"Overruling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... else would he have acted in the same manner; while the soldier whom he had rescued, and who was given up at the same time, also affirmed that he had interfered merely to prevent Dexippus and some others from overruling, for their own individual benefit, a proclaimed order of the entire army. Kleander, having observed that if Dexippus had done what was affirmed, he would be the last to defend him, but that no one ought to have been stoned without trial—desired ...
— The Two Great Retreats of History • George Grote
... are not a literal image of what takes place in the sphere of intelligence and freedom. Moral evil, wherever it is a factor in history, has its origin in the will of man. In respect to it, the agency of God is permissive and overruling. Through his providence, order is made to emerge, a worthy goal is at last reached, despite the elements of disorder introduced by ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... that," said Prospero; "let us not remember our troubles past, since they so happily have ended." And then Prospero embraced his brother, and again assured him of his forgiveness; and said that a wise overruling Providence had permitted that he should be driven from his poor dukedom of Milan, that his daughter might inherit the crown of Naples, for that by their meeting in this desert island, it had happened that the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... to worse. The State was in the grasp of a few usurpers at the centre and their committees through the shires; finings and imprisonings of the loyal were universal; and all true liberty for the subject was gone. The Church too had passed into confusion, "the Brownistical faction" overruling it, joined "in league with the Brownists and Independents in England, to the prejudice of Religion." [Footnote: Several times in the course of the document this accusation of Brownism or Independency comes ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... concrete and literal. No single fact of nature can be fully understood by our finite minds. But I do feel vaguely that the laws that compass us, and make our lives possible, point always on—"beyond the realms of time and space"—toward the existence of a mighty overruling spirit. If this is a cold and inadequate conception of God, it is at least one that can be held by ...
— The Untroubled Mind • Herbert J. Hall
... given up the law which Darwin called "Natural Selection," and Spencer himself cashiered the law which he had called "Survival of the Fittest." But evolutionists continue to assert that somehow, by the action of certain laws, that which exists has naturally—there is no need of divine Providence, overruling the affairs of men,—has naturally been developed out of its antecedents. And so history is read by the evolutionist. He sees in all the institutions of civilization, in every department of culture, in the rise and fall of nations, ...
— Evolution - An Investigation and a Critique • Theodore Graebner
... establishing as a fundamental principle upon which all my subsequent pursuits and regulations are to be established, that the acquisition, at least, of a respectable reputation is (subject to the overruling power and wisdom of Providence,) within my own power; and that on my part nothing is wanting, but a constant and persevering determination to tread in the steps which naturally lead to honor. And, at the same time, I am equally convinced, that I never shall attain that credit in the world, ...
— Life and Public Services of John Quincy Adams - Sixth President of the Unied States • William H. Seward
... soul. The soul, however, always adds some form and determination to the abstract formlessness of the "merely many." Next, we rise to, or project for ourselves, the world of "the one and the many." This is the sphere in which our consciousness normally moves. We are conscious of an overruling Mind, but the creatures still seem external to and partially independent of it. Such is the temporal order as we know it. Above this is the intelligible world, the eternal order, "the one-many," das ewige Nu, the world in which God's will is done ...
— Light, Life, and Love • W. R. Inge
... degraded the gods, (and have made them instruments of degradation for man,) that they were, one and all, incarnations; not, as even the Christian God is, for a transitory moment and for an eternal purpose; but essentially and by overruling necessity. The Greeks could not conceive of spirituality. Neither can we, metaphysically, assign the conditions of the spiritual; but, practically, we all feel and represent to our own minds the agencies of God, as liberated from ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... considered this objection, which, in some cases, is of no little weight. For example, a man may, by the influence of an overruling planet, be disposed or inclined to lust, rage, or avarice; and yet, by the force of reason, overcome that evil influence. And this was the case of SOCRATES. But the great events of the World usually depending upon numbers of men; it cannot be expected they should all unite ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... sympathies were sometimes called forth in behalf of the former. At all events, the same apology ought certainly to be admitted for the wealthy, as for the needy offender. They are subject alike to the overruling influence of necessity, and equally affected by the miserable condition of society. If it be natural for a poor man to murder and rob, in order to make himself comfortable, it is no less natural for a rich man to gormandise and domineer, in order to have the full ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... any other experience her faith in an overruling Providence. His return to health was to her a return from death: it was an answer to her prayers: it was a resurrection. Henceforth his life was a gift for the second time to himself, to her, to the world for which he must work with all his powers and ...
— The Reign of Law - A Tale of the Kentucky Hemp Fields • James Lane Allen
... overruling knowledge of God as the supreme fact in a practical world with that vague and ineffective subject for sentiment who had been the "God" of his Anglican days. Some theologian once spoke of God as "the friend behind phenomena"; ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... prejudices which had passed from the brain into the very blood of his race. He would probably say at the end: "I admit all that you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;" and this sentiment, overruling sense, would insist, with sublime obstinacy, that Gabriella must not work in a shop. It would ignore, after the exalted habit of sentiment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starvation (who ever heard of a woman of ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... called forth by the necessity of having a written standard of doctrine to which to appeal amid the growing differences of opinion which disturbed the Church. Thus the earlier gospels exhibit, though in different degrees, the indications of a modifying, sometimes of an overruling dogmatic purpose. There is, indeed, no conscious violation of historic truth, but from the varied mass of material supplied by tradition, such incidents are selected as are fit to support the views of the writers concerning the personality of Jesus. ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... God's providence, and exemplary in his respect for the forms of public worship, no philosopher of the eighteenth century was more firm in the support of freedom of religious opinion, none more remote from bigotry; but belief in God, and trust in his overruling power, formed the essence of his character. Divine wisdom not only illumines the spirit, it inspires the will. Washington was a man of action, and not of theory or words; his creed appears in his life, not in his professions, which burst from him ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... dream of a life with you which is perhaps too perfectly happy to be enjoyed on earth. And yet, I cannot resign my delusion. Must my poor heart always long for happiness which is beyond my reach? If an overruling Providence guides our course through this world, may we not sometimes hope for happier ends than our ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... men whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not content with acknowledging, in general terms, an overruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the will of the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was with them the great end of existence. They rejected with contempt the ceremonious ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... to have an efficient force on every mile of it, and which outbreak, therefore, neither may be able to suppress in a day, may take vengeance into its own hands, and without even a remonstrance, and in the absence of any pressing or overruling necessity may invade the territory of the other, would inevitably lead to results equally to be deplored by both. When border collisions come to receive the sanction or to be made on the authority of either Government general war must be the inevitable result. While it is the ardent desire ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... however, that after all her awkwardness she should fail. Given a blockhead like Armadale, and a dreamer like Midwinter, there is no reason in nature, and no reason in art, why a lady of Miss Gwilt's advantages should not marry both of them; and the author's overruling on this point is more creditable to his heart than to his head. These three people are the chief persons of the story, and their hands are tied from first to last They are not to act out their characters: they are to act out the plot; and the author's designs are accomplished ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... deliberation is, to promote the good purposes for which elections have been instituted, and to prevent their inconveniences. If we thought frequent elections attended with no inconvenience, or with but a trifling inconvenience, the strong overruling principle of the Constitution would sweep us like a torrent towards them. But your remedy is to be suited to your disease—your present disease, and to your whole disease. That man thinks much too highly, and therefore he thinks weakly and delusively, of any contrivance of human wisdom, ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... welcomed back by his father to her earthly home. And yet, how much still remained to be done! But, as he had worked on in faith and trust before, so he would continue trusting, watching, working, committing all to the wise guiding and overruling of that loving Father whose leading hand he had hitherto sought to follow, but ...
— Amos Huntingdon • T.P. Wilson
... act of the drama; and a spectator must be sadly deficient in spiritual insight if he does not perceive the hand of God overruling the strife of nations and the ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... universal element, expressed under different points of view according to the difference of religions, and the moral and intellectual cultivation of different nations. In the epic poem fate is represented as overruling the will, and making it instrumental to the accomplishment ...
— Literary Remains, Vol. 2 • Coleridge
... them into His great scheme. That is undeniable on one side, and on the other it is as undeniable that God's foreseeing leaves men free. God's putting men into circumstances where they fall is not His tempting them. God's non-prevention of sin is not permission to sin. God's overruling the consequences of sin is not His condoning of sin as part of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... old age, he had looked forward to the time when, as the curate of some retired parish, he might encourage the devout, reprove and control the erring, and, by his example, counsel, and prayers, so mould and influence the little community, that it should seem another Eden. But an overruling Providence had reserved for him a larger field of usefulness, a more extended mission of mercy, and it was through the path of trial that he was ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... and during that dreadful stillness, when she hushed her breath that she might listen, occurred an incident of killing fear, that to her dying day would never cease to renew its echoes in her ear. She, Mary, the poor trembling girl, checking and overruling herself by a final effort, that she might leave full opening for her dear young mistress's answer to her own last frantic appeal, heard at last and most distinctly a sound within the house. Yes, now beyond a doubt there is coming an ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... therefore, of my knowledge of the peninsular coast, and the pardonable ignorance of Captain Bunker, I endeavored, through my faithful subordinates, to reach a less known port, and a coast rarely frequented by reason of its prevailing fog. Here occurred one of those dispensations of an overruling power which, dear friend, we have so often discussed. We fell in with an unknown current, and were guided by a mysterious hand into the bay ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... delightful, has not devolved upon us as a public journalist. The elevation of the Right Rev., Father in God,, Phineas Lucre to the See of ———, is a dispensation to our Irish Establishment which argues the beneficent hand of a wise and overruling Providence. In him we may well say, that another bright and lustrous star is added to that dark, but beautiful galaxy, in the nether heavens above us, which is composed of our blessed Bishops. The diocese over which he has been ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... doubt been one of very peculiar difficulty, and no one will grudge him the warm tribute paid to him by Mr. Montagu. Whatever the merits of the great controversy between Lord Curzon and Lord Kitchener, the overruling of the Government of India by the Home Government on a question of such magnitude and the circumstances in which Lord Curzon was compelled to resign had dealt a very heavy blow to the authority and prestige of the ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... Millard hit upon during the night that followed Gouverneur's visit, he could not have told. He planned letters to her in a dozen different veins, and rejected them all. He thought of appealing to Mrs. Callender once more, but could not conceive of Mrs. Callender's overruling Phillida. His mind perpetually reverted to Agatha. If only he might gain her co-operation! And yet this notion of securing the assistance of a younger sister had an air of intrigue that he did ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... Aunt Charlotte had been born in servitude, the possession of their mother's mother. She had been their mother's handmaiden before their mother's marriage. Afterward she had been their own nurse, cradling them in babyhood on her black breast, spoiling them, training them, ruling them, overruling them, too, coddling them when they were good, nursing them when they were ailing, scolding them and punishing them when ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... to the object of this apparently purposeless journey. I have had much experience in the world you are so anxious to renounce, and although I have seen the wicked prosper for a time, yet my faith has never been shaken in an overruling Providence, and what happened last night set me thinking so deeply that daylight stole in upon ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... little more than miserably poor; and now this unfortunate complication had to arise to undo them—this Chicago fire. What a curious thing that was! If any one thing more than another made him doubt the existence of a kindly, overruling Providence, it was the unheralded storms out of clear skies—financial, social, anything you choose—that so often brought ruin and ...
— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser
... with a verdict of one penny damages. A motion was made for a new trial; but the court, too, had now lost the equipoise of their judgment, and overruled the motion by an unanimous vote. The verdict and judgment overruling the motion were followed by redoubled acclamations, from within and without the house. The people, who had with difficulty kept their hands off their champion from the moment of closing his harangue, no sooner saw the fate of the ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... tutelary deities, many of them, of their country: but as men and women like themselves, only more vast; with mightier wills, mightier virtues, mightier sorrows, and often mightier crimes; their inward free-will battling, as Schlegel has well seen, against outward circumstance and overruling fate, as every man should battle, unless he sink to be a brute. 'In tragedy,' says Schlegel—uttering thus a deep and momentous truth—'the gods themselves either come forward as the servants of destiny and mediate executors of its decrees, or approve themselves godlike ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... This vanity and presumption is now punished, and, I acknowledge, justly. I should have left it to Providence. Wise are the ways of the Almighty, and salutary all His dispensations to man. Were we not continually put in mind of an overruling Providence by reverses of this kind, the human heart, exalted with its own consequence, would soon cease to implore ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... I was exposed defenselessly to all such contingencies), and then lightly as thistle-down. On the rare occasions when the mal-de-mer proved too much for his valiant self-assertion, he yielded to an overruling fate without groan or complaint: folding the scanty coverlet around him, he would subside gradually into his berth, composing his little limbs as gracefully as Caesar. His courtesy was invincible and untiring: he was anxious to defer and conform even to my ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... through the trial, and inflict on his fellow men a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which he rose in rebellion to oppose. But we must wait with patience the workings of an overruling Providence, and hope that that is preparing the deliverance of these our suffering brethren. When the measure of their tears shall be full—when their tears shall have involved heaven itself in darkness—doubtless a God of justice will awaken to their distress, ...
— The Bobbin Boy - or, How Nat Got His learning • William M. Thayer
... a Princess in Exile!" he repeated, overruling her. "You come into these sordid surroundings—you mustn't mind my calling them sordid—and it makes them seem as though they didn't matter.... I don't think they do matter. I don't think any surroundings could throw a shadow ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... them from the door until their figures were lost in the darkness. When she returned to the dining-room, Clytie had already retired to her room, and Mrs. Morpher, overruling M'liss's desire to sit up until the master returned, bade her follow that correct example. "There's Clytie, now, gone to bed like a young lady, and do you do like her," and Mrs. Morpher, with this one drop of balm in the midst of her trials, trimmed the light ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... allowed the good sense of these replies, and at once explained to myself the philosophy which gave rise to them. The truth is, there is in human nature a deep sense of "the eternal fitness of things," which usually gives tone to the opinions of man, where undue prejudices do not exercise an overruling control. You know, my dear Godfrey, how unlikely it is that an American would ever care to pay you a second visit at the Hall, should he signalise his first by depreciating the character of Washington, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... tale it told of sweet anxiety for his fate overruling everything else in that moment—even her horror of Gian Maria—quickened his blood to the pace of ecstasy. He was taken by a wild longing to catch her in his arms—this lady hitherto so brave and daunted now by the fear of his peril only. Every fibre of his being ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... mankind a sailor has experienced most signal proofs of the omnipotence of God. Throughout the daily dangers they are exposed to is the underlying, as well as the overruling, sense of the Almighty Power that holds the heavens in the hollow ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... needless to specify them; they are, in general, all such as are known to affect us in the manner described. The catalogue will vary both in number and kind with different persons, according to the degree of force or developement in the overruling Principle. ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Senate did not reaffirm its ratification until the following February; and it was two years to a day after the signing of the treaty that Adams and Vives exchanged formal ratifications. Again Adams confided to the pages of his diary, so that posterity might read, the conviction that the hand of an Overruling Providence was visible in this, the most important event ...
— Jefferson and his Colleagues - A Chronicle of the Virginia Dynasty, Volume 15 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Allen Johnson
... a letter to the King the reasons why he should be Chancellor; criticising justly enough, only that he was a party interested, the qualifications of other possible candidates, Coke, Hobart, and the Archbishop Abbott. Coke would be "an overruling nature in an overruling place," and "popular men were no sure mounters for your Majesty's saddle." Hobart was incompetent. As to Abbott, the Chancellor's place required "a whole man," and to have both jurisdiction, ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... inkling of the line likely to be taken by supernatural agencies able, and possibly willing, to suspend or reverse that course. Indeed, logically developed, the dualistic theory must needs end in almost exclusive attention to Supernature, and in trust that its overruling strength will be exerted in favour of those who stand well with its denizens. On the other hand, the lessons of the great schoolmaster, experience, have hardly seemed to accord with this conclusion. They have taught, with considerable emphasis, that it does not answer to neglect Nature; ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley
... their toil and struggle, they have gone not whither they willed, but whither God willed? Have they not found out that for one circumstance of their lives which they could alter, there have been twenty which they could not, some born with them, some forced on them by an overruling Providence, irresistible indeed—but, as I hold, most loving and most fatherly, though often severe—even to agony—but irresistible still— till what they have really gained by fighting circumstance, however valiantly, has been the MORAL gain, the gain in character?—the ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... sectional prejudices find no place in the public deliberations. It will not be sufficient that the rash counsels of human passion are rejected. It must be felt that there is no national security but in the nation's humble, acknowledged dependence upon God and His overruling providence. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 3 (of 4) of Volume 5: Franklin Pierce • James D. Richardson
... that number for your husband; may he watch over you as I would have done!—love you as I do he cannot! Yes, I repeat it," continued Clifford, vehemently,—"he cannot! None amidst the gay, happy, silken crowd of your equals and followers can feel for you that single and overruling passion which makes you to me what all combined—country, power, wealth, reputation, an honest name, peace, common safety, the quiet of the common air, alike the least blessing and the greatest-are to all others! Once more, may God in ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... held some dim faith in an overruling Power and in a life beyond the grave. They offered human sacrifices to that Power, and when they buried one of their warriors, they buried his spear with him so that he might fight as good a battle in the next world as he had ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... on all sides, that the powers properly belonging to one of the departments ought not to be directly and completely administered by either of the other departments. It is equally evident, that none of them ought to possess, directly or indirectly, an overruling influence over the others, in the administration of their respective powers. It will not be denied, that power is of an encroaching nature, and that it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it. After discriminating, therefore, in theory, the several classes ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... had said, "A bone of Him shall not be broken." It seemed the most casual circumstance that the soldier plunged the spear into the side of Jesus, to make sure that He was dead; yet an ancient oracle, of which he knew nothing, had said, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced." Thus, by the overruling providence of God, the soldiers, going with rude unconcern about their work, were unconsciously fulfilling the Scriptures; and those who both saw what they had done and knew the Scriptures recognised the Divine finger pointing out Jesus as the Sent ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give him in that day. And He who gave him to us, and who so abundantly blest his labors, and helped him to accomplish so much for his country and his race, will not permit the country which He saved to perish. I believe in the overruling providence of God, and that, in permitting the life of our Chief Magistrate to be extinguished, He only closed one volume of the history of His dealings with this nation, to open another whose pages shall be illustrated with fresh developments of His love and sweeter ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... however, endeavored to calm and quiet him by soothing words. "My dearest husband," said she, "do not give way thus to anxiety and grief. The events which have befallen us, have not come by chance. They are all ordered by an overruling providence that is omnipotent and divine. It was predetermined by the decrees of heaven that you were not to take me with you in your flight. I have learned what your future destiny is to be. There is a long period of weary wandering before you, ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... thoughtlessness of his character, and no doubt her love and care would henceforth make the happiness of his life. So they said to one another with smiles, and not without grateful tears, in view of the overruling love and care visible in all they had to ...
— Janet's Love and Service • Margaret M Robertson
... under an overruling Providence for the defence of threatened external authority in religion, and producing admirable effects of uniformity, discipline, and obedience, served well in the politics of the Reformation and post-Reformation eras, when nearly all governments were absolute ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... encroachment upon another. With the strict observance of this rule and the other injunctions of the Constitution, with a sedulous inculcation of that respect and love for the Union of the States which our fathers cherished and enjoined upon their children, and with the aid of that overruling Providence which has so long and so kindly guarded our liberties and institutions, we may reasonably expect to transmit them, with their innumerable blessings, to ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume - V, Part 1; Presidents Taylor and Fillmore • James D. Richardson
... "this nation had enjoyed a greater amount of civil, political, social, and religious liberty than, as he believed, any other people in the world, that result had been accomplished, not by vesting in either of the three estates, the Crown, the Lords, or the Commons, exclusive or overruling power over the others, but by maintaining for each its own separate and independent authority, and also by the three powers combining together to bear and forbear, endeavoring by harmonious concert with each other to avoid those conflicts and clashings which must have arisen if independent ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... suppose. Emerson despised Calvinism, and had no definite opinions on any theological subject; Carlyle was a Calvinist without the theology of Calvinism, if that be possible. He did not, indeed, believe in historical Christianity, but he had the profoundest convictions of an overruling God, reigning in justice, and making the wrath of man to praise Him. Carlyle, too, despised everything visionary and indefinite, and had more respect for what is brought about by revolution than by evolution. But of all things ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIII • John Lord
... the free and voluntary act of the independent State of Texas in blending her destinies with our own. This course we shall ever pursue, unless circumstances should occur which we do not now anticipate, rendering a departure from it clearly justifiable under the imperative and overruling law of self-preservation. The island of Cuba, from its geographical position, commands the mouth of the Mississippi and the immense and annually increasing trade, foreign and coastwise, from the valley of that noble river, now embracing half the sovereign ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... barrels about in every direction. The escape of David from very serious injuries seemed almost miraculous. But our little barbarian leaped from the ruins unscathed. It does not appear that he had ever cherished any conception whatever of an overruling Providence. Probably, a religious thought had never entered his mind. A colt running by the side of the horses could not have been more insensible to every idea of death, and responsibility at God's bar, than was David Crockett. And he can be hardly blamed for this. The savages ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... fellow—the dupe of his own vanity and the tool of bad principles!"[218] Woodworth's action was severely criticised; and when, shortly afterward, the Bucktails in the Senate sitting as a Court of Errors, reversed a judgment against him for several thousand dollars, overruling the opinion of Chancellor Kent, it seemed to impeach ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... earnest conviction, but it is without a single word, from first to last, of asperity or insinuation against opponents; and this, not from any deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an overruling ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a more than ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... stand there talking, but run at once! Oh, Willis! Never tell me again that there's no such thing as an overruling providence. Oh, what an interposition! Oh, I can never be grateful and humble enough—Goodness me, Jane! why don't ...
— A Likely Story • William Dean Howells
... pretty foreign ways and kissed my hand. Dear little thing, I didn't spoze my talk had done her much good, but then I considered it couldn't do her any hurt 'tennyrate. And so I left the event to the overruling Power, just as we poor weak ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... Ambition's dreams were fled; Though o'er my blighted heart, Despair Desponded, love still nestled there; Love! how the pale-faced scorner's lip Would sneer, to hear me name that name; Yet was it deep within my soul A secret but 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 ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... spoke the other day," she said, after the conversation had turned directly on her father's affairs—"when you spoke the other day about a pillar of cloud, I suppose you meant what one might call—an overruling sense ...
— The Street Called Straight • Basil King
... surprised to discover that there is such a power, and that there is actually a disposition to exercise it. The public— the all-powerful omnipotent, overruling, law-making, law-breaking public—has a passing caprice to possess itself of your beloved Point; and Ned Effingham must show unusual energy, or it ...
— Home as Found • James Fenimore Cooper
... continued plot was carried on within the divan, black and white, of the Nabob of Arcot, for the destruction of Hyder Ali. As to the outward members of the double, or rather treble government of Madras, which had signed the treaty, they were always prevented by some overruling influence (which they do not describe, but which cannot be misunderstood) from performing what justice and interest combined so ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... nothing could resist; and though I had several times loud calls from my reason, and my more composed judgment to go home, yet I had no power to do it. I know not what to call this, nor will I urge that it is a secret overruling decree that hurries us on to be the instruments of our own destruction, even though it be before us, and that we rush upon it with ...
— Literary Remains (1) • Coleridge
... in man a primordial and overruling phenomenon which defies analysis. Man may be dissected completely; the elements of Will and Mind may perhaps be found; but there still will remain beyond apprehension the x against which I once used to struggle. That ...
— Louis Lambert • Honore de Balzac
... an overruling Providence, Morse says later in the same letter: "This delay and suspense tries me more than distance or even absence from my dear family. If I could be on my way and pursuing my profession I should feel much better. But all will be for the best; though things look dark I can and will trust ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... electricity, or of its sister force, magnetism, than what we find in Pliny's writings. There, without recognizing a qualitative distinction between them, he refers to the faculty of rubbed amber and of certain pieces of iron to attract other small pieces of matter. It required the awakening of that overruling interest in material nature, characteristic of our own age, for the essential difference between electric and magnetic attraction to be recognized. The first to give a proper description of this was Queen Elizabeth's doctor, Gilbert. His discovery was soon followed ...
— Man or Matter • Ernst Lehrs
... we may go so far as to say that the majority of us are secretly wishing they could say "Who did you see?" It would be a weight off their unconscious minds if some divine authority, overruling the lifted finger of the pedagogue, gave them carte blanche. But we cannot too frankly anticipate the drift and maintain caste. We must affect ignorance of whither we are going and rest content with our ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir
... objection—absolutely overruling, apparently, in Sherman's mind—to any further attempt by Sherman himself, with the main body of his army then in Georgia, to prosecute the primary military object of his campaign—the destruction or capture ...
— Forty-Six Years in the Army • John M. Schofield
... dead, too—struck by the lightning in the act of stealing those mules and that Cape cart. Don't let any fellow waste hot air after that trying to persuade me that there isn't such a thing as an overruling Providence!" ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... contention had been perfectly right under the special circumstances. Their arguments were quite right so long as they took the lower ground of expediency, though wrong when elevated to the position of ultimate principles, overruling arguments from expediency.[143] Toleration, he thinks, is in its right place as softening and moderating an inevitable conflict. The true ground for moral tolerance is that 'most people have no right to any opinion whatever ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Thus Gui de Lusignan, after flying from France for murder, was ultimately raised to the throne of Jerusalem. To the more vulgar class were held out inducements which, though absorbed in the more overruling fanaticism of the first crusade, might be exceedingly efficacious when it began rather to flag. During the time that a crusader bore the cross, he was free from suit for his debts, and the interest of them was entirely abolished; he was exempted, in some instances, at least, from taxes, ...
— The Freethinker's Text Book, Part II. - Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History • Annie Besant
... ELLIPSIS} From His overruling and eternal providence we have received also the support of the Apostle's aid, which assuredly does not cease from its operation; and the strength of the foundation, on which the whole lofty building of the Church is reared, is not weakened ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... events which, in the more recent history of mankind, have struck the minds of nations with awe, and appeared to reveal in its direct operation a power overruling the highest human effort, there is none equal in grandeur and terror to the annihilation of Napoleon's army in the invasion of Russia. It was natural that a generation which had seen State after State overthrown, and each new violation of right ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... of accustomed party allegiance gave way. Antislavery Democrats and antislavery Whigs felt themselves drawn together by a common overpowering sentiment, and soon they began to rally in a new organization. The Republican party sprang into being to meet the overruling call of the hour. Then Abraham Lincoln's time was come. He rapidly advanced to a position of conspicuous championship in the struggle. This, however, was not owing to his virtues and abilities alone. Indeed, the slavery question stirred his soul in its profoundest depths; it was, ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... sympathies are always on the side of what is right, noble, and honorable. He believed in a divine ordering of the world, and saw obscurely through the mists and shadows of heathenism the indications of the wisdom and rectitude of an overruling Providence. To him man did not appear as the sole arbiter of his own destiny, but rather as an unconscious agent in working out the designs of a Higher Power; and yet, as these designs were only dimly and imperfectly to be recognized, the noblest man was he who was truest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... might lead to an understanding among the new states formed out of the old possessions of the Hapsburgs. That, in fact, is why our transalpine allies were so favorable to the union of Austria with Germany. France on her side, whose one overruling thought is to reduce her vanquished enemy to the most complete impotence, France who is afraid of being afraid, will not tolerate an Austria joined to the German Federation." Here the principle of ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... by that restraining force which holds it to the pillar of the sun. Loose but the bond an instant, and it flies in wild, tangential flight, to shatter other worlds. The very bondage that we curse, and seek, in fretful mood, to break and burst, may keep us to the orbit that is traced, by overruling wisdom, for our good. We gravitate towards duty, though we sweep with errant course along the outer marge of the bare area of its tightened cord. Let but the wise restraint be rudely broke, and through life's peopled space we heedless rush, trampling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... dealt with, but the power of God has not been upon their wills and minds, and affections, rightly to subdue them to the grace of the gospel. (Psa. 110:3) Indeed there seems to be subjection of the will, and an overruling of the mind, and affections also, else they could not for a time lay aside their iniquity, come off from the pollutions of the world, and for a season rejoice in the world and be pleased with the light thereof. But we may consider, that this ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... wretches who had kindly harbored and protected him. To his sanguine expectations, expressed in the impassioned language of Scripture he loved to use, the enthusiastic girl would listen, with the warmest interest. Accustomed to assign every event to an overruling Providence, she thought she now saw clearly the hand of a superior Power in the occurrences which had compelled Holden, in the first instance, to take up his temporary residence among them. Temporary residence, we say, because the Solitary had since returned to his hut, which was at the distance ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... own inherited faith, no doubt because Mrs. Lowell was also a Swedenborgian; but I do not think he was interested in it, and I suspect that all religious formulations bored him. In his earlier poems are many intimations and affirmations of belief in an overruling providence, and especially in the God who declares vengeance His and will repay men for their evil deeds, and will right the weak against the strong. I think he never quite lost this, though when, in the last years of his life, I asked him if he believed there was a moral ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... profits might be divided among the slaves themselves. Experienced men warned me that I should fail; that such a plan would be destroyed by the innate selfishness and rivalry of human nature; that it demanded what was impossible to find, good faith, fraternal love, overruling moral influence. I answered, that I knew that already; that nothing but Christianity alone could supply that want, but that it could and should supply it; that I would teach them to live as sisters, by living with them as their sister myself. To become the teacher, the minister, the slave of ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... aspect of the guest-chamber had inspired him with a joyous credulity. It wooed him with its large and welcoming light, its four walls were golden white and warm, and in all its details he had found unmistakable evidences of design. There was an overruling coquetry in the decorative effects, in the minute little arrangements for his comfort. A finer hand than any housemaid's must have heaped that blue china bowl with roses, laid out that writing-table, and chosen the books in the shelf beside the bed. A woman ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... forgotten; stirring, eventful. grave, serious, earnest, noble, grand, solemn, impressive, commanding, imposing. urgent, pressing, critical, instant. paramount, essential, vital, all-absorbing, radical, cardinal, chief, main, prime, primary, principal, leading, capital, foremost, overruling; of vital &c. importance. in the front rank, first-rate; superior &c. 33; considerable &c. (great) 31; marked &c. v.; rare &c. 137. significant, telling, trenchant, emphatic, pregnant; tanti[Lat]. Adv. materially &c. adj.; in the main; above all, , par excellence, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... that number he has long since been absorbed; he was a drop in a vast ocean, and long ago he has been confounded with the waters that did not differ, except numerically, from his own. But the Jews are an obstinate, bigoted people; and they have maintained their separation, not by any overruling or coercing miracle, but in a way perfectly obvious and palpable to themselves—obvious by its operation, obvious in its remedy. They would not resign their customs. Upon these ordinances, positive and negative, commanding and forbidding many peculiar rites, consecrating ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... circumstances. (5) If I from my spy-hole, looking with purblind eyes upon the least part of a fraction of the universe, yet perceive in my own destiny some broken evidences of a plan and some signals of an overruling goodness; shall I then be so mad as to complain that all cannot be deciphered? Shall I not rather wonder, with infinite and grateful surprise, that in so vast a scheme I seem to have been able to read, however little, and that that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... never have intentionally sought to influence her, even by a glance, since I knew of her relation to Mr. Hearn. I'm under no obligation to this prosperous banker; I'm only bound by honor in the abstract. They are not married. Mrs. Yocomb would say that I had been brought hither by an overruling Providence—it certainly was not a conscious choice of mine—and since I met this woman everything has conspired to bring me to my present position. I know I'm not to blame for it—no more than I was for the storm or the ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... would be necessitated by the conception, so deeply entertained by the primitive people of the earth, of overruling and inspecting gods. They supposed these gods to be in a great degree like themselves, partial, fickle, jealous, revengeful. Such beings, of course, would caress their favorites and torture their offenders. The calamities and blessings of this life were regarded as tokens, revengeful ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... reported by the Colonial Times. The editor, Mr Henry Melville, pointed out in strong language the suspicion of unfairness; the dependence of the jury; the presence of the governor at Launceston during the trial; the infamous character of certain of the witnesses; and the overruling a challenge of a juror by the prisoner. The remarks of Melville were carried beyond the tolerated bounds of public criticism; the attorney-general, Stephen, induced the court to issue an attachment. The defendant was required to admit the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... indeed on some occasions be necessary that the Author of nature display His overruling power in producing some appearance out of the ordinary series of things. Such exceptions from the general rules of nature are proper to surprise and awe men into an acknowledgement of the Divine Being; but then they are to be used but seldom, otherwise ...
— A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge • George Berkeley
... dusk, with bowed head, came a woman. Her air was one of proud humility. It was the air of royalty in the presence of an overruling power. It was Isabella. She was on her way to confession. She carried a large, beautifully-bound volume containing a memorandum of her sins for the day. Ever and anon she would refer to it, but the twilight had come on so fast that she could not ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye
... Marlboro or any other place for an assassin to "do up" those against whom their indignation is aroused.' Speaking of the combination of circumstances that led to the identification of Kelly, he said: 'There is a Providence in these things. There is an overruling power that is directed in the cause of right.' He said regarding the character of Kelly: 'The learned counsel for the defence will try to make you believe that Kelly's evidence should not be accepted. The witness, Kelly, is not one of my choosing; he is not chosen ...
— The Story of a Dark Plot - or Tyranny on the Frontier • A.L.O. C. and W.W. Smith
... locally disturbed this predominating sentiment of Englishmen; but never at any time with such depth as to kill the root of the old hereditary manliness. Sometimes at this day a gentleman, either from carelessness, or from overruling force of convenience, or from real defect of gallantry, will allow a female servant to carry his portmanteau for him; though, after all, that spectacle is a rare one. And everywhere women of all ages engage in the pleasant, nay elegant, labors of the hay field; but in Great Britain women are never ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... these were but the prelude to a glorious vindication and deliverance. This hopefulness was not merely the result of their natural optimism, but of the belief, formed by their experiences in many a national crisis, that a God of justice was overruling the events of history, and that he was working not for man's destruction but for his highest happiness and well-being. It was their insight into the divine purpose that led the Hebrew prophets to break away from the popular traditions that ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... this is not implicit, as the author supposes. The course of reasoning by which the courts have come to their conclusions, is often assailed by the advocate and shown to be fallacious, and the instances are not unfrequent of courts disregarding prior decisions and overruling them when not fairly ...
— American Institutions and Their Influence • Alexis de Tocqueville et al
... this call as you have done in days that are past, and, with the blessing of a kind and overruling Providence, the enemy shall be driven from your soil. The security of your wives and daughters from the insults and outrages of a brutal foe shall be established soon, and be followed by a permanent and ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... done more mischief in Ravenna than the lives of either of them were worth. And if Providence had in its wisdom decreed that they should mutually counteract and abolish each other—why it would behove them to see in it a signal instance of the overruling wisdom of Heaven. ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... revelation, teaches an overruling providence, very few deny. There must exist in nature an omnipotent and benevolent Being to keep all her works in harmony—to touch the most secret and subtle springs of the vast machinery of the universe—to regulate seed ...
— Twenty-Four Short Sermons On The Doctrine Of Universal Salvation • John Bovee Dods
... dubious and gloomy just at the time of first contact (ten o'clock), the prime minister archly invited the foreigners who believed in an overruling Providence to pray to him "that he may be pleased to disperse the clouds long enough to afford us a good view of the grandest of eclipses." Presently the clouds were partially withdrawn from the sun, and his Majesty observing that ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... on religion, is explained to be one form of the principle of progress by antagonism, the conservation or discovery of truth by means of inquiry and controversy; a merciful Providence leaving men responsible for their errors, but ultimately overruling evil ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... home again, blessing her overruling stars to have escaped notice so entirely both in going and returning; for the mother was hard at washing near the well, having got in half an hour before, and father has not yet left off digging in his garden. So she crept up stairs quietly, put away her ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... teas and tennis parties, that are part of the system by which the English keep alive their courage, and growing after a while a little tired of trivialty, she tried to scandalize Sialpore by inviting Tom Tripe to her own garden party, successfully overruling Tripe's objections. ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... before them those statesmanlike gifts which accomplished the successful accommodation of a more varied series of novel and entangled situations than has, perhaps, fallen to the lot of any other public man within our own memory. Especially might be named that rare quality of a strong overruling sense of the justice due from man to man, from nation to nation; that 'combination of speculative and practical ability' (so wrote one who had deep experience of his mind) 'which peculiarly fitted him to solve the problem how the subject races of ...
— Letters and Journals of James, Eighth Earl of Elgin • James, Eighth Earl of Elgin
... kindness, and mercy in the whole moral and blessed economy of his equitable and infinitely wise government! On no object do I cast my eyes without observing an affecting instance of a benevolent and overruling power; and, while in mental contemplations my mind is absorbed, my admiration rises still higher to the exalted purposes and designs of Almighty God. I behold in the soul noble faculties, superior powers of imagination, and capacious desires, unfilled by ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... and seemed to moan. Her face had paled to ashen grey: "Then one is left me—one alone," She said, "of four who marched away. Oh, overruling, All-wise God, How can I pass beneath Thy rod!" The soldier walked across the floor, Paused at the window, at ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... people. They have been strangely dealt with by their former magistracy." Just two days later Nicholas Spencer wrote that though the rebellion was over, "the putrid humors of our unruly inhabitants are not so allayed but that they do frequently vent themselves ... and were they not awed by the overruling hand of his Majesty would soon ...
— Bacon's Rebellion, 1676 • Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker
... Well, I always will say that you're perfectly inspired! To think of my forgetting the most important thing, after all! Oh, I do believe there is an overruling Providence, I don't care what the agnostics pretend. Why, it's to be evening dress for the men, of course! Mrs. Miller would do it to be different from Mrs. Curwen, who let you come in your cutaways, even if it wasn't the ...
— Evening Dress - Farce • W. D. Howells
... looked thin and older. An anxious wrinkle had deepened between his eyes. It was June, and the days were getting warm. He was anxious about Ida's health also. Ida was not at all anxious. She was perfectly placid. It did not seem to her that an overruling Providence could possibly treat her unkindly. She was rather annoyed at times, but still never anxious, and utterly satisfied with herself to that extent that it precluded any doubt as to ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... and the two dames took their way to Dalcastle, with baskets well furnished with trifles. They did not take the common path from the village, but went about, and approached the mansion by a different way. But it seemed as if some overruling power ordered it that they should miss no chance of attaining the information they wanted. For ere ever they came within half a mile of Dalcastle they perceived the two youths coming as to meet them, on the same ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... thinks there is a great purpose in our coming here, Mammy. He says he believes that the Lord is overruling our defeat, and that the driving us out from our homes and scattering us abroad will be the means of extending King George's sway, and raising up a great nation ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... leave the execution of his decrees to second causes?—Ans. Whatever use God may make of second causes, in the execution of his decrees, yet they are merely tools in his overruling hand, to bring about his glorious designs, and must do all his ...
— The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted • Francis Hodgson
... Lord there speaks to Moses, and that which, here. He speaks to Joseph, proceed from the same cause. Like all servants of God under the Old Testament, Moses is a type of Christ. There is the same overruling by divine Providence, the same direction of all events for the good of the kingdom of God. Moses is first withdrawn from threatening danger by flight into distant regions. As soon as it is time that he should enter upon his vocation, the door for the return to the scene of his activity ...
— Christology of the Old Testament: And a Commentary on the Messianic Predictions, v. 1 • Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
... himself. A man of covenanting antecedents, heroic in his physical proportions, with a massive, Jove-like head and beard, tirelessly devoted to his work, watching every detail with a microscopic eye, marshaling a huge force of workers who were as possessed by this one overruling idea as was McCormick himself, he certainly presented an almost unassailable battlefront to his antagonists. The competition that raged between McCormick and the makers of rival machines was probably the fiercest that has prevailed in any American industry. For marketing his machine ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick
... thinking it possible that there might be more against Bunyan than the "mittimus" expressed, he was afraid of compromising himself by letting him go at large. His refusal, though it sent him back to prison, was received by Bunyan with his usual calm trust in God's overruling providence. "I was not at all daunted, but rather glad, and saw evidently that the Lord had heard me." Before he set out for the justice's house, he tells us he had committed the whole event to God's ordering, with the prayer that "if he might do more good by being at liberty ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables
... of the cattle-ship FALCON on her Virginia voyage; whom we greet next—and best—as Admiral of the Pilgrim fleet, commander of the destiny freighted MAY-FLOWER, and though a conspirator with nobles against the devoted band he steered, under the overruling hand of their Lord God, their unwitting pilot to "imperial labors" and mighty honors, to the founding of empire, and to eternal Peace; whom we next meet—fallen, "like Lucifer, never to hope again" —as Captain of the little buccaneer,—the DISCOVERY, disguised as a trading-ship, ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... without taking a lift of our fellows' conduct. And this, further, that, in view of the final judgment, we should hold a preliminary investigation on our own principles of action, and 'decide' to adopt as the overruling law for ourselves, that we shall do nothing which will make duty harder for our brethren. Paul habitually settled small matters on large principles, and brought the solemnities of the final account to bear on ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... head, and treat her tenderly, to make her cease and be happy once more; but he did not dare. Had he done so, she might not have repelled him; for, in all intensely passionate grief, there comes a moment of subsidence, when the grief and its origin are forgotten, and the one overruling desire is the desire to be comforted, no matter who the comforter and what his means, so long as ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... and that there is no new thing under the sun. For over them is the kingdom of Christ, the Saviour of all men, specially of them which believe, the King of all the princes of the earth, who has always asserted, and will for ever assert, His own overruling dominion. And in them is the Spirit of God, which is the spirit of truth and righteousness; of improvement, discovery, progress from darkness to light, from folly to wisdom, from barbarism to justice, and mercy, and the true civilization of ...
— The Water of Life and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... serious, earnest, noble, grand, solemn, impressive, commanding, imposing. urgent, pressing, critical, instant. paramount, essential, vital, all-absorbing, radical, cardinal, chief, main, prime, primary, principal, leading, capital, foremost, overruling; of vital importance &c in the front rank, first-rate; superior &c 33; considerable &c (great) 31; marked &c v.; rare &c 137. significant, telling, trenchant, emphatic, pregnant; tanti [Lat.]. Adv. materially &c adj.; in the main; above ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... poem hinges on the Divine will, which, is not as in Homer, a mere counterpart of the human, far less is represented as in conflict with resistless destiny, but, cognizant of fate and in perfect union with it, as overruling all lower impulses, divine or human, towards the realization of the appointed end. This Divine Power is Jupiter, whom in the Aeneid he calls by this name as a concession to conventional beliefs, but in the Georgics ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... her soul was, "Behind fate, stands God"; hidden for a season, deaf and blind and mute, it seemed, but always surely there; waiting His own appointed season of rescue, and of recompense. So strong was her faith in His overruling wisdom and mercy, that her soul found rest, through perpetual prayer for patience; and as weeks slipped into months, and season followed season, she realized that though no roses of happiness could ever bloom along her arid path, the lilies of peace ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... the mind extends itself with great difficulty. Admiration, indeed, was able to exalt to heaven a few selected heroes; it did not seem absurd, that those, who in their mortal state had distinguished themselves as superior and overruling spirits, should after death ascend to that sphere, which influences and governs everything below; or that the proper abode of beings, at once so illustrious and permanent, should be in that part of nature, in which they had always observed the greatest splendour ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... popular disaffection would be fatal to it. These fears proved to be unfounded. The day Washington took the oath, the government was as stable as it now is. Disturbing elements undoubtedly existed, but they were controlled by great and overruling necessities, recognized by all men. Thus the final purpose of the administration was accomplished at the outset. The labor which it was expected would task the patriotism and exercise the skill of the most generous and experienced was performed without an effort,—as ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... to be a major factor in every case of telepathic insanity. But the Queen had compensated for her frustrations in the easiest possible way; she had simply traded her identity for another one, and had rationalized a single, overruling delusion: that she was Queen Elizabeth I of England, still alive and wrongfully deprived ...
— Brain Twister • Gordon Randall Garrett
... allude here to a special department of the machine, which once had great power in overruling the thoughts and consciences of the people, and which is still considered by some as not altogether powerless. I refer to the Ecclesiastic department of the Grindwell works. This was formerly the greatest labor-saving machinery ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... to give their irrefutable testimony to the repeated supernatural acts of their Creator in this world which he had made. Every distinct species of plants and animals is proof of a distinct supernatural overruling of the present laws of nature. The experience of man is not the limit of knowledge. His own existence is a proof that the chain of finite causes is not inviolable. Geology sweeps away the very foundations of skepticism, by demonstrating that certain phenomena produced ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Overruling his continued objections, she lifted her foot to his hand, caught hold of the corner-post, and springing upward got her hands on the low end of the roof boards. With the agility of a cat, she put her second ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... issue from it; but they were to be achieved through the unconscious cooeperation of a multitude of individuals each intent with singleness of vision on his own individual ends. It is by such unconscious cooeperation that the directing mind and the overruling hand of God in history are ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... directed to state to his Majesty that, although in the instances he had cited, such guarantees had certainly been afforded in former times, yet they were always given either under the impression of an overruling necessity, or in consequence of some acknowledged claims, or previously existing engagements, the force of which could not be avoided; that their existence had often operated practically in the most embarrassing manner, while it constituted ...
— A Journey through the Kingdom of Oude, Volumes I & II • William Sleeman
... misfortune. Her own experience was to her a type of all the desolating evil and sorrow of the world; and in her agony she could not turn to a God who permitted such evil and suffering. It seemed to her that there could be no merciful, overruling Providence—that her husband's view, when his mind was in its most vigorous and normal state, was more rational than a religion which taught that a God who loved good left evil to ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... recall in these surroundings the wonderful measure of prophecy's fulfillment, within the span of a short century, the spirit, the patriotism and the civic virtue of Americans who lived a hundred years ago, and God's overruling of the wrath of man, and his devious ways for the blessing of our nation. We are all proud of our American citizenship. Let us leave this place with this feeling stimulated by the sentiments born of the ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... struggle to "find Him" who is so intimately near to every human heart, and who has never ceased to be the want of the human race. The philosophies of the ancient world were the earnest effort of human reason to reconcile the finite and the infinite, the human and the Divine, the subject and God. An overruling Providence, which makes even the wrath of man to praise Him, took up all these sincere, though often mistaken, efforts into his own plan, and made them sub-serve the purpose of redemption. They aided in developing among the nations "the desire of salvation," ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... still waters below: no longer stay possible there. The vis vitae overruling the vis inertia, we take up the line of march. Fold the napkin away from your eyes, O daughter of the ages, and behold, there lies your road—a throng already pressing their way where you thought you were alone. Upward, as well ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... in Europe has been described as "The Causeless War," but since no one would be bold enough to lay the blame for such an unholy situation upon an overruling Providence, it must find its origin in acts for which man, and man alone, ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 4, July, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... breathes the noblest spirit of philanthropy. The reader's mind kindles as it enters into the train of thought in which the author referred to "the work we have in hand. It is," he said, "by a mutual consent, through a special overruling Providence, and a more than an ordinary approbation of the churches of Christ, to seek out a place of cohabitation and consortship under a due form of government both civil and ecclesiastical." The forms and institutions under which liberty, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... we see so many conflicting elements, such a power of natural forces and human passions warring against the progress of good, and seeming to end only too often in disaster, that it becomes a matter of faith to perceive a Divine providence underlying and overruling ...
— Creation and Its Records • B.H. Baden-Powell
... our actions and their sense of them, enlightened by a benign religion, professed indeed and practised in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man, acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which, by all its dispensations, proves that it delights in the happiness of man here, and his greater happiness hereafter; with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens, a wise and frugal ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... vessels and protectors,—the one on a mission of pure humanity, and the other in calm pursuance of the objects he had proposed to himself to accomplish; and, with three companions, place himself at the mercy of such circumstances, regardless of the danger, and relying on the overruling Providence in which he trusted, to bring him safely through all ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... Whilst the people of Europe and Asia were blessed by communion with God through the medium of His prophets, and obtained divine laws to regulate their ways and keep them in mind of Him who made them, the Africans were excluded from this dispensation, and consequently have no idea of an overruling Providence or a future state; they therefore trust to luck and to charms, and think only of self-preservation in this world. Whatever, then, may be said against them for being too avaricious or too destitute of ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... after they have occurred. I have discussed this question, as far as seemed suitable to the occasion, in a former chapter; and I only think it necessary to repeat, that the doctrine of the Causation of human actions, improperly called the doctrine of Necessity, affirms no mysterious nexus, or overruling fatality: it asserts only that men's actions are the joint result of the general laws and circumstances of human nature, and of their own particular characters; those characters again being the consequence of the natural and artificial circumstances that constituted their education, among which circumstances ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... moment he least expected it, received a note from the King of Spain ordering him to withdraw at once, without attempting to see him or the Queen, or to write to them; and to leave Spain in twice twenty-four hours! An officer of the guards was to accompany him until his departure: How this overruling order was received, and what the Cardinal did, I know not; I only know that he obeyed it, and took the road for Arragon. So few precautions had been taken, that he carried off an immense number of papers, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... men's minds; and here was an invitation to more wholesale mutiny, which could hardly fail to end in bloodshed, and might precipitate the perplexed and embarrassed country into civil war. Washington issued a general order, recognizing the existence of the manifesto, but overruling it so far as to appoint the meeting for a later day, with the senior major-general, who happened to be Gates, to preside. This order, which neither discipline nor courtesy could disregard, in a measure tied Gates's hands, while it gave Washington time to ascertain the extent of the disaffection. ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske |
