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Oppressor   Listen
noun
Oppressor  n.  One who oppresses; one who imposes unjust burdens on others; one who harasses others with unjust laws or unreasonable severity. "The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds." "To relieve the oppressed and to punish the oppressor."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Oppressor" Quotes from Famous Books



... husband, I say, is gone to the battle, and Jael the wife is left alone, distracted with anxiety, in the tent;—when, weak and unprotected woman as she is, she beholds the Captain of the hateful oppressor of GOD'S people hastening to her tent, slumbering at her feet, and unexpectedly within her power:—will you pretend that she, a Midianitess, is to blame if she yields to the strong impulse which prompts her to compass the man's downfall, as speedily as she ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon

... were more fortunate. In England—while the old English literature was crushed out by the heel of the oppressor, the Norman instinct seized on the latent possibilities of the old English political institutions, welded them into a great system, developed out of them representative government, and created ...
— Mediaeval Wales - Chiefly in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries: Six Popular Lectures • A. G. Little

... of liberty, although it has undoubtedly been desired by individuals in all ages, is almost entirely modern as an ideal for civilized communities. This is the absence of interference, not only of a foreign power or of a lawless oppressor, but of the very law itself. The desire for such freedom as this, would in almost all ages of the world have been held inconsistent with proper respect for order and security. It would have been considered no more than the wicked longing of an unchastened spirit, the temptation ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... or three cases of this that occur in history have always been gibbeted gigantically. Thus Nero has become a black proverb, not merely because he was an oppressor, but because he was also an aesthete—that is, an erotomaniac. He not only tortured other people's bodies; he tortured his own soul into the same red revolting shapes. Though he came quite early in Roman Imperial history and was followed by many austere and ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... was no gladness in it-no happiness. And there was the captive, the victim of foul slavery-so foul that hell yearns for its abettors-whose deliverance she prayed for with her earnest soul. She knew the oppressor's grasp-she had, with womanly pride, come forward to relieve the wronged, and she had become sensible of the ties binding her to Clotilda. Unlike too many of her sex, she did not suppress her natural affections; she could not see only the slave in a disowned sister; she acknowledged ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... middle of the eighteenth century, and aided General Braddock with all his heart to resist the oppressor Washington. It was this ancestor who fired seventeen times at our Washington from behind a tree. So far the beautiful romantic narrative in the moral story-books is correct; but when that narrative goes on to say that at the seventeenth round the awe-stricken savage said solemnly that ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain

... power thereto is in thine hand, For still in danger of revenge the sad oppressor goes. Thine eyes will sleep anon, what while the opprest, on wake, call down Curses upon thee, and God's eye shuts never ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous

... intelligence that Missouri has joined the Confederacy. She will be scourged by the vengeful enemy; but will rise some day and put her foot on the neck of the oppressor. Missouri is a giant. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones

... himself with dressing his plumage, though, as the breeze freshened, he was compelled once in a while to keep his wings in motion to prevent the wind from carrying him away. When the old bird returned,—in just half an hour,—she resented my intrusion (what an oppressor of the widow and the fatherless she must by this time have thought me!) in the most unmistakable manner, coming more than once quite within reach. However, she soon gave over these attempts at intimidation, perched ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey

... book of Esther the name of God is not once mentioned; but it shows us the unseen God acting in his secret providence to deliver his covenant people, the Jews, from the hand of the Gentile oppressor, and setting them in the place of authority and ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... of Austria in which she claimed to recognize a violation of that country's treaty with herself. The pourparlers thus gradually turned for subject matter to the time-honored grievances which Italy cherished against her present ally, but old oppressor. In these negotiations Germany rendered continued aid to Italy, who sought by peaceful means to secure the return of the provinces to which she had an immemorial claim. These negotiations failed, and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... might in good truth travel long through wildernesses and "great woods" given over to the outlaw and the ruffian. There the avenger of wrong need seldom want for perilous adventure and the occasion for quelling the oppressor. There the armed and unrelenting hand of right was but too truly the only substitute for law. There might be found in most certain and prosaic reality, the ambushes, the disguises, the treacheries, the deceits and temptations, even the supposed ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... off the vile restraint Of ages! but, like Ballymena's saint, The oppressor spare, Heap only on his head the ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various

... lays his injuries equally at that door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens

... stormy day, Yet shall his death-hour leave a track Of glory permanent and bright To which the brave of after-times, The suffering brave, shall long look back With proud regret,—and by its light Watch thro' the hours of slavery's night For vengeance on the oppressor's crimes. This rock, his monument aloft, Shall speak the tale to many an age; And hither bards and heroes oft Shall come in secret pilgrimage, And bring their warrior sons and tell The wondering boys where HAFED fell; And swear them on those lone remains Of their lost country's ancient fanes, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al

... rule, iron hand, iron sway; tight grasp; brute force, brute strength; coercion &c 744; strong hand, tight hand. hard lines, hard measure; tender mercies [Iron.]; sharp practice; pipe-clay, officialism. tyrant, disciplinarian, precisian^, martinet, stickler, bashaw^, despot, hard master, Draco, oppressor, inquisitor, extortioner, harpy, vulture; accipitres^, birds of prey, raptorials^, raptors^. V. be severe &c adj.. assume, usurp, arrogate, take liberties; domineer, bully &c 885; tyrannize, inflict, wreak, stretch a point, put on the screw; be hard upon; bear a heavy hand ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... discerned by the man who has not been accustomed to look for Him. He will not be seen by the swine, who with head to earth has eaten his fill of sensual pleasures, and has cared for nothing better. He will not be seen by the covetous man and the oppressor, who never identified His image hidden away under the labour-stained dress of the poor. He will not be seen by the man, who never looked up into His face in prayer here below. He will not be seen by the earth-laden spirit, that cared nothing at all for God, that hated ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.

... an old friend there would help him. Ah, poor children! there they sat from the first ray of daylight, and the bright sun was now glittering high above their heads, shining upon their desolation and upon the castle turrets, wherein dwelt in luxury their oppressor. The events we have described as taking place at the castle were still in progress, when a female was seen slowly coming along the road, bearing a basket on her arm that seemed too heavy ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite

... position where they might hope to do either the one or the other successfully? The law of divorce was still common; and, like every thing else where the sexes were concerned, all the advantages were on the side of the oppressor, man. ...
— Woman: Man's Equal • Thomas Webster

... Charles had done. These ignorant and bitterly oppressed unfortunates, constituting everywhere, remember, the vast majority of the human race, heard impassioned preachings of reform, revolt. To them Rome seemed not the oppressor, but their immediate lords; and, thinking they were obeying Luther's behest, they rose in arms. Some of the more violent reformers joined them. Luther preached against the uprising, but it was not to be checked. Terrible were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various

... violent and stinging reproaches. Raidler's attitude toward his charge was quite inexplicable in its way. The cattleman seemed actually to assume and feel the character assigned to him by McGuire's intemperate accusations—the character of tyrant and guilty oppressor. He seemed to have adopted the responsibility of the fellow's condition, and he always met his tirades with a pacific, patient, and even remorseful ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry

... Lavengro with regard to drink is open to little censure, assuredly the use which he makes of his fists is entitled to none at all. Because he has a pair of tolerably strong fists, and knows to a certain extent how to use them, is he a swaggerer or oppressor? To what ill account does he turn them? Who more quiet, gentle, and inoffensive than he? He beats off a ruffian who attacks him in a dingle; has a kind of friendly tussle with Mr. Petulengro, and behold the extent of ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow

... with all my soul," replied Ulrica; "I also have had my hours of vengeance; I have fomented the quarrels of our foes; I have seen their blood flow, and heard their dying groans; I have seen my oppressor fall at his own board by the hand of his own son. Yet here I dwelt, till age, premature age, has stamped its ghastly features on my countenance, scorned and insulted where I was once obeyed. Thou art the first I have ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten

... host in Wuerzburg was undoubtedly a source of great weakness to the movement. In the east, in the Tyrol and Salzburg, there were similar risings to those farther west. In the latter case the prince-bishop was the obnoxious oppressor. ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax

... glance, They never until then of beauty tasted: So I, by lonely contemplation led To muse awhile amid the silent dead— Turn me from all around I hear or see— From all of Shakspeare and of great to thee: And think on all thy wrongs—on all the shame That dims for ever thine oppressor's name; On all thy faults, nor few nor far between, But then thou wert—a woman and a queen. Proud titles, even in a barb'rous age, To stem th' impetuous tide of party rage; While as I gaze each well-known feature seems To stir with life, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... stand shoulder to shoulder and fight off nature's calamities as the French fought off their oppressor at Verdun. I repeat, we could let nature oppress us as she oppresses the meek Chinese—let her whip us with cold, drought, flood, isolation ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... by Josephus's accounts, both here and in his Antiquities, B. XIV. ch. 11. sect. 2, that this Cassius, one of Caesar's murderers, was a bitter oppressor, and exactor of tribute in Judea. These seven hundred talents amount to about three hundred thousand pounds sterling, and are about half the yearly revenues of king Herod afterwards. See the note on Antiq. B. XVII. ch. 11. sect. 4. It also appears that Galilee then ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus

... which shows the views of a singularly able, impartial, and fair-minded Irishman. "The breaking of leases was another risky thing to do, for it shook all faith in the sovereignty of the law and the finality of its dicta. Till Mr. Gladstone made himself the champion of the tenants and the oppressor of the landlords, Parliament never dreamed of revising rents paid under leases. Mr. Gladstone began by breaking these leases when held for a certain term defined by him. But we cannot stop there now. If another Land Bill is to be brought ...
— About Ireland • E. Lynn Linton

... Persian had spared. The Jauts established themselves on the Jumna. The Seiks devastated Lahore. Every part of India, from Tanjore to the Himalayas, was laid under contribution by the Mahrattas. The people were ground down to the dust by the oppressor without and the oppressor within, by the robber from whom the Nabob was unable to protect them, by the Nabob who took whatever the robber had left to them. All the evils of despotism, and all the evils of anarchy, pressed at once on that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... the idol, destroyed the oppressor! Always we felt we were good as the rest, Now from the mouth of K. PEARSON, Professor, Hear we the truth that the younger are best. Vanished the halo that shone round the first-born Now that Eugenics proclaim ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 25, 1914 • Various

... the unspoken fervor, the sacred fury of the fight. Yours is the power to redress wrong, to defend the weak, to succor the needy, to relieve the suffering, to confound the oppressor. While vigor leaps in great tidal pulses along your veins, you stand in the thickest of the fray, and broadsword and battle-axe come crashing down through helmet and visor. When force has spent itself; you withdraw from the field, your weapons pass into younger hands, you rest ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... side, By deeds of arms dispelled the foemen's pride. heir lives they saved not, bidding Death make clear— Impartial Judge!—their courage or their fear. For Greece they fought, lest, 'neath the yoke brought low, In thraldom she th' oppressor's scorn should know. Now in the bosom of their fatherland After their toil they rest—'tis God's command. 'Tis God's alone from failure free to live;[n] Escape from Fate to no ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes

... loved one for whose sympathy he had longed was given nothing but her husband's lifeless corpse.[39] They buried of him all that earth could bury; but his undaunted spirit remained still among his people, cheering them in their misfortunes, and ever calling upon them to resist the hand of the oppressor. Sten Sture's character is one which draws forth a warmth of sentiment such as can be felt for no other character of his time. Living in an age when hypocrisy was looked upon with honor, and when falsehood ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson

... civilization throughout the world, that we can scarcely ever tire in contemplating the instrumentalities by which, under Divine guidance, it was effected. It has taught mankind that oppression and misrule, under any government, tends to weaken and ultimately destroy the power of the oppressor; and that a people united in the cause of freedom and their inalienable rights, are invincible by those ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter

... Armenian. Under British rule he suddenly found these latter on an equal footing with him, and he felt that this did not compensate the lifting from his shoulders of the Turkish burden. Then, too, when a race has been long oppressed and downtrodden, and suddenly finds itself on an equality with its oppressor, it is apt to become arrogant and overbearing. This is exactly what happened, and there was bad feeling on all sides in consequence. However, real fundamental justice is appreciated the world over, ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... enemy or oppressor doing great deeds Aristocratic assumption of licence But what is it we do (excepting cricket, of course) Consent of circumstances Continued trust in the man—is the alternative of despair Critical fashion of intimates who know as well as hear Despises ...
— Quotations from the Works of George Meredith • David Widger

... held out to him a photograph of the Donatello David at Florence—the divine young hero in his shepherd's hat, fresh from the slaying of the oppressor. ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Another Indian expression. The last resource against oppression or injustice in India is to commit suicide by starvation or some violent means, and to lay the blame on the oppressor. This is supposed to bring the curse ...
— Three Frenchmen in Bengal - The Commercial Ruin of the French Settlements in 1757 • S.C. Hill

... cast out the Christian dogs and restore the sceptre of empire to the hand of a devout believer in Allah. Turkey, Assyria, Asia Minor, Persia, Arabia, India, Egypt, the whole of Africa, should be freed from the yoke of the oppressor. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... nothing but anarchy. Under anarchy progress was at an end. The individual must give up something of his rights to the state and the community. He gave up a certain amount of liberty, but received therefor an equivalent in protection. The law was, therefore, no oppressor, no monster, no usurer, no austere being, reaping where it had not sown. The law was nothing to be dreaded, nothing to be feared; and, upon the other hand, it was nothing to ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough

... when here below, we shall live obedient to His ordinances and who also will require of us all, when we depart hence to His presence, an account of our life, since He is Judge of all proud wrongdoing; for the groans of the oppressed become the punishment of the oppressor. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda

... of the Table Round, a knight vowed, not only to deeds of hardihood, but also to gentleness and courtesy; and faithfully he served the King, fighting ever to maintain justice and put down wrong, and to defend the weak from the oppressor. ...
— Stories from Le Morte D'Arthur and the Mabinogion • Beatrice Clay

... mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society. That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... justice and righteousness and deliver him that is robbed out of the hand of the oppressor; and do no wrong, do no violence, to the sojourner, the fatherless, nor the widow; neither shed ...
— Stories of the Prophets - (Before the Exile) • Isaac Landman

... religious sentiment was to dissolve all the ties of human brotherhood; when uniformity of faith was to be purchased by the sacrifice of any rights, even those of intellectual freedom; when, in fine, the Christian and the Mussulman, the oppressor and the oppressed, were to be alike bowed down under the strong arm of ecclesiastical tyranny. The means by which a revolution so disastrous to Spain was effected, as well as the incipient stages of its progress, are topics that fall within the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... in this world that cared for me—if I had anywhere to go, I'd leave him this hour!" declared Ollie, her face burning with the hate of her oppressor. ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden

... the period in a sense culminated in the great Ramessu II, the oppressor of the Hebrews, who with his Egyptian, Libyan, and Negro armies fought half the world. His reign, however, was the beginning of decline, and foes began to press Egypt from the white north and the black south. The priests transferred their ...
— The Negro • W.E.B. Du Bois

... except the exclusive right of cultivation," he only, in deference to the Bavarian policy of the time, which wished to copy Mohammed Ali's administration in Egypt, caricatured a misconception of the right of property equally strong in every Greek, whether he be the oppressor or the oppressed. Even the late National Assembly has not thought it necessary to correct any of the invasions of private property by the preceding despotism. Individuals, almost ruined by the plunder of their land, have not even received the offer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various

... recover his full liberty. The 22d the king feasted Asaph Khan. The 25th Asaph Khan feasted Noormahal. It is reported the Prince Cusero is to make a firm alliance, as above stated, and is to take a wife of his father's choice. This will produce his entire liberty, and the ruin of our proud oppressor, Churrum. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr

... and great Lordships, taking a resolution the most favourable upon the said request, have discovered thereby, that they would not abandon the footsteps of their ancestors, who found, in the united sentiments of magistrates and citizens, the resources necessary to resist a powerful oppressor, who even would not have undertaken that difficult, but glorious task, if they had not been supported by the voice of the most respectable ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams

... returns at evening to a home that is his own, there is a sense of coming joy and freedom which may support him throughout the weary hours of labour. But think what it must be to share one's home with one's oppressor; to have no recurring time when one is certain to be free from those harsh words, and unjust censures, which are almost more than blows, aye even to those natures we are apt to fancy so hardened to rebuke. Imagine the deadness of heart that must prevail in that poor wretch who never hears ...
— The Claims of Labour - an essay on the duties of the employers to the employed • Arthur Helps

... wealth: Rough and unyielding, like their native soil, The hardy sons of Nature and of Toil; Resistless vigour, resolute and warm, Strings every nerve, and braces every arm. Foremost to vindicate the righteous cause, And from th' oppressor guard their injur'd laws, Thro' many a rolling century these have shone Th' unfailing champions of the Swedish throne, And now with all my forces singly cope, Sweden's last bulwark, and her choicest hope. ...
— Gustavus Vasa - and other poems • W. S. Walker

... an underhung sneer—"bowin' your heads before the Oppressor that comes to spend his leisure gloatin' ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling

... and oppressor of all who ascended and descended this river, is dead, sir, and with your help, I hope that a new period of peace will open on the land. The time was ripe at last, and I sent to my ...
— The Rajah of Dah • George Manville Fenn

... and the abbots of the neighboring convents, with priests and people from all the region around, together with a great number of horsemen and footmen, made a grand parade, and came down like locusts upon the Protestants. Their former oppressor is dead, but his son, Tamir Beshoor, is making his little finger thicker than his father's loins. He headed a grand parade, and brought with him a supply of new garments, which he had purchased as bribes for the occasion. With the bishop ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume II. • Rufus Anderson

... "Our father's oppressor rather," she insisted scornfully. But she had said her say; and, besides, the lads and little Flora had heard their voices, and ...
— Shenac's Work at Home • Margaret Murray Robertson

... neutral powers in search of deserters from her navy. The only neutral power in Europe was Sardinia; so that the United States was the only neutral power that had vessels upon the ocean; and the President of the United States was conniving against England with the usurper and oppressor of Europe. ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson

... allowed to return and reorganize instruction. The result was that a common discontent with ensuing conditions made Italians conscious of their racial and historical unity, and this finally expressed itself in the revolutions of 1848. These failed at the time, and the heel of the Austrian oppressor came down harder than before. Liberty of the press practically ceased. The national leaders went into exile for safety. The prisons were filled with political offenders. The schools were closed or ceased to influence. The Pope, fearing the end of his earthly kingship ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY

... there would be no one in the office of the Chief of Engineers at Washington, but Loring addressed it direct to the home of the assistant, upon whose interest in the case he had reason to rely, and then returned at once to his desk. Were he not to be there it would place it in the power of a would-be oppressor to say the officer designated to receive the property had called during office hours and could not find Mr. Loring. And then, with such patience as he could command, Loring received the visitors who kept dropping in, among them the ...
— A Wounded Name • Charles King

... attempt against the unity of our national power and the integrity of our free institutions. Not always in human affairs has the cause of right and freedom prevailed. In the gradual development of human society, as unfolded in the lapse of long ages, the oppressor has generally triumphed, and history has full often been compelled to record the failure of the noblest efforts, and the downfall of the most righteous designs conceived for the benefit of man. Such has been the experience of the race in those parts of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... when I am here, I am not so shut out from the world and its great interests as you seem to imagine. I see History enacting itself before my eyes, and I cannot sit by with averted face. I hear the grand chant of Liberty as the beautiful goddess comes nearer and nearer and smites down one Oppressor after another with her red right hand; and I cannot shut my ears. I have been an actor in the great drama of Revolution ever since a lad of twelve. I saw my father borne off in chains to Siberia, and heard my mother with her dying breath curse the tyrant who had sent him there. Since that day Conspiracy ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 3, March, 1891 • Various

... not expected for two months, as the last was but a fortnight gone. Le Brunnec had not a match, nor Kriech. The governor had not returned. The only alternatives were to go lightless and smokeless or to assault the heartless oppressor. Many dark threats were muttered on the cheerless paepaes and in the dark huts, but in variety of councils there was no unity, and none dared assault alone the yellow-walled hut in which O Lalala smiled among ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... the war ended, and he was on the point of taking his final departure, he presented himself to Congress, and contemplating in his affectionate farewell the Revolution he had seen, expressed himself in these words: "May this great monument raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the oppressor, and an example to the oppressed!" When this address came to the hands of Dr. Franklin, who was then in France, he applied to Count Vergennes to have it inserted in the French Gazette, but never could obtain his consent. ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine

... in Mrs. Trevarthen from the doorway, "that Sall here ill-wished 'en. But she didn't. 'Twas his own sins compassed his end. Look to your ways, Peter Benny! Your master was an unbeliever and an oppressor, and now he's ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... way, and then—oh, then, it would just be good to be alive! Meantime he would diligently keep up his reputation for meekness; and also, as always theretofore, he would allow no one to hear him say a resentful or offensive thing about his oppressor. ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain

... Regardless of the contradictions to this law in the life of the individual, its supremacy in the life of empires has throughout man's history been decreed and proclaimed. Hebrew thought was perplexed and amazed from the remotest periods at the felicity of the oppressor and the unjust man, and the misery of the good. But the sublime and inspired rhetoric of Isaiah rests upon the assumption that the punishment of wrong, uncertain amongst men, is sure amongst nations ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb

... anger, bitter opposition to the violation of liberty, are of little avail if the psychological factors are favourable to amalgamation. A few decades, a few centuries, and there is fusion between oppressor and oppressed. Hence the loyalty of conquered nations to their foreign masters, at times, when rivals vainly hope for trouble. Hence the indisputable fact that many a nation which but a short time ago fought valiantly for liberty now manifests not only passive resignation, ...
— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... oppressed, stayed upon the plantation in peace, our oppressors were upon the field of battle engaged in mortal combat; and it was the blood of our oppressor, not our own, that was paid as the price of our freedom. And that same God is alive to-day; and let us trust Him for vengeance, and if we pray let our prayer be for mercy on those who have wronged us, for direful shall ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs

... as it were Effect an entire Ignorance, whereby an exorbitant Power is chearfully submitted to, and a perfect Obedience paid to Tyranny; and the Ignorance and Superstition of these People so powerfully prevail, that the greatest Oppressor is commonly the most entirely Belov'd, which I take to be sufficiently ently Illustrated in the late Lewis the Fourteenth, whose Arbitrary Government was so far from Diminishing the Affections of his Subjects, that it highten'd their Esteem for ...
— A Vindication of the Press • Daniel Defoe

... the Art of Persuasion, to remind you how sacred truths may be most ardently promulgated at the altar—the cause of oppressed innocence be most woefully defended—the march of wicked rulers be most triumphantly resisted—defiance the most terrible be hurled at the oppressor's head. In great convulsions of public affairs, or in bringing about salutary changes, every one confesses how important an ally eloquence must be. But in peaceful times, when the progress of events ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... thought that this poor varlet, thus trembling before the brief authority of a country Squire, and the sport of rustic boors, was soon to become the delight of princes; the theme of all tongues and ages; the dictator to the human mind; and was to confer immortality on his oppressor by ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume I. - Great Britain and Ireland • Various

... hypocritical recommendation. When on the one side there is a strong man, poor, and a victim of robbery—on the other, a weak man, but rich, and a robber—it is singular enough that we should say to the former, with a hope of persuading him, "Wait till your oppressor voluntarily renounces oppression, or till it shall cease of itself." This cannot be; and those who tell us that capital is by nature unproductive, ought to know that they are provoking a terrible and ...
— Essays on Political Economy • Frederic Bastiat

... majesty, for daring to contradict you," said Hardenberg, smiling; "it is better to keep the crown, and submit to necessity as long as possible, in order to be able to take future revenge on the oppressor. At times I am likewise tortured by the doubts and fears now disquieting the noble soul of your majesty. But at such hours I always repeat to myself, in order to justify our course, a few words from the letter which the Duke de Bassano ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach

... 19th of April, 1775, the men of Acton left their homes upon these hills, and their families anxious and disconsolate, that they and their descendants might have homes undisturbed by the hand of the oppressor. ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell

... Sophy opened the door wide, and entered boldly. She had heard her grandfather's voice raised, though its hoarse tones did not allow her to distinguish his words. She was alarmed for him. She came in, his guardian fairy, to protect him from the oppressor of six feet high. Rugge's arm was raised, not indeed to strike, but rather to declaim. Sophy slid between him and her grandfather, and, clinging round the latter, flung out her own arm, the forefinger raised ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... will. Ay, for Aegisthus is not here, who barred Your rashness from defaming your own kin Beyond the gates. But now he's gone from home, You heed not me: though you have noised abroad That I am bold in crime, and domineer Outrageously, oppressing thee and thine. I am no oppressor, but I speak thee ill, For thou art ever speaking ill of me— Still holding forth thy father's death, that I Have done it. So I did: I know it well: That I deny not; for not I alone But Justice slew him; and if you had sense, ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles

... a dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, little as his friends were to me, and much as I repudiated his sacrifices on their behalf, that very minute I might have led the first assault on their oppressor. In a sudden fury the savage had hurled his empty tumbler into the fireplace, and followed the crash with such a volley of abuse as I have seldom heard ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... men, women, and children, in a general massacre. The bodies of these people lay in the streets tainting the air, while the two sovereigns sat here sipping their coffee, and swearing to the most deliberate lies in the name of their God, Prophet, and Koran;—all are now dust; that of the oppressor undistinguishable ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... belonging to his ancient house." "If your ancestors and your ancient house be all that you can bring in your defence, you may go the same road as he," said one of the devils, "because we can scarcely remember one ancient house, of which some oppressor, murderer, or strong thief did not lay the foundation, and which he did not transmit to people as froward as himself, or to lazy drones, or drunken swine, to maintain whose extravagant magnificence, the vassals and the tenantry must be squeezed to death, whilst every ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne

... her invaders, infused into her system a malady from which she was to suffer in the future; for the pampered veterans whom he had distributed throughout Italy in scenes of peace, all unwonted to such a life, were to be the ones on which another oppressor was to depend in his efforts ...
— The Story of Rome From the Earliest Times to the End of the Republic • Arthur Gilman

... until he had seized upon the principal jewels, and likewise put out the eyes of the last of the unfortunate family of Afrasiab. Scindiah came to the rescue of the sightless Shah Allum, and though he destroyed his oppressor, only increased his slavery; holding him in as painful a bondage as he had suffered under the ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... gulped down a good draught at the first, drinking then more sparingly. He gave an angry sigh as often as he woke from the delightful dream; and his anger went out against the pitiless manager, the weaver, the miserable skinflint, the little stumpy fellow, the oppressor, the seller of his soul, the poisonous Jew. After he had fumed enough at the manager, he began to be sorry for himself and fell into a tearful mood; but finally he made a resolution to work the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various

... no mistaking the absolute intention in this threat; it was fixed and final, and the boy accepted it as he accepted his oppressor's power to make good his words. It was true that he might have escaped already; the nearer he had been to it, the less chance was he likely to be given again. So reasoned Pocket from the face and voice now dominating him more powerfully than ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... that fine spirit of his which had ever prompted him to defend the weak against the oppressor, stirred him now, and stirred him to such purpose that, in the end, from taking up the burden of his task reluctantly, he came to bear it zestfully and almost gladly. He was rejoiced to discover himself equipped with histrionic gifts of which he had had no suspicion hitherto, and it ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini

... life So manifold in cares, whose every day Brings its own evil with it, makes it less. For he has wings that neither sickness, pain, Nor penury, can cripple or confine. No nook so narrow but he spreads them there With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds His body bound, but knows not what a range His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain; And that to bind him is a vain attempt, Whom God delights in, and in whom ...
— The Task and Other Poems • William Cowper

... boy was really unable to do more than struggle to his knees. There he knelt trying to recover his breath, and not yet wholly conquered, though unable to make any further threatening gestures toward his cruel oppressor. ...
— The Chums of Scranton High - Hugh Morgan's Uphill Fight • Donald Ferguson

... on the awful night when the Inca Atahuallpa was strangled by the Spaniards in the great square of Caxamalca. From that moment the ancient Peruvian people have looked for the coming of my lord to free them from the yoke of the foreign oppressor, to give them back their country, and to restore them to the proud position which they occupied ere the coming of the cruel Spaniard; and now that my lord has deigned to appear we should be foolish indeed to permit anything—anything, Lord—to stand in the ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood

... him unworthy of such honours, even as he is unworthy of the life whereof my sword shall deprive him. In truth, his very birth was a sacrilege; he is a fratricide, an usurper of the goods of other men, an oppressor of the innocent, and a highway assassin; he is a man who will violate every law, even, the law of hospitality respected by the veriest barbarian, a man who will do violence to a virgin who is passing ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... devil as I am—a damned wretch, A hardened, stubborn, unrepenting villain, Still my heart melts at human wretchedness; And with sincere but unavailing sighs I view the helpless children of distress: With tears indignant I behold the oppressor Rejoicing in the honest man's destruction, Whose unsubmitting heart was all his crime.— Ev'n you, ye hapless crew! I pity you; Ye, whom the seeming good think sin to pity; Ye poor, despised, abandoned vagabonds, Whom Vice, as usual, has turn'd o'er to ruin. Oh! but for ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... of the idea which a man entertains that kills him. Freedom for every creature that bears God's image—the breaking of the rod of the oppressor and letting the oppressed go free—this is a good idea. It is so great, so broad, so full, so flowing, that a world of men might gather around it for a time as they do around Niagara, and grow divine in its majestic music ...
— Lessons in Life - A Series of Familiar Essays • Timothy Titcomb

... heart, and made their children read Calamy's account of the 2,000 ejected ministers along with the stories of Daniel in the Lion's Den and Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego. Sympathy for the persecuted, unbending resistance to the oppressor, was the creed which had passed into their blood. 'This covenant they kept as the stars keep their courses; this principle they stuck by, for want of knowing better, as it sticks by them to the last. It grew with their growth, it does not wither in their decay.... It glimmers with the last feeble ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen

... extinguished the lamp, with its poisonous odor, and, wrapping herself in her cloak threw open the window and sat in the gloom, softly chatting about this and that. Lena made no coherent answers. She lay in sullen torment, casting tearful glances at her benevolent oppressor. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie

... of that kingdom was nearly equally divided between the two parties. The people of England, who aspired after liberty and felt the throb of nobler manhood in their pulse, had asked Scotland to combine forces against the oppressor. The outcome was the Solemn League and Covenant which united ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters

... written five hundred years before the event! In that sublime anticipation of the future, he observed—"When the Romans shall be hunted out from those countries which they have conquered, what will then happen? The revolted people, freed from their master oppressor, will not be able to subsist without destroying their neighbours, and the most cruel wars will exist ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... cause worth fighting for," said the young man, his brow changing again. "It is only to add weight to the oppressor's hand, or throw away life in the vain endeavour to avert ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... men bound together by an obligation to stand by one another in weal or in woe, regardless of their own lives, and without inquiring into one another's antecedents. A bad man, however, having joined the Otokodate must forsake his evil ways; for their principle was to treat the oppressor as an enemy, and to help the feeble as a father does his child. If they had money, they gave it to those that had none, and their charitable deeds won for them the respect of all men. The head of the society was ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford

... betrayed by his feelings into any extremity of action concerning him, he resolved at once to write him a note, declaring that their relationship was known, and that should any further persecution be offered, the same should at once be made public to the oppressor's disgrace. ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... vindictive cruelty makes the mind run forward and dwell with a glow of satisfied justice on the bitter days of retaliation and revenge which in a future, still thirty years off, will humble the proud and pitiless oppressor in the dust; when he shall be a suppliant, and a suppliant in vain, at the feet of the haughty victors of Blenheim, Ramillies, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... also quoted from "that eminent jurist Vattel" the following words: "When a people from good reasons take up arms against an oppressor, it is but an act of justice and generosity to assist brave men in the defence ...
— Lady John Russell • Desmond MacCarthy and Agatha Russell

... boy; "he is calling his mate." "No," said I, "it is because the eagle is after him. Wait a bit." In fact, the eagle was already in pursuit, and the hawk, as he always does, had begun struggling upward with all his might. That is the fish-hawk's way of appealing to Heaven against his oppressor. He was safe for that time. Three negroes, shad-fishers, were just beyond us (we had seen them there in the morning, wading about the river setting their nets), and at the sight of them and of us, I have no doubt, the eagle turned away. The boy was not peculiar in his ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey

... bottom of my soul! But I look forward to that serene calm when I shall sleep with Kings and Counsellors of the earth. There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest!—There the prisoners rest together—they hear not the voice of the oppressor; and I trust that there my breast will not be ruffled by the storm of sin—for the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me. I was not in safety, neither had I rest; yet trouble came. It is the Lord, let him do what ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... The real oppressor, enslaver and corrupter of the people is the bible. That book is the chain that binds, the dungeon that holds the clergy. That book spreads the pall of superstition over the colleges and schools. That book puts out the eyes ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll

... which does not exist for the purpose of adding to human happiness has no excuse for being. And once when he was down among his own people he saw an Egyptian taskmaster or foreman striking an Israelitish workman, and in wrath he arose and killed the oppressor. The only persons who were witnesses to this affair were two Hebrews. The second day after the fight, when Moses was attempting to separate two Hebrews who had gotten into an altercation with each other, they taunted him by saying, "Who gavest thee to be a ruler over us?—wilt ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... myself, I find not the materials of such a tempest as is comen upon me. I have been (as your Majesty knoweth best) never author of any immoderate counsel, but always desired to have things carried suavibus modis. I have been no avaricious oppressor of the people. I have been no haughty or intolerable or hateful man, in my conversation or carriage. I have inherited no hatred from my father, but am a good patriot born. Whence should this be? For these are the things that ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church

... came to me with their grievances, in full assurance that sooner or later I would see them redressed. And so, with no intention on my part, and almost without my own consent, I suffered myself to be set up between the oppressor and the oppressed. From that time I had no peace. Day after day I was called upon to resist the wanton cruelty of judges and magistrates, till at last I found myself at feud with the whole "San Luang." In cases of torture, imprisonment, ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens

... the threshold of his door, Vixnu sprang at him, tore him to pieces, and drank his blood. But the blood affected Vixnu so much that he became stupid. Vixnu's fifth transformation was into a dwarf. At that time a cruel king's subjects appealed to Vixnu to relieve them of their oppressor, and, to carry out the people's desire, he, in the form of a dwarf, went to the city where the tyrant kept court. The dwarf begged from the king a grant of three feet of ground whereon to build himself a house. The tyrant was about to comply with the request, when the morning star, ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant

... the Master of Ravenswood. "On my soul, I had no such intention; I meant but to confront the oppressor ere I left my native land, and upbraid him with his tyranny and its consequences. I would have stated my wrongs so that they would have shaken his ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott

... the mystery was at length dissolved. And what an explanation! A Norman, a noble, an oppressor of the people, a plunderer of the church—all the characters and capacities that Sybil had been bred up to look upon with fear and aversion, and to recognise as the authors of the degradation of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... you should, for where, oh! where is his aiquil to be found? Like yourself, every one that comes near him must love him; and, like you, again, isn't he charity itself to the poor, no matter what their creed may be—oh, no! it's he that is neither the bigot nor the oppressor, although God he knows what he himself is sufferin' from both. God's curse on that blasted Sir Robert Whitecraft! I declare to mercy, I think, if I was a man, that I'd shoot him, like a mad dog, and free the country of him ...
— Willy Reilly - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... future husband, will ever interfere with your happiness by thrusting ourselves upon you, or endanger your social position by proclaiming our relationship. Our paths lie so widely apart that they need never cross. You walk on the side of the oppressor—I, thank God, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb

... centuries they've been telling, Crime, like an asp, I'd gladly crush Upon the threshold of my dwelling, But shall not join a purblind rush Of panic-stricken fools to play The oppressor's game, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various

... sense of Mrs. Oldham's words being fraught with some ugly and hidden meaning. In her voice there had been manifest an unsuspected quality which had revealed her for the moment as not all frivolous fool or spoiled and empty-headed doll; but a tyrant and oppressor, crueller and more menacing because infinitely ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow

... when Duke of York, at Holyrood, accompanied by Anne Hyde, when Duchess of York, James became extremely popular in Edinburgh; in the Highlands his hold of the affections of the chieftains had a deeper origin. The oppressor of the English had endeavoured to become the emancipator of the chieftains. The rigour of the feudal system, which was carried to its utmost extent in the Highlands, although softened by the patriarchal character of ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745. - Volume I. • Mrs. Thomson

... that this was the oppressor; he saw only the man, fresh roused from sleep, with the horror of impending dissolution in his eyes. And when the rider, behind whom he sat, pointed to a faint spark of light, at no great distance before them, and whispered that it was St. Agnes's Chapel, ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman

... Celtic Ireland had been allowed to grow up and develop by the side of each other untouched by Norman conquest. In the case of Ireland we should have been spared centuries of oppression which has profoundly reacted, as oppression always does, on the character of the oppressor; and it is difficult to believe that the Isle of Saints and of primitive Universities would not have produced some good fruits of its own. In the Norman conquest of England historical optimism sees a great political and intellectual blessing beneath the disguise ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... endeavour to declare la patrie en danger, as they had done at the close of the legislative assembly. But Sieyes, after having lost Joubert, sought for a general who could enter into his designs, and who would protect the republic, without becoming its oppressor. Hoche had been dead more than a year. Moreau had given rise to suspicion by his equivocal conduct to the directory before the 18th Fructidor, and by the sudden denunciation of his old friend Pichegru, whose treason he had kept secret for a whole year; Massena was not ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... consuming flame; Whose overruling mastership, Defied slow Reason's dull control! And felt for one of that vile race, To whom my tribe had given place; Was nursed in silence and in shame! Shame, for the weakness of a heart, Yet bleeding from th' oppressor's blow, Which could bestow its better part Upon the offspring of a foe! They, the mean delvers of the soil, The wielders of the felling axe,— Because we will not stoop to toil, Nor to its burdens bond our backs; Because we scorn Seduction's ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands

... except when he was making their lives a burden. For, as with most men who have suffered in their youth under oppression, his ambition was not so much to relieve the oppressed as to become in his turn the oppressor. Owing, perhaps, to his fine Scotch-Irish blood, which ran a little muddy in his veins, he had never lost a certain primitive feeling of superstition, like the decaying root of a religious instinct; and he was as strict ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow

... dream: ay, there 's the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there 's the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? who would ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... Revolution. Here was the weak place in Pitt's armour. By parting company with the reformers, he had embittered no small section of his countrymen. In 1794, as we have seen, he was considered a reactionary and an oppressor. He therefore could not appeal to the nation, as Carnot did in France. Even his Bill of March 1794 for increasing the Militia by an extension of the old custom of the ballot or the drawing of lots produced some discontent. ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... been a situation of such excruciating cross-purposes even in the three-act farce. The more we saw in the Irishman a sort of warm and weak fidelity, the more he regarded us with a sort of icy anger. The more the oppressor looked down with an amiable pity, the more did the oppressed look down with a somewhat unamiable contempt. But, indeed, it is needless to say that such comic cross-purposes could be put into a play; they have been put into a play. They have been put into what ...
— George Bernard Shaw • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... the fulfilment of a prophecy which, as spoken, was simply a promise that the northern parts of Israel which, by geographical position, had to bear the first and worst brunt of Assyrian invasion, should have deliverance from the oppressor? Yes; for Isaiah's vision of the light rising on Israel, crushed beneath foreign oppression, was based on a distinctly Messianic prediction. It was because Messiah should come that he expected Assyria ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... perennial passion, which, burning like the Vestal fire, chaste and eternal, never suffers generous sympathy to grow cold in maintaining the rights of the injured or in denouncing the crimes of the oppressor? ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke

... large-minded and free sagacity in Pope Innocent, and around Pompilia the tragic pathos of an incurable woe, which by its intensity might raise her to grandeur if it sprang from some more solemn source than the mere malignity and baseness of an unworthy oppressor. Lastly, there is nothing in The Ring and the Book of that "certain incommensurableness" which Goethe found in his own Faust. The poem is kept closely concrete and strictly commensurable by the very ...
— Studies in Literature • John Morley

... the chosen race Shall carry and bring them to their place: 80 In the land of the Lord shall lead the same Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame, When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er The oppressor triumph ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning

... recognition and adoption will make better the condition of his species; then, if he be a true man, he will speak, not in humble whispers, lest he offend potentates and powers; not ambiguously, that he may escape "the oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely," but in clarion tones, like another Peter-the- Hermit, who, bearing all, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, preached the crusade of the Holy Sepulcher till at last his words of fire burned through dull understandings, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... that the grand oppressor of your country is the Persian; why not attempt to free your country from his oppression—you have two hundred thousand pounds, and money is ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow

... their retainers, its courtiers and hangers-on, made up a considerable portion of the population; its shows supplied the entertainment, its gossip the politics of the hour. It was the seat of pageantry, the mirror of manners, the patron or the oppressor of every one. No one could be so humble as to escape coming somehow within its sway, and some of the greatest wrecked their lives in efforts to secure its approval. It is no wonder that the plays of Shakespeare deal so largely with kings, queens, and their courts. Under the Tudors, and still more ...
— The Facts About Shakespeare • William Allan Nielson

... to come there once, a great French farmer, an oppressor of swedes. Legends were told of him and his herd of cattle, dark traditions that passed down vegetable generations. It was somehow known in those fields ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany

... and garrison beside it; the fierce savage lured from a roving life, and changed into a toiling peon, afterwards to revolt against a system of slavery that even religion failed to make endurable; the neophyte turning his hand against his priestly instructor, equally his oppressor; revolt followed by a deluge of blood, with ruinous devastation, until the walls of both mission and military cuartel are left tenantless, and the redskin has returned to ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... wear out within that period. Shall you and I last to see the course the seven-fold wonders of the times will take? The Attila of the age dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and liberties of the world, shut up within the circuit of a little island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he has most injured. How ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... Truth's sake: or tell, 205 How that one Frenchman, [Q] through continued force Of meditation on the inhuman deeds Of those who conquered first the Indian Isles, Went single in his ministry across The Ocean; not to comfort the oppressed, 210 But, like a thirsty wind, to roam about Withering the Oppressor: how Gustavus sought Help at his need in Dalecarlia's mines: [R] How Wallace fought for Scotland; left the name Of Wallace to be found, like a wild flower, 215 All over his dear Country; [S] left the deeds Of Wallace, like a family of Ghosts, To people the steep rocks and ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. III • William Wordsworth

... suggests itself to me, Mr Murray, though I can hardly understand such conduct on the part of one of these wretched ill-used slaves towards the oppressor. But there, we ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn

... would'st not start, 1520 Nor fear the fire that lights an Eastern heart; 'Tis now the beacon of thy safety—now It points within the port a Mainote prow: But in one chamber, where our path must lead, There sleeps—he must not wake—the oppressor Seyd!" ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... cruel and enterprising, seemed to fit him for the situation. Delighting in the tumult and in the struggles of life, he was equally a stranger to pity and to fear; his very courage was a sort of animal ferocity; not the noble impulse of a principle, such as inspirits the mind against the oppressor, in the cause of the oppressed; but a constitutional hardiness of nerve, that cannot feel, ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... Bagdad. Hojaj Yusuf (a great tyrant) sent for him and said: "Put up a good prayer for me." He prayed, "O God! take from him his life!" Hojaj said, "For God's sake, what manner of prayer is this?" He answered: "It is a salutary prayer for you, and for the whole sect of Mussulmans.—O mighty sir, thou oppressor of the feeble, how long can this violence remain marketable? For what purpose came the sovereignty to thee? Thy death were preferable to thy tyrannizing ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous

... Burgundy; and yet, after his father's death, her marriage with that very Maximilian alone secured the possession of her paternal inheritance. Unsuccessful in schemes of conquest, and in political intrigue, as an oppressor of the Netherlands, he nearly carried out his plans. Those provinces he regarded merely as a bank to draw upon. His immediate intercourse with the country was confined to the extortion of vast requests. These were granted with ever-increasing reluctance, by the estates. The ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... accordance with the theory that this life is a state of trial and probation that the tastes can be explained. Happily, it is not very common. Most women know their strong from their weak points, and marshal them on the whole well in the encounter with their lawful oppressor and great enemy, man. And until they have won the victory to which Dr. Mary Walker is now leading them on, may they never lack the female vanity which makes it one of their great objects in life ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... oppression has its roots in the economic dependence of the oppressed upon the oppressor. In this condition woman finds herself, from an early day down to our own. The history of the development of human ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel

... at the great monastic house of Abingdon, where I have rejoined my brethren. I have already told how, in company with Elfwyn, Father Adhelm and I sought the forest farm where our beloved ones had found refuge from the cruel oppressor. The joy of the women and children to whom their husbands and fathers were thus restored was very touching; all seemed willing to forget the destruction of their homes, since they had been spared to each other, and I, to whom, by my vows, such love is unknown, ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... to the writer to be compelled to retrench the story of the early deeds for liberty of Bonivard and his boon companions. There is a rollicking swagger about them all, which by and by begins to be sobered when it is seen that on the side of the oppressor there is power. By violence, by fraudulent promises, by foul treachery on the part of cowardly citizens, the duke of Savoy gains admittance with his army within the walls of Geneva, and begins his delicious and bloody revenge for the indignities that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various

... known me, had he seen me as he was wont to see me, for he was in the habit of flogging me constantly. Perhaps," adds his victim, "he did not recognize me by my face!" But it is comforting to learn, in another place, that justice overtook the oppressor. "Dr. Butler only lived to be Dean of Peterborough; but his successor (Dr. Longley) became Archbishop of Canterbury." There is a great deal of Trollopian morality in the fate of these two men, the latter of whom "could not have said anything ill- ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne

... much-hated man among the oppressor class, as reformers of deep-seated abuses usually are; but he knew that the weak and helpless at all events would appreciate him. When Wilberforce, the great slavery abolitionist, was accused by an opponent of interference with the rights of man, he asked what those rights ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... wife, severed brother from sister as completely; for Hindley hated the swarthy child who was Cathy's favourite companion. When Mrs. Earnshaw died, two years after Heathcliff's advent, Hindley had learned to regard his father as an oppressor rather than a friend, and Heathcliff as an intolerable usurper. So, from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson

... was some considerable consultation and discussion between the outlaws as to the expediency of mixing themselves in the quarrels between the Norman barons. However, Cnut persuaded them that as the Baron of Wortham was an enemy and oppressor of all Saxons, it was in fact their own quarrel that they were fighting rather than that of the earl, and they therefore agreed to give their aid, and promised to be at the rendezvous outside the castle to be attacked, soon after dawn next morning. Cuthbert returned with ...
— Winning His Spurs - A Tale of the Crusades • George Alfred Henty

... expostulation with which the preceding chapter closes. He receives a comforting message, but one that will try the faith of God's people by its delay. Verse 3. It is an announcement of the overthrow of the Chaldean oppressor, carried out in a series of bold and vivid descriptions in which woe upon woe is pronounced against him for his rapine, covetousness, iniquitous oppression, and idolatry. The third chapter is a lyric ode in which the prophet, in view of both the judgments that God is about to execute on his ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows



Words linked to "Oppressor" :   torturer, tormentor, tormenter, dictator, switcher, oppress, unpleasant person, unkind person, meanie, authoritarian, persecutor, whipper, disagreeable person



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