"Obsequiousness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... declining state. The feeble efforts of its two leaders Cromwel and Cranmer, of whom the first was deficient in zeal, the last in courage, now experienced irresistible counteraction from the influence of Gardiner, whose uncommon talents for business, joined to his extreme obsequiousness, had rendered him at once necessary and acceptable to his royal master. The law of the Six Articles, which forbade under the highest penalties the denial of several doctrines of the Romish church ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... and rested herself while pricing goods she did not intend to buy. There was a seat for all such. The unoccupied saleswoman had been seeking relief from the strain upon her muscles by leaning back against the shelves, but on the entrance of a customer she must be all obsequiousness. While she might have rested, she was unfeelingly forbidden to do so. Now the customer must be waited on, no matter how completely she may be overcome by fatigue or prostrated by lassitude. Either was sufficient to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... courage, a writer for the masses, in whom the acme of moral gravity appeared felicitously blended with an always present and all refreshing humor, a fervent patriot and accomplished courtier, though far from every courtly flattery and obsequiousness. ...
— Eingeschneit - Eine Studentengeschichte • Emil Frommel
... ice and snow and tempests, and with the consoling reflection that when our poor and long-looked-for monthly express arrives, we can get our letters and papers from the office after duly performing our genuflections to a petty military chief, with the obsequiousness of a Hindoo to ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... in coming into the senate than obsequiousness in the opinions expressed by them, as we have learned. It is recorded that, after Appius Claudius laid the subject of debate before the meeting, and before their opinions were asked in order, Lucius Valerius ...
— Roman History, Books I-III • Titus Livius
... Nicias of Smyrna; I also embraced with all the courtesy I possessed the most trumpery of men, even Nymphon of Colophon. And all this I did from no liking for these particular people, or the nation as a whole: I was heartily sick of their fickleness and obsequiousness, of feelings that are not affected by our kindness, but ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... loved her father; but their petting admiration soon grew oppressive, after the more bracing air of Compton; and their idolatry of her little brother fretted and tried her all the more, because they thought he must be a comfort to her, and any slight from her might be misconstrued. Mr. Venn's obsequiousness, instead of rightful homage, seemed deprivation of support, and she saw no one, spoke to no one, without the sense of Raymond's vast superiority and her own insensibility to it, loving him a thousand times more than she had loved him in life, and ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind, causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... meaning; "leastways not me, but them as has taken me by the hand. There's every prospect as it'll all be known afore long," said Elsworthy, pushing his wife aside and following Mr Wentworth, with a ghastly caricature of his old obsequiousness, to the door. "There's inquiries a-being made as was never known to fail. For one thing, I've written to them as knows a deal about the movements of a party as is suspected—not to say as I've got good friends," said Rosa's ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... really an invaluable servant, and, with a world of obsequiousness, contrived to have his own way on most occasions. He had, I believe, only one great weakness, that of imagining a beau-ideal of aristocracy and then outdoing it in the ...
— Christie Johnstone • Charles Reade
... imitativeness, asses for lust, cats for thievery, cocks for jealousy. They are a perfect laughing-stock with their strivings after vile ends, their jostling of each other at rich men's doors, their attendance at crowded dinners, and their vulgar obsequiousness at table. They swill more than they should and would like to swill more than they do, they spoil the wine with unwelcome and untimely disquisitions, and they cannot carry their liquor. The ordinary people who are present naturally flout them, and are revolted by the philosophy ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... very well, without obsequiousness or temper, appealing to Mark as a fellow man-of-the-world against a girl's rash judgment. 'You know,' he said, in the course of his arguments, 'I'm not really an incarnate fiend in private life. Miss Langton is quite convinced I am. I believe I saw her looking suspiciously at my boots the other ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... the promptings of Abbas—who stood apart like a statue of obsequiousness, each hand stuck into the sleeve of the other—responded as best he might. In the meantime tea and candies were served by a black hat on bended knee, who also produced a pair of ornate pipes. The Father of Swords marvelled that Matthews should have abandoned the delights of Shuster ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... are the wants which Nature (with a little assistance) leaves unsatisfied. The figures are presented with the utmost diffidence, but with indifference alike to the censure of those who may scent obsequiousness to the stern philosophy of Thoreau in the matter of diet, or to the jeers of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... going to have a party, and Jake told me you'd be able to fix me up with a little gin." In alarm, in obsequiousness, as Hanson's eyes grew more bored, "You telephone to Jake about me, if you ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... jumped out, and running up to the landlord, whispered a few words in his ear, to which the other answered by a deep "ah, vraiment!" and then saluted me with an obsequiousness ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... a coalition beneficial to the State, and honourable to all concerned, was suffered to escape, the fault was not with the Whig ministers. They behaved towards Pitt with an obsequiousness which, had it not been the effect of sincere admiration and of anxiety for the public interests, might have been justly called servile. They repeatedly gave him to understand that, if he chose to join their ranks, they were ready to receive him, not as an associate, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... owners irritated me intensely with their obsequiousness. I was irritated because they lived: they should have ceased to exist long ago. They were still very much afraid, although they had reached Peking in safety, for they half thought that I would hand them over to some ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... eyebrows contracting ever so slightly. There was a shameless streak of dust across her cheek, but there was also a dimple there that appealed to the grim old man. His eyes twinkled as he replied, with fine obsequiousness: ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... the rest, Claggett Chew and his fine friend, had stopped some ten feet away at the first sound of mirth. Then into Claggett Chew's gray-white face came astonishment, for he was used to creating many impressions—fear, hatred, or cringing obsequiousness—but never before had he or any of his friends been laughed at. Furthermore, he, the dreaded Claggett Chew, and his gaudy friend Osterbridge Hawsey, were held as being of so little account that a boy dared to ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... nose for them so {30} sensitive and discriminating as that of the chambermaid or butler. The mere pride of an easy mastery over slaves is the taint of every society in which class differences are recognized as fixed. It attaches to all classes; whether it be called snobbery or obsequiousness, it is all one. The virtue of mastery, on the other hand, lies in the power and in ...
— The Moral Economy • Ralph Barton Perry
... twitted Santerre on his obsequiousness towards women. Valentine, mollified by the compliment, soon recovered her birdlike gayety, and such free and easy conversation ensued between the trio that Mathieu felt both stupefied and embarrassed. In fact, he would have ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... Honestus pleases discerning People, and keeps their Custom by good Usage; makes modest Profit by modest Means, to the decent Support of his Family: Whilst Fortunatus blustering always, pushes on, promising much, and performing little, with Obsequiousness offensive to People of Sense; strikes at all, catches much the greater Part; raises a considerable Fortune by Imposition on others, to the Disencouragement and Ruin of those who trade in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... his aspect was nearly that of a man. He held his head erect, the cringe disappeared from his back, the obsequiousness from his manner. Then while an eye might wink, he took on the appearance of a snake with ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton
... the Langobards is the smallness of their number, for that they, who are surrounded with very many and very powerful nations, derive their security from no obsequiousness or plying; but from the dint of battle and adventurous deeds. There follow in order the Reudignians, and Aviones, and Angles, and Varinians, and Eudoses, and Suardones and Nuithones; all defended by rivers or forests. Nor in one of these nations does ...
— Tacitus on Germany • Tacitus
... omne jus et omnem legem dissolvit." It was "as if the rod should shake itself against them that lift it up, or as if the staff should lift up itself, as if it were no wood." Nothing could surpass Louis's obsequiousness: "Sicut mandasti ... pellimus dejicimus stirpitusque abrogamus," etc. He pledges his royal word to overcome opposition: "Quod si forte obnitentur aliqui aut reclamabunt, nos in verbo regio pollicemur tuae Beatitudini ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... glass are beautifully bright, your bell quickly answered, and Thomas ready, neat, and good-humored, you are not to expect absolute truth from him. The very obsequiousness and perfection of his service prevents truth. He may be ever so unwell in mind or body, and he must go through his service—hand the shining plate, replenish the spotless glass, lay the glittering fork—never laugh when you yourself or your guests joke—be profoundly ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... he says, with no doubt the finest of periwigs, long before he had ceased to be a skull-thatcher, and swaggered through the wynds and about the Cross with the best. The Edinburgh shopkeeper has never been "blate." He has always maintained a freedom of independence which has nothing of the obsequiousness of more common traders, and which gave the greater value to the sly compliment which he would insinuate between two jests. No doubt Campbella and Hamilla would laugh at the little man's compliments, his bows and admiring glances, ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... to a sudden thought, he seized my hand impulsively and spread my fingers apart. Having done this, he muttered two or three words of surprise. His face became serious, even solemn, and he treated me with strange obsequiousness. Rushing out of the temple, he went to inform the other Lamas of his discovery, whatever it was. They crowded round him, and from their words and gestures it was easy ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... so many and so satisfying, I never, for a moment, considered a return to my former estate. I was—I admit it—enamored of my rank and power; and, it may be, even of that very obsequiousness and flattery which I thought I despised. I know there was a supreme satisfaction when I passed through the saluting crowds in the Alta Avenue. It became almost elation when I rode upon the parade ground to take the ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... watch at drills and target practice. Shall I ever forget the flash in his eye if there were a fraction of a second's delay in the firing after the breech had gone home! The way in which he made that enormous block obey his touch in oily obsequiousness suggested the apotheosis of the whole business of naval war. I don't know whether the plugman of H.M.S. Lion or the plugman of the U.S.S. Connecticut was the better. It would take a superman to improve ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... reflection should accompany the mature reader through all such records of boyish inexperience. A good tempered-man, who is also acquainted with the world, will easily evade, without needing any artifice of servile obsequiousness, those quarrels which an upright simplicity, jealous of its own rights, and unpractised in the science of worldly address, cannot always evade without some loss of self-respect. Suavity in this manner ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various
... superstitions which they witness, and which they mechanically perform, a visit to the "Nuns' Island," is always proposed as the greatest privilege, and the most costly reward, which can be given for constant obsequiousness to the nuns, and unreserved compliance with their requirements. The term "Nuns' Island," is thus used to express the nunneries in Canada, and probably some similar institutions in the United States, where they are not too difficult of access. At all events, girls just ...
— Awful Disclosures - Containing, Also, Many Incidents Never before Published • Maria Monk
... reciprocated. They resented their Royal Mistress's insolence as much as they despised her previous obsequiousness. They accepted the fact that she was their Queen, but, among themselves, they did not pretend any respect for her, as was manifest from their habit of referring to her in private as "Mother Schwellenposch!" Edna, who was scarcely more beloved, was known as "Princess ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... features and the powers of the tyrant! Tyranny is not alone the prerogative of an aristocracy. "It is the place of a court to make its servants insignificant. If the people should fall into the same humor, and should choose their servants on the same principles of mere obsequiousness and flexibility, and total vacancy and indifference of opinion in all public matters, then no party of the state will be sound, and it will be vain to think of saving it." Thus writes Burke, the champion of our American revolt against his own ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... was, that so much offended Sir James Craig, even time and Mr. Ryland have not yet revealed. Perhaps "the Anglo-American Barrister" did not bow sufficiently low to confidential Secretaries and Executive Clerks. He would have found such obsequiousness difficult. Mr. Stuart was both vigorous in mind and body, and was very far from being a common man. He stood more than six feet high, and was built in proportion. His shoulders were broad, his chest ample, and his arms long. His head was immoderately large. ...
— The Rise of Canada, from Barbarism to Wealth and Civilisation - Volume 1 • Charles Roger
... a habit of plucking at his scanty, wedge-shaped beard with his hand. He walked not rapidly, but with long strides, leaning lightly on a long thin staff. He addressed me more than once during the day, and he waited on me without, obsequiousness, but he looked after his master as if he were a child. When the unbearable heat drove us at mid-day to seek shelter, he took us to his beehouse in the very heart of the forest. There Kalinitch opened the little hut for us, which was hung round with bunches of dry scented ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... was eager to get paid and see me safely off. The ticket man told me curtly I was in no hurry, and shut the wicket in my face. The idea prevails here, except in the cases of the local gentry who are privileged, and to whom the obsequiousness is remarkable, that the general public, besides paying for their accommodation, ought to accept their tickets as a favor done them by the Company. This stately official at last consented to issue tickets; as I had not change enough to pay I gave him a sovereign, and, not having time to count ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... all this obsequiousness on my part, and my aunt's repeated promises, that the old lady would at least make me a present of a score of guineas (of which she had a power in the drawer); and so convinced was I that some such present was intended for me, that a young lady by the name ...
— The History of Samuel Titmarsh - and the Great Hoggarty Diamond • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Legislative Body also gave grand entertainments in honor of the coronation. That of the Legislative Body was particularly brilliant. This assembly, which rivalled the Senate in obsequiousness, had decided that a marble statue should be raised to the Emperor in the room where it sat, in honor of the drawing up of the civil code. The day when this statue was to be inaugurated was chosen for the festivity. The Empress, followed ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... subjection &c. 749; nonresistance; passiveness, resignation. allegiance, loyalty, fealty, homage, deference, devotion; constancy, fidelity. submissness[obs3], submissiveness; ductility &c. (softness) 324; obsequiousness &c. (servility) 886. V. be -obedient &c. adj.; obey, bear obedience to; submit &c. 725; comply, answer the helm, come at one's call; do one's bidding, do what one is told, do suit and service; attend to orders, serve faithfully. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... possibly be compromised by her trial for perjury! Then you rush to me, trembling with the fear of being unmasked, of losing the promotion which has caused you so many efforts to attain! You come to me with an air of obsequiousness, and with the words of flattery, expecting to make me your dupe, and thus to show your sincerity! Well, you have sufficient reason for alarm—Pamela is in the hands of justice, and she has ...
— Pamela Giraud • Honore de Balzac
... anything that looks like exaggerated seeking for foreign favour, anything that looks like uncertainty or obsequiousness. But I understand that the Kaiser, precisely because he was anxious to work zealously and honestly for good relationship with England, felt embittered at being ever the object of attacks casting suspicion on his best motives. Has one not gone so far as to attribute ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... overstraining popular qualities, and, irregularly if you please, asserting popular privileges, has led to disqualification; the opposite fault never has produced the slightest punishment. Resistance to power has shut the door of the House of Commons to one man; obsequiousness and servility, to none. ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... was on; he was placed, as he had wished, without handicap; he closed his jaws and summoned all his will to take the consequences. The pity was that he had brought himself to make any concessions to the obsequiousness of the world. As he passed down Michigan Avenue he overtook a shabby laboring man, who begged of him. Sommers found out that he was a striker, a fireman on the Illinois Central, who had lost his job by being blacklisted ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... American Trusts. What is all this growing love of pageantry, this effusive loyalty, this officious rising and uncovering at a wave from a flag or a blast from a brass band? Imperialism: Not a bit of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused by the prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only, when Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for Millionaires) ...
— Man And Superman • George Bernard Shaw
... Obsequiousness loomed in the doorway. Its mistress flashed an order for port—two glasses. Sir Rebus sprang a pair of eyebrows on her. Suspicion slid down the banisters of his mind, trailing a blue ribbon. Inebriates were one of his hobbies. For ...
— A Christmas Garland • Max Beerbohm
... station a great deal of simplicity. More than once Morier seized an opportunity for an act of special courtesy to the Tsar; and Alexander appreciated this from a man whose character was too well known for him to be suspected of obsequiousness. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... and some other taxing functionary, united; he had come out with great obsequiousness to assist at this examination, and had held the examined by the drapery of his arm ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... this time had shown extreme obsequiousness towards me, had now no words but those of rudeness and distrust. There occurred on the pier where the Mistic was moored a riotous movement, which Vacaro assured me was directed against me. "Do not be uneasy," said he to me; "if they ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... had to pay cash for meat, than inferior in the village. One day, Amaryllis was waiting for some steak, side by side with a poor woman, waiting for scraps, while Cobb served a grand lady of the town. "Yes, m'm—oh, yes, m'm, certainly, m'm," bows, and scrapes, and washing of hands, all the obsequiousness possible. When the fine lady had gone, "Lar, Mr. Cobb," says the poor woman, "how different you do speak to they to what you do speak ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... the Guardian Angel returned for his traps and I bade him a sleepy adieu and was startled to see two soldiers standing shading their eyes in salute in the doorway and two gentlemen bowing to my kind protector with the obsequiousness of servants— He sort of smiled back at me and walked away with the soldiers and 13 porters carrying his traps. So I rung up the conductor and he said it was the King's Minister with his eyes sticking out of his ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... monasteries, terrified with this rigorous inquisition carried on by Cromwell and his commissioners, surrendered their revenues into the king's hands; and the monks received small pensions as the reward of their obsequiousness. Orders were given to dismiss such nuns and friars as were below four and twenty, whose vows were, on that account, supposed not to be binding. The doors of the convents were opened, even to such as ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume
... retiring, in a paroxysm of silent laughter, behind the shutters of his little box. Why Madame de Nemours endured his vagaries was indeed strange, for she was one who demanded of every other domestic something of an over-obsequiousness in service. It was a well-known fact, however, that he held an assured position in the household, and that the Countess only smiled at his grimaces and drinking, rewarding him with frequent gifts ...
— Katrine • Elinor Macartney Lane
... The obsequiousness of Mademoiselle Victorine was perfectly overwhelming, yet she experienced no little disappointment. She had made up her mind that since Mademoiselle Melanie was known to be Mademoiselle de Gramont, she would never again be able to appear among her workwomen, even to superintend their labors, ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie
... prone to luxurious indulgence not only from natural turpitude, but from the profusion of the means of voluptuous enjoyment which flowed in upon them, and the temptations of all the luxuries of land and sea; at that time especially proceeded to such a pitch of extravagance in consequence of the obsequiousness of the nobles and the unrestrained liberty of the commons, that their lust and prodigality had no bounds. To a disregard for the laws, the magistrates, and the senate, now, after the disaster of Cannae, was added a contempt for the Roman government ...
— The History of Rome; Books Nine to Twenty-Six • Titus Livius
... The obsequiousness of Coke to his Royal mistress was in perfect keeping with his character. Nothing exceeds his abject servility while in the sunshine, save his fixed malignity when dismissed to the shade. In 1594 the office of Attorney-General became vacant; Coke regarded the prize as his ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... career we find him hard to get on with, proud to his inferiors, still more crabbed to those above him. If policy required that he should use the arts of a diplomatist, he overplayed his part, and stung his rivals to the quick by an obsequiousness in speech to which his eyes and shoulders gave the lie. With all his wealth and influence, he missed the crowning points of his ambition; he never sat in the House of Peers, he never pushed his way to the council board, he never held quite the highest rank in any naval expedition, he never ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the changes that would be brought in, and their decline. He reproached them with their laxity, and with their want of fervor in cooperating with the peculiar graces they had received from God; he spoke so energetically, that, in censuring their foolish obsequiousness, if such a fault they had, he covered them with confusion. The cardinal was somewhat mortified, and said:—"Pray, why, brother, did you gainsay me, setting the imperfections of your brethren in opposition to the praises I had given them?" "My lord and my ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... forth absently and spied the old beggar crouching in his accustomed place. He almost prostrated himself at sight of her, but she had no money with her, nor could she have bestowed any under Lady Bassett's disapproving eye. The carriage rolled on, leaving his obsequiousness unrequited. ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... as did my wife, from being present at the wedding; but everything, I afterwards heard, passed off with great eclat. The bridegroom was all fervor and obsequiousness; the bride all bashfulness and beauty. The "happy pair," I saw by the afternoon newspapers, were to pass the honeymoon at Mr. Harlowe's seat, Fairdown Park. The evening of the marriage-day was ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... in my own mind, can cause this obsequiousness on the part of Miss Toady; has Briefless got a county court, or has his wife had a fortune left her? Miss Toady explained presently, with that simplicity which distinguishes all her conduct. "You know," she said, "Mrs ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... friends immediately resumed their parts. The governor, suspicious and hard, behaved toward D'Artagnan with a politeness almost amounting to obsequiousness. With respect to the travelers, he contented himself with offering them good cheer, and never taking his eye from them. Athos and Raoul observed that he often tried to embarrass them by sudden attacks, or to catch them off their guard; ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... His obsequiousness to Lady Price had alienated his brother clergy, and his fellow-curate allowed himself to be kept aloof by his mother, in a manner that became ungenerous. Half petulant, and wholly ungracious, as Mr. Smith's ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his soup—hers came at the same time; she had only toyed with some caviare by way of hors d'oeuvre, and it angered him to notice the obsequiousness of the waiters, who passed each thing to the dignified servant to be placed before the lady by his hand. Who was she to be served ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... heard rich women do, the men with glossy faces which reminded her in their brilliance and their blankness of the nails on Marion's hands; pretty food, like the things to eat in Keat's St. Agnes' Eve, being carried about on gleaming dishes by waiters whose bodies seemed deformed with obsequiousness; jewel-coloured wines hanging suspended over the white cloths in glasses invisible save where they glittered; bottles with gold necks lolling in pails among lumps of ice like tipsy gnomes overcome by sleep on some Alpine pass; innumerable ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... is only a question of STRONG and WEAK wills.—It is almost always a symptom of what is lacking in himself, when a thinker, in every "causal-connection" and "psychological necessity," manifests something of compulsion, indigence, obsequiousness, oppression, and non-freedom; it is suspicious to have such feelings—the person betrays himself. And in general, if I have observed correctly, the "non-freedom of the will" is regarded as a problem from two entirely opposite standpoints, but always in a profoundly PERSONAL manner: some ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... mounted still higher when Mrs. Carkeek opened the door to us. I had looked for a Mrs. Gummidge, and I found a healthy middle-aged woman with a thoughtful but contented face, and a smile which, without a trace of obsequiousness, quite bore out the farmer's description of her. She was a comfortable woman; and while we walked through the rooms together (for Mr. Hosking waited outside) I 'took to' Mrs. Carkeek. Her speech was direct and practical; the ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... at all necessary," said Richardson, dropping with equal suddenness into his old-world obsequiousness. "I shall certainly do as you wish. It is not a bad investment, Mr. Mainwaring, and as you suggest, a very proper return for their kindness. And, being here, it will come quite naturally for me to take up ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... it shewed a mere idle curiosity, and a wretched want of relish for extraordinary powers of mind. Mrs. Thrale justly and wittily accounted for such conduct by saying, that Johnson's conversation was by much too strong for a person accustomed to obsequiousness and flattery; it was mustard in a young ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... is a sort of fixed vision with him, which I suppose he'll never be cured of believing in. He still thinks it a great centre of high and fearless thought, instead of what it is, a nest of commonplace schoolmasters whose characteristic is timid obsequiousness to tradition." ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... hurried through a declaration that the pope had no more power in England than any other bishop.[263] Five years before, if a heretic had ventured so desperate an opinion, the clergy would have shut their ears and run upon him: now they only contended with each other in precipitate obsequiousness. The houses of the Observants at Canterbury and Greenwich, which had been implicated with the Nun of Kent, were suppressed, and the brethren were scattered among monasteries where they could be under surveillance. The Nun and her friends ...
— History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth. Vol. II. • James Anthony Froude
... of medicine as far as to the cure of a pimple or a rash. On occasions of the like importance, he is the most assiduous of all men living, in consulting and searching precedents from family to family; and then he speaks of his obsequiousness and diligence in the style of real services. If you sneer at him, and thank him for his great friendship, he bows, and says, "Madam, all the good offices in my power, while I have any knowledge or credit, shall be at your service." The consideration ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... our elections. But as the case stands, it seems against the nature of right government that strangers (who may be spies, and who may have an interest opposite to that of England, and who at best ever join in one link of obsequiousness to the Ministers) should be suffered to intermeddle in that important business of sending members to Parliament. From their sons indeed there is less to fear, who by birth and nature may come to have the same interest and inclinations as ...
— Essays on Mankind and Political Arithmetic • Sir William Petty
... was indifferent; far from it. This new aspect of her exasperated him mightily. "She needs a master," he thought. The idea of taming her was delicious, seductive. "I could do it," he told himself, sneering at the obsequiousness of ...
— The Huntress • Hulbert Footner
... for honest Hickman, the good man is so generally meek, as I imagine, that I know not whether I have any preference paid me in his obsequiousness. And then, when I rate him, he seems to be so naturally fitted for rebuke, and so much expects it, that I know not how to disappoint him, whether he just then deserve it, or not. I am sure, he has puzzled me many a time when I have seen him look ...
— Clarissa, Volume 2 (of 9) • Samuel Richardson
... the dispute with Paul V. been compromised, than Sarpi noticed how the aristocracy of Venice yielded themselves to sloth and political indifference. The religious obsequiousness to Rome and the 'peace or rather cowardice of slaves,' which were gradually immersing Italy in mental torpor and luxurious idleness, invaded this last stronghold of freedom. Though Sarpi's Christian Stoicism and practical sagacity ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... rarely saw Leon again, the lad came in a shadowy way to take the place he had momentarily designed for Joseph Strelitski. To-night it was Pinchas who assumed the paternal manner, but he mingled it with a subtle obsequiousness that made the shy simple lad uncomfortable, though when he came to read the poet's lofty sentiments which arrived (with an acrostic dedication) by the first post next morning, he conceived an enthusiastic ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... changed—rarely for the better, always less to our taste. Ameliorations and improvements seem to us positive evils; we sigh for the good old times, for the dirty streets of Paris, the villanous odours of Rome, the banditti of Naples, the obsequiousness of Greece, and the contempt, with the casual satisfaction of being spit upon, of Turkey. In short, we feel the want of our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... party stood on the quay, puffing their segars with all the gravity and silence that was becoming their rank and birth as officers of his Catholic Majesty and natives of old Spain, a subaltern officer approached, and, with abundance of parade and obsequiousness, informed the governor that there was a ship in the offing, becalmed at that time, but apparently bound in. The officer proceeded to inform him farther, that there were two American ships at St. Josef, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... nonsense about him, that he was a thoroughly manly fellow and old-fashioned at that, that he didn't profess to know much, and that what he did not know was not worth knowing He made a manly bow, ostentatiously free from obsequiousness and passed. ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... one's secret counsels. Relying on thy friendship for me, I shall say something to thee, O sage! O thou that canst go to heaven at thy pleasure, one should speak to another if one be convinced of the intelligence of that other. I never behave with slavish obsequiousness towards my kinsmen by flattering speeches about their prosperity. I give them half of what I have, and forgive their evil speeches. As a fire-stick is grinded by a person desirous of obtaining fire, even so my heart is ground by my kinsmen with their cruel speeches. Indeed, O celestial ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... supplant my sister by this complaisant attention; nor, when the consequence of my obsequiousness came to be known, did Sukey so much envy as despise me: I was, however, very well pleased with my success; and having received, from the concurrent opinion of all mankind, a notion that to be rich was to be great and happy, I thought I had obtained my advantages at an easy rate, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... and Cabot and Dexter, Webster and Everett and Sumner and Andrew. Nothing better can be said in praise of either than that they have been worthy of her, and she has been worthy of them. They have given her always brave and honest service, brave and honest counsel. She has never asked of them obsequiousness, or flattery, or even obedience to her will, unless it had the approval of their own judgment and conscience. That relation has been alike most honorable and most advantageous to both sides. They have ...
— Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2 • George Hoar
... to the soil and the passion for heroic enterprise. Thus it came about that the peasantry gave up their sons to be "food for cannon" with the same docility that was shown by soldiers who sank death-stricken into a snowy bed with no word of reproach to the author of their miseries. A like obsequiousness was shown by the officials and legislators of France, who meekly listened to the Emperor's reproaches for their weakness in the Malet affair, and heard with mild surprise his denunciation against republican idealogy—the cloudy metaphysics ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... It was Denmark's obsequiousness to Russia which led to the first of her unfortunate collisions with Great Britain. In 1800 the Danish government was persuaded by the tsar to accede to the second Armed Neutrality League, which Russia had ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... instruct, defend, and govern the Church peacefully. Hence Jerome, commenting on Titus 1:5, says against certain persons that "some seek to erect as pillars of the Church, not those whom they know to be more useful to the Church, but those whom they love more, or those by whose obsequiousness they have been cajoled or undone, or for whom some person in authority has spoken, and, not to say worse than this, have succeeded by means of gifts ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... all who came to the house of the dean, and who knew he was an only child. Indeed, considering the labour that was taken to spoil him, he was rather a commendable youth; for, with the pedantic folly of his teachers, the blind affection of his father and mother, the obsequiousness of the servants, and flattery of the visitors, it was some credit to him that he was not an idiot, or a brute—though when he imitated the manners of a man, he had something of the latter in his appearance; for he would grin and bow to a lady, catch her fan in haste when ...
— Nature and Art • Mrs. Inchbald
... inspire a lady of her high-toned mind with any deep feeling of regard or esteem. The elder woman, who, from her long probation at service, before she was fortunate enough to secure William Brown, the grocer's apprentice, had caught that cringing obsequiousness that we so often see in those accustomed to serve, and could have borne patiently, any slights or rebuffs that opposed her entrance into the charmed circle which she had determined to invade at all hazards. Meek and fawning, where she desired to gain favor, as she was insolent ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Bishop Mew:—Though he knew very little of divinity, or of any other learning, and was weak to a childish degree, yet obsequiousness and zeal raised him through several steps to this great see [Bath and Wells].—Swift. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... conduct of public affairs. Previously to this, grants of money were usually obtained through the personal influence of the barons over the cities and towns held in demesne. The burgesses, however, did not sit with the knights of shires, but apart by themselves, and, through loyalty or obsequiousness, assessed themselves in a contribution nearly one third greater than that granted by the barons and knights. The convenient precedent was not overlooked, and it became henceforth customary to expect the like liberality from subsequent ...
— The Corporation of London: Its Rights and Privileges • William Ferneley Allen
... it has set up for itself. Freedom of opinion will be professed and pretended to, but every one will exercise it at the peril of being banished from political communion with those who hold the reins and prescribe the policy to be pursued. Slavishness to party and obsequiousness to the popular whims go hand in hand. Political independence only occurs in a fossil state; and men's opinions grow out of the acts they have been constrained to do or sanction. Flattery, either of individual or people, corrupts both the receiver and the giver; and adulation is not of ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... obsequiousness towards a great lady," said he, "but the respect of a poor pastor for an angel whom Heaven by a peculiar act of grace has sent down to us. This is no empty compliment, your ladyship. I am not very lavish ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... for that, I also am poor, very poor indeed," the new-comer hastened to reply with the crafty obsequiousness peculiar to the Greek race. "My name is Janaki, and I am a butcher at Jassy. The kavasses have laid their hands upon my apprentice and all my live-stock at the same time, and that is why I have come to Stambul. I shall be utterly beggared if I ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... servile deference which is repugnant to their feelings, and is thrust upon them by the dependent circumstances in which they are placed. This homage to rank and education is not sincere. Hatred and envy lie rankling at their heart, although hidden by outward obsequiousness. Necessity compels their obedience; they fawn, and cringe, and flatter the wealth on which they depend for bread. But let them once emigrate, the clog which fettered them is suddenly removed; they are free; and the dearest privilege of this freedom is to wreak upon their superiors ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... and solemn seriousness, as if they had been in the midst of a grand courtly assemblage, he conducted her to the divan. There she seated herself, and he bowed before her with all the formality and obsequiousness of a courtier as he ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... nothing but obsequiousness, and heard nothing but commendations. None are so little acquainted with the heart, as not to know that woman's first wish is to be handsome, and that consequently the readiest method of obtaining her kindness ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson - Volume IV [The Rambler and The Adventurer] • Samuel Johnson
... faintly disappointed, but he didn't lose his obsequiousness. "Oh, that's quite a way from here, sir—about the closest would be Mallard's, over on Fourteenth Street and Upper Drive. A mile, ...
— But, I Don't Think • Gordon Randall Garrett
... and the joys of triumph; but had danced the round of gaiety amidst the murmurs of envy and the congratulations of applause, had been attended from pleasure to pleasure by the great, the sprightly, and the vain, and had seen her regard solicited by the obsequiousness of gallantry, the gaiety of wit, and the timidity of love." Surely Sir John Falstaff himself did not wear his petticoats with a worse grace. The reader may well cry out, with honest Sir Hugh Evans, "I like not ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... situated at the confluence of the rivers Rhone and Soane, tempted him to stay some days.—He was one evening sitting with his landlord in the inn-yard, when a post-chaise came in, out of which alighted a gentleman and a lady, just by the place where they were.—The man got up with all the obsequiousness of persons of his calling, to bid them welcome, and shew them into a room:—the lady, in passing, looked earnestly at Natura, and his eyes were no less attached on her: he thought he saw in her face features he ...
— Life's Progress Through The Passions - Or, The Adventures of Natura • Eliza Fowler Haywood
... equally offensive humility they show on being first accepted into the family; when it is exposed that they receive the new master, or lady's hand, in a half kneeling posture, and kiss it, as women under the rank of Countess do the Queen of England's when presented at our court.—This obsequiousness, however, vanishes completely upon acquaintance, and the footman, if not very seriously admonished indeed, yawns, spits, and displays what one of our travel-writers emphatically terms his flag of abomination behind the chair of a woman of quality, without the ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... Saint-Michel. He was not in the habit of going thither. He did not particularly care to meet Madame Nanteuil; she bored him and embarrassed him, although she was extremely polite to him, even to obsequiousness. ...
— A Mummer's Tale • Anatole France
... behaviour of his abductors, found himself partaking of the said breakfast, presented to him in a service of solid gold of curious but most elaborate design and workmanship, and waited upon by his entire suite with as much ceremony and obsequiousness as though he were ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... the youth who is taking lessons from a comic actor in voice-production not to carry his precepts so far as to imitate the female falsetto, the senile tremolo, the obsequiousness of the slave, the stuttering accents of intoxication or the ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... morning, before I was out of bed, the Abbe Fontanon was announced to me. When he entered he proved to be a tall old man with a bilious skin and a sombre, stern expression, which he tried to soften by a specious manner and a show of gentle but icy obsequiousness. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... Esmond Thackeray dropped the satirical tone, and indulged very rarely indeed in the habit of pausing to moralise, as writer to reader, upon social hypocrisy, servile obsequiousness, and whited sepulchres generally. In The Virginians he is less attentive to dramatic propriety; he begins again to turn aside and lecture us, in the midst of his tale, upon the text of De te fabula ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... in a tone devoid, of course, as any gentleman's would be, of superciliousness, but at the same time not in any way deprecatory, while the manner of the young man was simply that of a person intent on discharging correctly the task he was engaged in, equally without familiarity or obsequiousness. It was, in fact, the manner of a soldier on duty, but without the military stiffness. As the youth left the room, I said, "I cannot get over my wonder at seeing a young man like that serving so contentedly ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... help which there is a Fishawk that catches Fishes, and suffers the Eagle to take them from her, although she is long-wing'd and a swift Flyer, and can make far better way in her Flight than the Eagle can. The bald Eagle attends the Gunners in Winter, with all the Obsequiousness imaginable, and when he shoots and kills any Fowl, the Eagle surely comes in for his Bird; and besides, those that are wounded, and escape the Fowler, fall to the Eagle's share. He is an excellent Artist at stealing young Pigs, which Prey he ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... The obsequiousness of the leading politicians at that juncture must have given Crispi a savage satisfaction for the contumely he had had to suffer in 1891, and there is no kind of question in my mind that, if he had then insisted as a sine qua non on a dictatorship, ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman |
