, to the demolition of her bonnet; but that both bonnet and cap survived to grace the heads of their respective proprietors. The only mishap that occurred, dear reader, befell your obsequious servitor, who went to bed with a sick headache, caused really by her acute sympathy with the misfortunes of the hero and heroine of our aunt's story, but which Miss Christine grossly attributed to a hearty supper ...
— The Rector of St. Mark's • Mary J. Holmes
... I understand," he returned good-humouredly; but he was secretly surprised by the quickness with which her commissions were executed. Evidently the ladies of the Wood House were people of consideration to the tradesmen of Earlsfield, for obsequious shopmen stood bowing and smiling on the threshold; and was it his fancy, or was there an added stateliness in the second Miss Templeton's step and carriage as she threaded the pretty little market-place, exchanging greetings with every ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... see at a glance that Mr. Hamilton was master in his own house. Miss Darrell seemed perfectly submissive to him. There was something almost obsequious in her manner to him. She watched his looks anxiously, and, though she coaxed and flattered him, she did not seem quite certain how he would ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... forth out of the darkness an endless, garrulous appeal for mercy. A sense of danger, of daring, had alone nerved Carthew to enter the forecastle; and here was the enemy crying and pleading like a frightened child. His obsequious "Here, sir," his horrid fluency of obtestation, made the murder tenfold more revolting. Twice Carthew raised the pistol, once he pressed the trigger (or thought he did) with all his might, but no explosion followed; and with that the lees ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... exaggerated shapes through the medium of the natives; and I had lately been anxious to see some of them, as many of those so near the colony can speak very well. Now we understood why the Bogan was deserted. The non-appearance of the chief who had been so obsequious on our going down was perhaps a suspicious circumstance when connected with the fact that a silk handkerchief had been seen on the first of that tribe whom we met, and the strange movements and bustle which took place among those at our camp at ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... lack of literary independence that belittled Irving's dignity. He had become so well satisfied with his post of mediator between the writers of the two nations, that it became paramount with him to preserve the good-will he had won in England, and this appears in the cautious and almost obsequious mien of "Bracebridge." One may trace it also, with amused pain, in his correspondence with Paulding,—honest, pathetic Paulding, a rabid miso-Briton who burned to write something truly American, and couldn't; whom ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... opened by an obsequious colored servant, Craig handed him the scrap of paper signed by the password, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to the kingdom of Italy the territory of Genoa, whilst forming the domains of Lucca and Piombino into a principality in favor of his eldest sister, Elisa Baciocchi. The storm was already threatening the feeble government of Naples: the queen, obsequious in her alarm, had sent to Milan an ambassador to congratulate the emperor and king. "Tell your queen," exclaimed Napoleon, "that her intrigues are known to me, and that her children will curse her memory, for I shall not leave in her kingdom ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... and robbing the grave of what is sometimes its only consoling attribute, the dignity of reserve. We know of no more unsavory calling than this, unless it be that of the Egyptian dealers in mummy, peddling out their grandfathers to be ground into pigment. Obsequious to the last moment, the jackal makes haste to fill his belly from the ribs of his late lion almost before he ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... order his car over the hotel telephone. The hotel attachs were obsequious and would be waiting to escort him in state across the main office. The politicians would surround the car. And he was perfectly sure that some of the big men of an amazed State House lobby might step into that car along with him and seek to know what in the name o' mischief had happened ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... part alone, How imitative nature takes her course From the celestial mind and from its art: And where her laws the Stagyrite unfolds, Not many leaves scann'd o'er, observing well Thou shalt discover, that your art on her Obsequious follows, as the learner treads In his instructor's step, so that your art Deserves the name of second in descent From God. These two, if thou recall to mind Creation's holy book, from the beginning Were the right source ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... fence with others,—positive and shy, Yet knows to put an edge upon his speech, Pithily Saxon in unwilling talk. Him I entrap with my long-suffering knife, And, while its poor blade hums away in sparks, 240 Sharpen my wit upon his gritty mind, In motion set obsequious to his wheel, And in ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... he may help me in procuring pardon for Ruperto. Luckily my good looks, if I have any, never received notice from the grand colonel, who has eyes only for you; so he's not jealous of Ruperto. As the obsequious servant of his master, hostile to him no doubt; but that might be overcome by your doing as ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... justice, the Irish members gave such an exhibition of blackguardism as has no parallel on earth, though it earned but the mildest rebuke from their obsequious ally, Mr. Gladstone. ...
— The Reminiscences of an Irish Land Agent • S.M. Hussey
... to the prince; assiduous at feasts, at galas, at ladies' receptions, at ceremonies, and in battle; servile in a gentlemanlike way; very haughty; with eyesight dull or keen, according to the object examined; inclined to integrity; obsequious or arrogant, as occasion required; frank and sincere on first acquaintance, with the power of assuming the mask afterwards; very observant of the smiles and frowns of the royal humour; careless ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... and then make dishonest fortunes from it, had come up to take their places, with everything about them, sire and son, mother and daughter, new, arrogant and unpleasant; and there was such a marked absence of that Southern element which in other days had supplied money to obsequious waiters and green girls to needy fortune-hunters,—that there seemed to have been a complete turn of the kaleidoscope, and it almost puzzled an old habitue to know whether he had not exchanged lands as well ...
— Shoulder-Straps - A Novel of New York and the Army, 1862 • Henry Morford
... loudly. Many came, not only from different parts of the kingdom, but from the other states of Europe, to witness the spectacle. It took place on the 20th of June, 1715. As the troops, in their gorgeous uniforms, defiled before the terrace of Marly, quite a spruce-looking man, surrounded by obsequious attendants, emerged from the principal entrance of the palace, descended the marble steps and mounted his horse. It was the poor old king. Inspired by vanity, which even dying convulsions could not quell, he had rouged his pale and haggard cheeks, wigged his thin locks, padded ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott
... hand, FACTS are being established which the science of yesterday dubbed swindles. Even newspapers, which are for the most part the most obsequious servants of worldly success and of the mob, and which trim their sails to every wind, find themselves compelled to modify their ironical judgements on the "marvels" of science and even to abandon them altogether. Various learned men, among them ultra-materialists, ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... Beauvais, with his chaplain and his pages at his shoulder, was making in his stately way towards the farther door, when he met M. de Chateauneuf, and paused to speak. When he escaped from him a dozen clients, whose obsequious bows rendered evasion impossible, still delayed him. And I had grown cold, and hot again, and he was but halfway on his progress up the crowded room, when the inner door opened, half a dozen voices cried "The Queen! The Queen!" and an usher with a silver wand passed ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... declare themselves to be peaceful, respectable citizens whom toil and life's buffetings have exhausted, and compelled to seek temporary rest and prayer; yet never does a creaking, groaning, ponderous grain wagon, with its Cossack driver, pass them by without their according the latter a humble, obsequious salute as, with straw in mouth, and omitting, always, to raise his cap, the man glances at them askance and with contempt, or, more frequently, does not even descry these tattered, grimy hulks between whom and himself there is absolutely nothing ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky |
