"Potentate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an extremely old custom and has been practiced by the better classes of society almost without interruption from earliest times. And "society," like the potentate of the parable whose touch transformed every object into gold, has embellished and adorned the all-too-common habit of eating, until there has been evolved throughout the ages that most charming and exquisite product of human culture—the formal dinner party. The ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... are also intended to fill the souls of the ignorant with envy. I can recall but one case of a foreign decoration being refused by a compatriot. He was a genius and we all know that geniuses are crazy. This gentleman had done something particularly gratifying to an Eastern potentate, who in return offered him one of his second-best orders. It was at once refused. When urged on him a second time our countryman lost his temper and answered, "If you want to give it to somebody, present it to my valet. He is most anxious to be decorated." ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... sometimes let his Majesty have an evening off. And turn my attention, of course, to the very highest nobility. But naturally I have performed before every sovereign potentate, white and black. There never was a conjurer ...
— Magic - A Fantastic Comedy • G.K. Chesterton
... others, some in Italian, some in German. Besides these he composed several cantatas for church use, and several instrumental pieces. In 1735 he was invited to the residence of the crown prince of Prussia, afterward Frederick the Great. This powerful potentate remained Graun's friend and patron until his death. Here, among other works, he composed fifty Italian cantatas, usually consisting of two airs with recitative. In 1740 Frederick came to the throne, and gave Graun the post of musical director, with a salary of $2,000. Selecting his singers in Italy, ...
— A Popular History of the Art of Music - From the Earliest Times Until the Present • W. S. B. Mathews
... a numerous staff; beside the agent, were a commissioner, an agriculturist, an architect, and surveyors. Its local affairs were confided to a council of three, Curr being the chairman; but the divided sovereignty was impracticable, and the "Potentate of the North," as he was sometimes ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... had been summoned, the captain looked inquiringly at Edna. As he came in that afternoon, he had seen both the negroes in the courtyard, and, in the passing thought he had given to them, had supposed them to be attendants of some foreign potentate from Barbary or Morocco. Cheditafa and Mok! The ragged, half-clad negroes of the sea-beach—a parson-butler of sublimated respectability, a liveried lackey of rainbow and gold! It required minutes to harmonize these presentments in the mind ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... also signalized. Yet it is said that the Lord hath manifestly prospered our armies. This opens the question, whether, when our hands are strengthened to make great slaughter of our enemies, it be absolutely and demonstratively certain that this might is added to us from above, or whether some Potentate from an opposite quarter may not have a finger in it, as there are few pies into which his meddling digits are not thrust. Would the Sanctifier and Setter-apart of the seventh day have assisted in a victory gained on the Sabbath, as was one in the late war? Or ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... in a new world, and the talk is all of people and islands and animals we never heard of. Do you know, for instance, that such a potentate as the Sultan of Terantor exists? and, ambitious ruler that he is, that he now claims tribute from the whole of New Guinea? Then, again, let me tell you that the Sultan of Burnei gets $6,000 per year tribute from Setwanak, and, like a ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... tell you that I have had proposals again from the Norwich manager, and from Bath and Bristol; and yesterday the Princess's Theatre potentate called upon me; but upon my telling him that I should prefer transacting my arrangements with him in writing rather than viva voce, he ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... who would deprive himself of every chance of success should have recourse to auxiliaries; that is, to the troops of a foreign potentate. For these are far more dangerous than mercenary arms, bringing ruin with them ready made. The better such troops are the more dangerous they are. From Hiero of Syracuse to Cesare Borgia, princes have become powerful in proportion as they could dispense ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... towards him, and wrote rapidly. Horses were harnessed, horsemen equipped in haste, and with no unfitting retinue Lanfranc departed on the mission, the most important in its consequences that ever passed from potentate to pontiff. [234] Rebraced to its purpose by Lanfranc's cheering assurances, the resolute, indomitable soul of William now applied itself, night and day, to the difficult task of rousing his haughty vavasours. Yet weeks passed before ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Mr. Jasper, presenting Mr. Datchery with a courtly motion of his hand towards that potentate; 'whose recommendation is actually much more important to a stranger than that of an obscure person like myself, will testify in their behalf, I ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... and most pathetic of spectacles. There were the veterans of the Irish party hardened by a hundred fights, ranging from Venezuela to the Soudan in search of battlefields, making allies of every kind of foreign potentate, from President Cleveland to the Mahdi, from Mr. Kruger to the Akhoom of Swat, but looking with suspicion on every symptom of an independent national movement in Ireland; masters of the language of hate and scorn, yet mocked by inevitable and eternal failure; ...
— Ireland In The New Century • Horace Plunkett
... bottom of his own table. A mild man he was, too, when out of his saddle, and one by no means disposed to assume special supremacy. But a master of hounds, if he have long held the country,—and Sir William had held his for more than thirty years,—obtains a power which that of no other potentate can equal. He may say and do what he pleases, and his tyranny is always respected. No conspiracy against him has a chance of success; no sedition will meet with sympathy;—that is, if he be successful in showing sport. If a man be sworn at, abused, and put down without cause, ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... elder brother. The first question to be decided was that which we have already mentioned, namely, the disposal of spoil from prospective captures, and with this end in view the corsairs approached the Sultan of Tunis. This potentate made a gracious response to their overtures, and wished them all success in their enterprises. He promised them succour and support on the same terms which Curtogali had obtained, namely, one-fifth of all the ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... no potentate in France or Flanders You will not heap with insult if you can. For lo! a car. It is the Corps Commander's; The sentries take no notice of the man, Or fix him with a not unkindly stare, And slap their butts in an engaging way, Or else, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, August 1, 1917. • Various
... with Melusine Scales, and ended a successful adventure by winning Lady Maria's acceptance "for herself and her young friend," of a banquet at the Cooper's Company of which he was warden. The occasion was a great one-a foreign potentate, the Prime Minister, Lord Mayor, and Sheriffs. The Coopers were to distinguish themselves, or be extinguished. He could promise them of the best. Sanchia, new to courtship, was quietly elated, and her amusement did nothing to diminish her elation. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... their most precious possession—the language they talk and write—from the Old World, under and out of its feudal institutes, I will allow myself to borrow a simile even of those forms farthest removed from American Democracy. Considering Language then as some mighty potentate, into the majestic audience-hall of the monarch ever enters a personage like one of Shakspere's clowns, and takes position there, and plays a part even in the stateliest ceremonies. Such is Slang, or indirection, an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald literalism, and ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... of hospitable Colonel Prowley, when, volubly delivering these and other sentiments, the High Priest and Potentate over all Sextondom entered the parlor and made himself comfortable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Dryden, whom his too partial countrymen have styled him, than the Germany of the Thirty Years' War of taking rank by the side of civilized and cultured England during the Cromwellian era, or Klopstock of sitting on the same throne with Milton. Leibnitz was the one sole potentate in the fields of intellect whom the Germany of this country produced; and he, like Luther and Kepler, impresses us rather as a European than as a German mind, partly perhaps from his having pursued his self-development in foreign lands, partly ...
— Biographical Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... through the Clothes of a Man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official Bank-paper and State-paper Clothes) into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the meanest Tinker that ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... Congress, or the bar, for our ambitious young men, when the highest bribes of society are at the feet of the successful orator? He has his audience at his devotion. All other fames must hush before his. He is the true potentate; for they are not kings who sit on thrones, but they who know how to govern. The definitions of eloquence describe its attraction for young men. Antiphon the Rhamnusian, one of Plutarch's ten orators, advertised in Athens, "that he would cure distempers of the mind ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... their free liberty, by their own consent, to be used among them; and have bound themselves by long use and custom to the observance of the same: not as to the observance of the laws of any foreign prince, potentate, or prelate; but as to the customed and antient laws of this realm, originally established as laws of the same, by the said sufferance, consents, and custom; and ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... Captain the Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is over their door. The captain does not choose to let all the world know where he lives, and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn-street hotel; and as for the Embassador Plenipotentiary of the Indian potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts of St. James's or Leadenhall-street, but is here on a confidential mission, quite independent of the East India Company or the Board ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... getting weak. These he sold, and the last were discovered passing into one of the cooks' hands in fair exchange for mutton chops. They were taken into the governor's room, and after being examined by that potentate they were laid on his desk, and next morning they were nowhere to be found; they were stolen, but not by a prisoner. Of course, P—— knew nothing about his spectacles, when examined on the subject, except that some one must have taken them from his shelf. The result ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... potentate go for his national foe, and, as soon as he's thoroughly licked him, Should he dare to demand a concession of land from his prostrate and paralyzed victim, It is then you arise and his arm you arrest when his harvest is ripe for the reaping, And a people oppressed may in confidence ...
— Lyra Frivola • A. D. Godley
... Maximilian, Henry had some notion of preempting the vacant throne, but soon discovered that Charles V. of Spain had a prior lien to the same, and thus, in 1520, this new potentate became the greatest power in the civilized world. It is hard to believe in the nineteenth or twentieth century that Spain ever had any influence with anybody of sound mind, but such the veracious historian tells us ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... 'every mark of Insult and Contempt.' The Directors in London, expressly declaring their desire to content the influential Nawab, decided in his favour; whereupon Lord Macartney, who in the opinion of his friends had been set at naught for the sake of the wealthy potentate, indignantly resigned the Governorship of Madras, and went home. Friendly relations between the Nawab and the Madras Government were thereupon resumed, and when Nawab Walajah died, at the age of seventy-eight, he was eulogised in an official note in ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... Having sold what of the domains he could to persons of quality, at an uncommonly easy rate, and so pocketed what ready cash there was among them, he made over his pawn-ticket, or properly he himself repawned Brandenburg to the Saxon potentate, a speculative moneyed man, Markgraf of Meissen, "Wilhelm the Rich," so called. Pawned it to Wilhelm the Rich—sum not named; and went home to Moravia, there to wait events. This is the third Brandenburg pawning: let us hope there may ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... Czar of Russia, some potentate presented him with a full-blooded Negro of gigantic size. Peter, the most eccentric ruler of modern times, dressed this Negro up in soldier clothes, christened him Hannibal, and made him ...
— The Book of American Negro Poetry • Edited by James Weldon Johnson
... sustained by the account of the same chief given by the Jesuit Dablon. Of the tribes of the Bay, the greater part promised to send delegates to the Saut; but the Pottawattamies dissuaded the Miami potentate from attempting so long a journey, lest the fatigue incident to it might injure his health; and he therefore deputed them to represent him and his tribesmen at the great meeting. Their principal chiefs, with those of the Sacs, Winnebagoes, and Menomonies, embarked, ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... Mount Imaus, (or whatever else you call that large range of mountains that walls the northern frontier of India,) where it touches us in the latitude of twenty-nine, to Cape Comorin, in the latitude of eight, that there is not a single prince, state, or potentate, great or small, in India, with whom they have come into contact, whom they have not sold: I say sold, though sometimes they have not been able to deliver according to their bargain. Secondly, I say, that there is not a single treaty they ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Fortitude personified. Bacchus is the tutelary demon of the Mahommedans, and Mars the guardian potentate of ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... an Da'v, "what right have I to complain? I am only the servant, and although I didn't make any bargain with the King of Leinster or with any king of them all, yet my wife is gone away as if she was the consort of a potentate the same as Duv ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... with acclaim. The crowd was too dense for any one to prostrate himself, but every Egyptian, potentate or slave, assumed as nearly as possible the posture of humility. Kenkenes bent reverently, but he lifted his eyes and looked long at the passing ark. Six priests bore it upon their shoulders. It was a small boat, elaborately carved, and the cabin in the center—the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... urned ashes of the mighty kindle The great soul to great actions, Pindemonte, And fair and holy to the pilgrim make The earth that holds them. When I saw the tomb Where rests the body of that great one,[1] who Tempering the scepter of the potentate, Strips off its laurels, and to the people shows With what tears it doth reek, and with what blood; When I beheld the place of him who raised A new Olympus to the gods in Rome,[2]— Of him[3] who saw the worlds wheel through the heights Of heaven, illumined by the moveless sun, ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... busily engaged in assembling and equipping his men, and making the other necessary preparations. The baron was exceedingly indignant when he received the letter. In those days, every man that was capable of bearing arms liked much better to be taken into the service of some prince or potentate going to war than to remain at home to cultivate the ground in quiet industry. D'Albret knew, therefore, very well, that his vassals and retainers would be all greatly disappointed to learn that four fifths of their whole number were, after all, to remain at home, and then, ...
— Richard II - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... to work to hit on some plan by which, if possible, to turn the feeling of the Eskimo community in favour of peace. At first he thought of going alone and unarmed, with Anders as interpreter, to the land of Grabantak to dissuade that savage potentate from attacking the Poloes, but the Eskimos pointed out that the danger of this plan was so great that he might as well kill himself at once. His own party, also, objected to it so strongly that he gave it up, and resolved in the meantime to strengthen his position and increase ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... appears to have been originally an example of a well-known class of folk-tales dealing with the subject of the Rescue of Fairyland. The same motive occurs in the famous tale called The Sickbed of Cuchulain. The idea is that some fairy potentate, whose realm is invaded and oppressed, entices a mortal champion to come to his aid and rewards him with magical gifts. But the eighteenth century narrator whose MS. was edited by Mr S.H. O'Grady, apparently had not the clue ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... queen to his cause during the famous audience at the summer court at Salamanca, when he was presented to the sovereigns by Cardinal de Mendoza, at which interview, we are told, he "had no eyes for any potentate but Isabella." But after years of disappointment to Columbus, the queen was again the great power to further his project: she offered to pledge her crown jewels to defray the cost of the expedition. Thus a speedy issue was obtained, and to Isabella's determination Spain owes a glory ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... pompous old bluff in repose, but nobody's fool, and a bad actor when his mad is up. He tells me he fell in with the Delorme a long time ago, while acting as personal escort for a fugitive South American potentate who crossed the borders of his native land with the national treasury in one hand and his other in Monk's, and of course—they all do—made a bee line for Paris. That's how we came to make her acquaintance, my revered employer, Mister ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... grieved at this; for the original emigrants of New England had strong sympathies with the people of London, who were mostly Puritans in religion and Parliamentarians in politics, in the early days of our country; so that the Lord Mayor was a potentate of huge dimensions in the estimation of our forefathers, and held to be hardly second to the prime minister of the throne. The true great men of the city now appear to have aims beyond city greatness, connecting themselves with ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little fun in the holidays." I quite agree: I believe in as much fun as you can get: I should like to be able to insist as sternly on your all enjoying yourselves in the holidays, as I should on your working in term-time. There was a great deal of sound wisdom in that Eastern potentate, who proclaimed a general holiday, adding, "Make merry, my children, make merry; he who does not make merry will ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... again. Sometimes he is the only man in England, not a peer of the realm, who has got a single drop of a certain famous vintage which has perished from the face of the earth. Sometimes he has purchased, with a friend, a few last left dozens from the cellar of a deceased potentate, at a price so exorbitant that he can only wag his head and decline mentioning it; and, if you ask his friend, that friend will wag his head, and decline mentioning it also. Sometimes he has been at an out-of-the-way country inn; has found the sherry not drinkable; has asked if there is no other ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... Padua, as little less than a demi-god; at certain hours he visited his patients, amongst whom might generally be numbered three-fourths of the population of Padua; at certain hours, his own mansion was crowded like the audience-hall of some mighty potentate, with supplicants for food and physic; three evenings in the week were devoted by him to intense study in his own secret, solitary chamber; and upon the alternate three, he received the visits of those ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 19, No. 531, Saturday, January 28, 1832. • Various
... the excellent wisdom of him that built Mansoul that the walls could never be broken down nor hurt by the most mighty adverse potentate unless the townsmen gave consent thereto'—BUNYAN'S ...
— The Years Between • Rudyard Kipling
... her mast overboard, and seemed in continual danger either of upsetting or of running on shore. In this way she drove quite through the Highlands, until she had passed Pollopol's Island, where, it is said, the jurisdiction of the Dunderberg potentate ceases. No sooner had she passed this bourn than the little hat spun up into the air like a top, whirled up all the clouds into a vortex, and hurried them back to the summit of the Dunderberg, while the sloop righted herself and sailed on as quietly as if in a mill-pond. Nothing ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... college boy. Tyler's temperament is well exhibited by the fact that he was one of the foremost instigators in a fishing party from his room window, when the students hooked the wig of the reverend president from his head one morning as that potentate was ...
— The Contrast • Royall Tyler
... territories, nor on machinery for their defense; but on their getting such territory as they have, well filled with none but respectable persons. Which is a way of infinitely enlarging one's territory, feasible to every potentate; and dependent no wise on getting Trent ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... of solitude, in the privacy of the potentate's toilet-chamber, must it not be dreadful for him to reflect that his silver helmet rests on ears that suppurate, that his voice comes from a mouth afflicted with fistula of the bone, and that there are days when his sceptre is at the mercy of the ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... at Wuerzburg, at Bamberg, and his advance might be compared to the royal progress of an Asiatic potentate. ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... the same spirit. I don't pretend to say that I have not entertained views for Cecilia which included hereditary rank and established fortune in a suitor to her hand, though I never should have made them imperative conditions. I am neither potentate nor parvenu enough for that; and I can never forget" (here every muscle in the man's face twitched) "that I myself married for love, and was so happy. How happy Heaven only knows! Still, if you had thus spoken a few weeks ago, I should not have replied very favourably to your question. But now ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... six call for particular mention: P. II., Pope from 1458 to 1464, was of the family of the Piccolomini, and is known to history as AEneas Sylvius, and under which name he did diplomatic work in Britain and Germany; as Pope he succeeded Callistus III.; he was a wily potentate, and is distinguished for organising a crusade against the Turks as well as his scholarship; the works which survive him are of a historical character, and his letters are of great value. P. IV., from 1559 to 1563, was of humble birth; during his popehood the deliberations ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... treacherous, rapacious, and ready to sanction gross breaches in the administration of justice, end by praising him for his pure moral character, by which one must suppose them to mean that he was not lewd nor debauched, not the European twin of the typical Indian potentate whom Macaulay describes as passing his life in chewing bang and fondling dancing-girls. And since we are sometimes told of such maleficent kings that they were religious, we arrive at the curious result that the most serious wide-reaching duties of man lie quite outside both Morality and ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... is in Galloway considered as having had her origin in the traditions concerning the celebrated Flora Marshal, one of the royal consorts of Willie Marshal, more commonly called the Caird of Barullion, King of the Gipsies of the Western Lowlands. That potentate was himself deserving of notice, from the following peculiarities. He was born in the parish of Kirkmichael, about the year 1671; and as he died at Kirkcudbright, 23rd November, 1792, he must then have been in the one hundred and twentieth year of his age. It cannot he said that ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... day, surprised that he did not stop to sack their homes, now brought ten large tusks of ivory to him to express the gratitude they said they felt for his not having molested them. Mahamed, on finding how easy it was to get taxes in this fashion, instead of thanking them, assumed the air of the great potentate, whose clemency was abused, and told the poor creatures that, though they had done well in seeking his friendship, they had not sufficiently considered his dignity, else they would have brought double that number of tusks, for it was impossible he could be satisfied at so ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... are no more, and petticoats not much: Morals and minuets, virtue and her stays, And tell-tale powder—all have had their days. The ball begins—the honours of the house First duly done by daughter or by spouse, Some potentate—or royal or serene— With Kent's gay grace, or sapient Glo'ster's mien, Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush Might once have been mistaken for a blush, From where the garb just leaves the bosom free, That spot where hearts were once supposed to be; Round ...
— English Satires • Various
... in retaining so completely the friendship of the king. When the cardinal died, and many gentlemen that served the Red Robe found themselves no longer in esteem, Gonzague passed at once into the circle of the king's most intimate friends. Gonzague, as the comrade of a ruling potentate, proved himself a master of all arts that might amuse a melancholic sovereign newly redeemed from an age-long tutelage, and eager to sate those many long-restrained pleasures that he was at last ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... laudably mild to its enemies, confirmed this report. That Prussia, who opened its inhospitable arms to every British rebel, should have tampered in such a business, was by no means improbable. That King hated his uncle: but could a Protestant potentate dip in designs for restoring a popish government? Of what religion is policy? To what sect is royal revenge bigoted? The Queen-dowager, though sister of our King, was avowedly a Jacobite, by principle so-and it was natural: what Prince, but the single one who profits by the principle, ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... this view set forth by a distinguished orthodox minister of the Gospel. There still, however, remains this question in connection with religious toleration and religious qualifications—Does a religion one element of which is absolute subservience to the will of a foreign potentate or prelate, the Roman or the Greek, for example, and which undertakes to deal with a civil relation, marriage for example, come properly within the provision for universal religious toleration, or does it not, for the reasons assigned, assume a relation to the State ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... every nation, which are established for such by the Soveraign Authority. It is true, that God is the Soveraign of all Soveraigns; and therefore, when he speaks to any Subject, he ought to be obeyed, whatsoever any earthly Potentate command to the contrary. But the question is not of obedience to God, but of When, and What God hath said; which to Subjects that have no supernaturall revelation, cannot be known, but by that naturall reason, which guided them, for the ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes
... able to announce that it is the intention of the new potentate of Guildhall to revive the ancient and honourable office of "Lord Mayor's Fool." A number of candidates have already offered themselves, whose qualifications for the situation are so equally balanced, that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... turned to the assembly, and read them their oath, that they likewise should further the honor and prosperity of the land, preserve its freedom and its equal rights, obey the laws, protect the Council and the judges, take no gift or favor from any prince or potentate, and that each one should accept and perform, to the best of his ability, any service to which he might be chosen. After this had been read, the Landamman lifted his right hand, with the oath-fingers extended; his colleagues on the platform, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... cherished officers; he insulted Anne of Austria, the queen: remained seated during a visit that she paid him, and threatened to separate her from her children. Even his guards no longer lowered their arms in the presence of the monarch. His demeanor to Louis XIII. was that of one potentate to another. In December of 1642 the malady of the cardinal became inveterate, and every hope of life was denied him. He summoned the king to his dying bed, recapitulated the great and successful acts of his administration, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, No. - 480, Saturday, March 12, 1831 • Various
... peril, wakened for the first time her admiration. Men she had never seen before, except menial servants, or a casual priest. But here was a gentleman, young like herself, that rode in the cavalry of Spain—that carried the banner of the only potentate whom Peruvians knew of—the King of the Spains and the Indies—that had doubled Cape Horn, that had crossed the Andes, that had suffered shipwreck, that had rocked upon fifty storms, and had wrestled for life ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey
... potentate; at the same time I could not possibly visit him, as my term of service would expire upon the 1st ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... from—and were these the officers of the Royal Guard that he had so often laughed at in disdain? Could that gay old gentleman in red and gold be the morbid, carelessly clad Duke of Rapp-Thorberg, whom he had grown to despise because he seemed so ridiculously unlike a real potentate? He marvelled and rejoiced as he strolled hither and thither with the casual Baggs, and for the first time in his life really felt that it was pleasant to be stared at—in admiration, too, he may ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... shell of some defunct mollusk. And more curious still, in the same shell we usually find a pretty crab, who acts as porter to the anemone. He drags the shell about with him like a palanquin, on which sits enthroned a very bloated, but gayly-dressed potentate, destitute of power ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 47, September, 1861 • Various
... despatched with a powerful squadron to teach them better behaviour. On arriving off Tripoli Sir John sent Lieutenant Cloudesly Shovel, of whom we now first hear, to open negotiations with the Dey. That Oriental potentate, despising Mr Shovel for his youthful appearance, sent him back with a disrespectful answer. He had, however, made a note of everything he saw, and on returning on board he assured the commodore of the practicability of burning the piratical fleet. The night being extremely dark, the commodore ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... cancelled the Ode to Buonaparte. It certainly was prematurely written, without thought or reflection. Providence has now brought him to reign over millions again, while the same Providence keeps as it were in a garrison another potentate, who, in the language of Mr. Burke, 'he hurled from his throne.' See if you cannot make amends for your folly, and consider that, in almost every respect, human nature is the same, in every clime and in every period, and don't act the part of a foolish boy.—Let not Englishmen talk of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... grimly, the next geek who picks up the idea of soaking a Terran in thermoconcentrate and setting fire to him will drop it again like a hot potato. And the next geek potentate who tries to organize an anti-Terran conspiracy, or the next crazy caravan-driver who preaches znidd suddabit, will be lynched on the spot. But this must be the last ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... alike—all night—men who have no prospect of relief to-morrow, whose only release is death, and the release they long and pray for seems never to come. And many of them are men who have done no wrong, unless it be wrong to offend a potentate, to have an opinion of your own, to have the courage to express it; to object to laws and customs which should have been scrapped ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... Rendel, "the savage potentate and civilised ruler are inevitably alike. The ultimate ground, the ultimate arbiter of their empire, ...
— The Arbiter - A Novel • Lady F. E. E. Bell
... guileless natives out of their copra, coco-nut oil and pearl-shell; his chief diet, turtle and turtle eggs and fish; his drink, rum and coco-nut milk—the latter only when the former is impossible. When a wreck happens he becomes a potentate in pyjamas, and with his dusky wives, dressed in bright vestiture, fares sumptuously. And though the ships from the isles do not meet to "pour the wealth of ocean in tribute at his feet," he can still "rush out of his lodgings and eat oysters in regular desperation." ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... in the time of Luther was Charles V.,—the most powerful potentate of Europe, and, moreover, a bigoted Catholic. On his abdication,—one of the most extraordinary events in history,—the German dominions were given to his brother Ferdinand; Spain and the Low Countries were bestowed on his son Philip. Ferdinand had already been elected King of the Romans. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... dominions, and also by reason of the seuere collection and exaction of his duties: yea, tributes are imposed vpon his subiects, not onely for lands, houses, and impost of marchandise, but also for euery person in each family. It is likewise to be understood, that almost no lord or potentate in China hath authoritie to leuie vnto himselfe any peculiar reuenues, or to collect any rents within the precincts of his seigniories, al such power belonging onely vnto the king: whereas in Europe the contrary is most commonly seen, as we haue before signified. In this most ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of - The English Nation, Vol. 11 • Richard Hakluyt
... all allegiance to foreign prince or potentate or government; in so doing he must reject the assumed superiority of any human grantor and assert the superiority of the individual citizen in ...
— 'America for Americans!' - The Typical American, Thanksgiving Sermon • John Philip Newman
... despatches, And foreign politicians circumvent; Then, if business isn't heavy, We may hold a Royal LEVEE, Or ratify some Acts of Parliament: Then we probably review the household troops - With the usual "Shalloo humps" and "Shalloo hoops!" Or receive with ceremonial and state An interesting Eastern Potentate. After that we generally Go and dress our ...
— Songs of a Savoyard • W. S. Gilbert
... formulated as a fundamental principle of diplomacy. According to this the European states formed a sort of federal community, the fundamental condition of which was the preservation of the balance of power, i.e. such a disposition of things that no one state or potentate should be able absolutely to predominate and prescribe laws to the rest; and, since all were equally interested in this settlement, it was held to be the interest, the right and the duty of every power to interfere, even by force of arms, when any of the conditions of this settlement were infringed ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... but he was certainly an extraordinary man. He spoke the unnumbered dialects of the Asiatic tribes among whom he had travelled. He spoke Greek with ease and freedom. Placed, as he was, on the margin where the civilizations of the East and the West were brought in contact, he was at once a barbarian potentate and an ambitious European politician. He was well informed of the state of Rome, and saw reason, perhaps, as well he might, to doubt the durability of its power. At any rate, he was no sooner fixed on his ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... palisades was filled with armed and gibbering savages, while his majesty, in the red coat of a British drummer, but without any trowsers, strutted pompously into my presence. Of course, I assumed an air of humble civility, and leading the potentate to one end of the guarded piazza, where he was completely isolated from his people, I stationed myself between the table and the sombrero. Some of the prince's relations attempted to follow him within my inclosure, but, according ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... son of the Naya of Mo," my companion answered, folding his arms resolutely, and regarding the potentate with supreme disdain. "Princes do not make obeisance to ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... was much struck by the barbaric splendour of this petty Oriental potentate, little aware that in the far-off interior there were other sovereigns possessed of infinitely greater wealth and power, with whom the Portuguese would have ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... dilettante, a dilettante in painting, in poetry, in music, and several other of the so-called unprofitable arts, which, however, at present secure for their masters the income of a cabinet minister, or even that of a minor potentate. Above all else I am ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... nails of my intrepid and devoted Columbine. The ire of the monarch was not to be appeased. He had suffered in his person, and he had suffered in his purse; his dignity too had been insulted, and that went for something; for dignity is always more irascible the more petty the potentate. He wreaked his wrath upon the beginners of the affray, and Columbine and myself were discharged, at once, from ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... very natty, but for the real hand-made thing you must have toiled in the sweat of your brow. In Britain it is a little difficult to persuade people that the writing of plays and novels is work. To many it remains one of those inventions of a certain potentate for idle hands to do. To some persons in high life, and addicted to field sports, it is still a species of licensed buffoonery, to be regulated by a sort of circus-master with a whip in one hand and a gingerbread nut in the other. By the truly simple soul it ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... STEPHANUS KRUGER. To all South Africa a veritable "man of Destiny" has he proved to be; and for eighteen successive years, as their honoured President he has ruled his people with an absoluteness no European potentate could possibly approach. By birth a British subject, and for a brief while after the annexation a paid official of the British Government, he yet seems all his life to have been a consistent hater of all things British. When only ten years old, a tattered, bare-legged, unlettered lad, he joined "The ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... jacket, with a gold-trimmed collar, and a sword at his side, who, when Jan stepped up to greet him did not offer his whole hand, but merely held out two fingers. The man's intentions may have been all right, but of course a potentate like Emperor Johannes of Portugallia knew he ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... fountain or author of this power, whence it originally flows; it being derived, not from any magistrate, prince, or potentate in the world, not from any man on earth, or the will of man; but only from Jesus Christ our Mediator, himself being the sole or first receptacle of all power from the Father, Matt. xxviii. 18; John v. 22: and consequently, ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... Carlyle, in his essay on Voltaire, refers to this passage as having been "inserted as a small, transitory, altogether trifling circumstance, in the history of such a potentate as Nero"; but it has become "to us the most earnest, sad and sternly significant passage that we know to ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume II (of X) - Rome • Various
... that, in the days when the kingdoms of the Scando-Goths reached from the North Cape to the Caspian, that some earlier great king performed his part; but, after the striking career of Attila, he became the recognised type of a powerful foreign potentate. All the other actors are mythic-heroic. Of the Eddaic songs only fragments now remain, but ere they perished there arose from them a saga, that now given to the readers of this. The so-called Anglo-Saxons brought ...
— The Story of the Volsungs, (Volsunga Saga) - With Excerpts from the Poetic Edda • Anonymous
... conscience, over the community of the faithful, nay, over the fate of departed souls. Here Luther saw an invasion of the rights reserved by God to Himself, and a perversion of the true conditions of salvation, as established by Christ and testified in Scripture. Here he saw a human potentate and tyrant, setting himself up in the place of Christ and God. He shuddered, so he wrote to his friends, when, in reading the Papal decretals, he looked further into the doings of the Popes, with their demands and edicts, into this smithy of human laws, this fresh crucifixion of Christ, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... manner of wearing it, and as to the signification of the enamelled figure, there has been the greatest diversity of opinion. Sir Francis Palgrave suggested that the figure was older than the setting. Perhaps it was a sacred object, and perhaps one of the presents of Pope Marinus, or some other potentate; and that the mounting was intended to adapt it for fixture in the rim of a helmet or crown over the centre of the royal brow. By its side, in the same glass case, there lies a gold ornament of far simpler ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... the morals of dog-kind are to a great extent subordinated to those of his ancestral master, man. This animal, in many ways so superior, has accepted a position of inferiority, shares the domestic life, and humours the caprices of the tyrant. But the potentate, like the British in India, pays small regard to the character of his willing client, judges him with listless glances, and condemns him in a byword. Listless have been the looks of his admirers, who have exhausted idle terms of praise, ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to very grand houses. The two duchesses and the Marchioness of Auld Reekie received Madame Melmotte, and the garden parties of royalty were open to her. And some of the most elaborate fetes of the season.—which indeed were very elaborate on behalf of this and that travelling potentate,—were attained. On these occasions Miss Longestaffe was fully aware of the struggle that was always made for invitations, often unsuccessfully, but sometimes with triumph. Even the bargains, conducted by the hands of Lord Alfred ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... knows where he is at, And they don't. And why Shouldn't he be high Above them as the clouds Are high above the brooks, For God, He made the Critic, And man, he makes the books. See? Gee whiz, What a puissant potentate the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... a position to conquer a fourth of Russia in Europe, to disgrace the Russian troops time after time, to condemn the finest Russian officers to a degrading death, and now even to bombard Orenburg like a real potentate. ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... regards of emperors had they been there to see. They were not. In the conservatory at Stokeham, where she stood amid the tropical trees and flowers and breathing the warm close scent of rich blossoms foreign to English soil, there was only one man to look at her, and he was no potentate, but a blond young fellow, with blue blood in his veins and a sad riot in ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... with this conceit, they can hold filth and nastiness to be an ornament; can reconcile their nose to the most intolerable smells; and finally, think their wretched slavery the most arbitrary kingdom, which they would not exchange for the jurisdiction of the most sovereign potentate: and they are yet more happy by a strong persuasion of their own parts and abilities; for thus when their employment is only to rehearse silly stories, and poetical fictions, they will yet think themselves wiser than the best experienced philosopher; nay, they have an art ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... of the captain-general was aroused. He consulted his legal adviser and factotum, a shrewd, meddlesome Escribano or notary, who rejoiced in an opportunity of perplexing the old potentate of the Alhambra, and involving him in a maze of legal subtilities. He advised the captain-general to insist upon the right of examining every convoy passing through the gates of his city, and he penned a long letter for him, in vindication of the right. ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... time of which I tell he was in command of a force of something like five hundred lances, that were very well fed, well kept, well equipped, and ready to serve the quarrel of any potentate of Italy that was willing to pay for them. He had just captained his rascals very gallantly and satisfactorily in the service of Padua, and having made a very considerable amount of money by the transaction, was now resting pleasantly on his laurels, and in no immediate ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the examination scene also, we note the fairy tale motif so frequently appearing of a hard-won prize, i.e., any story in which a king or a potentate proposes a riddle or a task for the hero. If the hero solves or accomplishes it, he generally wins, besides other precious possessions, a woman or a princess, whom he marries. In the case of a heroine the prize is a beautiful prince. The motif of the hard-won prize matches ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... Pedros were servants, they were not admitted to an audience with the potentate. Ziffak conducted the others into the hut adjoining the palace. This was his own building, where his aged mother had charge. She understood matters from her son, and the frightened fellows were made ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... perhaps have appeared to any other man. The occasion to which I refer was this: After the capture of Tunis, the Emperor passed through Paris with the consent of his brother-in-law, King Francis, [1] who wanted to present him with something worthy of so great a potentate. Having this in view, he ordered a Hercules to be executed in silver, exactly of the same size as my Jupiter. The King declared this Hercules to be the ugliest work of art that he had ever seen, and spoke his opinion plainly to the craftsmen of Paris. They vaunted ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... of a century before the Birth of Christ, the grandnephew of Julius Caesar had become sole master of the Roman world. Never, perhaps, at any former period, had so many human beings acknowledged the authority of a single potentate. Some of the most powerful monarchies at present in Europe extend over only a fraction of the territory which Augustus governed: the Atlantic on the west, the Euphrates on the east, the Danube and the Rhine on the north, and the deserts of Africa on ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen
... his people. The cities of Germany are very free; they have but very little of the countrey about them belonging to them; and they obey the Emperor, when they please, and they stand not in fear, neither of him nor any other Potentate about them: for they are in such a manner fortified, that every one thinks the siege of any of them would prove hard and tedious: for all of them have ditches, and rampires, and good store of Artillery, and alwaies have their publick cellars well provided with meat and drink ...
— Machiavelli, Volume I - The Art of War; and The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Manassas, where Wheat was severely wounded. The strongest of the three, and giving character to all, was called the "Tigers." Recruited on the levee and in the alleys of New Orleans, the men might have come out of "Alsatia," where they would have been worthy subjects of that illustrious potentate, "Duke Hildebrod." The captain, who had succeeded to the immediate command of these worthies on the advancement of Wheat, enjoying the luxury of many aliases, called himself White, perhaps out of respect for the purity of the patriotic garb lately assumed. So villainous was ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... conversation with these two daughters of the aristocracy was causing the assemblage to regard him as an individual of social importance. He gave the emir's address upon Clark Street and after dwelling some time upon his graces of person and mind, related how it was that this Eastern potentate was resident in the city of Chicago in a comparatively ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... ever assumed by prince or potentate, the proudest is that of the Roman pontiffs: "Servus servorum Dei"—"Servant ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Persian notion in Jewish literature warrants any inference or supposition at all, it would lead to the image of one who was originally a prince in heaven, and who must have fallen thence to become the builder and potentate of hell. Thirdly, that matter is not an essential core of evil, the utter antagonist of spirit, and that Ahriman is not evil by an intrinsic necessity, will appear from the two conceptions lying at the base and crown ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... letter?" "Yes," answered Wird Khan, and the boy said, "O King, me thought thou hadst sent for me on some grave occasion; indeed, a lesser than I had answered this letter but 'tis thine to command, O puissant potentate." Quoth the King, "Write the reply forthright, on account of the courier, for that he is appointed a term and we have delayed him another day." Quoth the boy, "With the readiest hearkening and obedience," ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... has presented Yusuf with a horse, blind with one eye, and not much bigger than a jackass, in return for the present Yusuf made to him. In fact, this potentate is now as poor as a rat, and has nothing to give away. When he has anything, he soon parts with it, being generous to prodigality. The title Sarkee is used for men of inferior rank, and ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... heraldic distinctions. But for years before we had even the village tailor appearing occasionally in the local newspaper as Sir Knight Shears, and the apothecary as Most Worthy Grand Commander and Puissant Potentate Senna. If it is pleasant for Bobby Shears and Sammy Senna to be knighted by their cronies and customers, how much more agreeable to the American mind a decoration and investiture from a ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... be great emperor of the world, And make a bridge thorough [37] the moving air, To pass the ocean with a band of men; I'll join the hills that bind the Afric shore, And make that country continent to Spain, And both contributary to my crown: The Emperor shall not live but by my leave, Nor any potentate of Germany. Now that I have obtain'd what I desir'd, I'll live in speculation of this art, ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... himself and all heroes by letting in this element of reason, irrespective of persons, this subtilizer and irresistible upward force, into our thoughts, destroying individualism; the power is so great that the potentate is nothing.— ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the revolver that I had only once heard fired, and there the blood-stained life-preserver, brace-and-bit, bottle of rock-oil, velvet bag, rope-ladder, walking-stick, gimlets, wedges, and even the empty cartridge-case which had once concealed the gift of a civilized monarch to a potentate ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... answer. Of the Mexicans I know little—of the war less: it were well our country made peace its friend, war its enemy. As to the General and his fighting in Mexico, that was a matter that best affected himself; through it he became a great potentate, but not so great a man; but, I accept the general idea that he is now become troubled of a short memory. During this time I had not forgotten number one—my supper! Having stowed it well away under my lining, I felt very much like a man who had just turned away his back on ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... with a large following, had crossed the Quathlamba Mountains, which we now know as the Drakensberg, and entered the territory of Natal. Here they proposed to settle if they could get the leave of the Zulu king, Dingaan, a savage potentate of whom and of whose armies everyone seemed to live ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... desire of governing Ireland through the influence of that utterly corrupt religion which has made that unhappy island the miserable lazar-house that it is; and, lo! Providence strikes down the ghostly potentate, and virtually, for the present, divests him of that 'property qualification' in virtue of which the relation can alone be maintained. But not less infatuated than our statesmen, and even less excusably so, are those men—professedly ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... back. My heart beat violently. Pausing at his desk, with only two or three of all the cards he had taken to the potentate, he looked at them, as he called out, with great dignity: "Mr. Huntington will see Mr. Sallinger, Mr. Stewart, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Bagh, or Garden of Delight, and the Mishat Bagh, or Garden of Pleasure, where wine-loving Jehangir and his beautiful consort Nur Jahan, the Light of the World, luxuriated in the summers of long ago. This potentate declared that he would rather lose all the rest of his vast and affluent empire than Kashmir. It furnished a place of refreshing retreat for his energies and his conscience, the load of the latter being fully up to the average of an Eastern despot's. By these lulling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... arm alone, Add Trisiras and Dushan dead, And Khara, with the hosts they led. Their death she saw, and mad with pain, Roared like a cloud that brings the rain, And fled in anger and dismay To Lanka, seat of Ravan's sway. There on a throne of royal state Exalted sat the potentate, Begirt with counsellor and peer, Like Indra with the Storm Gods near. Bright as the sun's full splendour shone The glorious throne he sat upon, As when the blazing fire is red Upon a golden altar fed. Wide gaped his mouth at every ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... whether we should see him, after all. But the day of our entree was a most propitious one, as on that very morning this renowned monarch had been made the happy father of his twenty-eighth child. To this fortunate event we doubtless owed our reception at the court of this very exclusive potentate, who, we were told, almost invariably declined the proffered civilities of foreigners. Bonfires, illuminations and processions seemed the order of the day, business was suspended, bells were ringing, gongs sounding, and everybody was taking holiday, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various
... of enemies was a bad thing; and I was thinking of a case in which a maritime people are harassed by enemies, as the Athenians were by Minos (I do not speak from any desire to recall past grievances); but he, as we know, was a great naval potentate, who compelled the inhabitants of Attica to pay him a cruel tribute; and in those days they had no ships of war as they now have, nor was the country filled with ship-timber, and therefore they ...
— Laws • Plato
... it was comparatively easy to make him believe he did not know anything which he ought to know; but at home, where the old meed of praise and deference was awarded to him, where his word was law and gospel, and he was Judge Markham, the potentate of the town, Ethelyn's criticisms were not palatable, and he hinted that he was old enough to take care of himself without quite so much dictation. Then, when he saw a tear on Ethelyn's eyelashes, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... town sweep from base to pointed apex with a symmetry so perfect, their houses are so light and airy of architecture, so brilliant and varied of colour, that they suggest having been called into being by the stroke of a magician's wand to gratify the whim of an Eastern potentate. Surely, they are a vast seraglio, a triple collection of pleasure houses where captive maidens are content and nautch girls dance with feet like larks. Business, commerce, one cannot associate with this enchanting vista; nor cockroaches as ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... been accustomed to hear so many frightful things of the cloven-footed potentate, and have formed such diabolical ideas of his satanic majesty, exhibiting him in so many horrible and monstrous shapes, that really it were enough to frighten Beelzebub himself, were he by any accident to meet his prototype in the dark, dressed up in the several figures in which imagination ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... Hal's representative was waltzing in a way that would have filled that stout potentate with respectful admiration, while Queen Katherine flirted with a Fire Zouave. Alcipades whisked Mother Goose about the room till the old lady's conical hat tottered on her head, and the Union held fast to a very little ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... principality of Honan. Utubu, low as he had sunk, declined to abase himself further and to purchase life at the loss of his dignity. The sudden death of Muhula gained a brief respite for the distressed Chinese potentate, but the advantage was not of any permanent significance; first of all because the Kins were too exhausted by their long struggle, and, secondly, because Genghis hastened to place himself at the head of his army. The news of the death of Muhula reached ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... iteration of jocose demonology and infernal burlesque might tempt the most patient and the most curious of readers to devote the author, with imprecations or invocations as elaborate as his own, to the spiritual potentate whose "last will and testament" is transcribed into the ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... hopeless, and abandoned hostilities. He had been, however, a week arriving at such a conclusion, and the sound of the cannonade was heard during the whole of the time occupied by our return. It was a pity to see a worthy potentate of moderate means spending his pocket-money so fruitlessly. The philanthropist will be glad to learn that no lives were sacrificed during this protracted siege. The Montenegrians, more modest than some of our own neighbours ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... granted," he said; "but as for Lafayette—I cannot free him; my hands are tied." Exactly what it was that had "tied the hands" of the great potentate has never been revealed. ...
— Lafayette • Martha Foote Crow
... intercourse; here pleasure is sought in the practice of abominations or in the chewing of noxious and intoxicating drugs; here men make a pomp and a parade of their infamy; and the cavalcade which escorts with jealous eye the wives and concubines of the potentate on a march or journey is also charged with the care of his zammins, the unfortunate youths who administer to his fouler passions. Such is the moral, and the political state of Morocco! Such are the fruits of a religion which is not that of ...
— Letters of George Borrow - to the British and Foreign Bible Society • George Borrow
... impossible but utterly unheroic. And the minutes were flying. He would remind her that time does not wait even for Kings, nor would the Orient Express delay its departure by a single second to oblige such a fledgling potentate as he. ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... the civic gentlemen and the proprietor, and vanished into the elevator. She was destined to see him so often afterwards that she scarcely took the trouble to time her dining and supping by that of the simple potentate, who had his meals in one of the public rooms, with three gentlemen of his suite, in sack-coats like himself, after the informal manner ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... you write, thank Mr. Kingsley for thinking of letting me see the sound sense of an Eastern potentate. (154/1. Kingsley's letter to Huxley, dated December 20th, 1862, contains a story or parable of a heathen Khan in Tartary who was visited by a pair of proselytising Moollahs. The first Moollah said: "Oh! Khan, worship my God. He ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin
... scorn with which Troubridge would have received the potentate's reply had he given the same advice as Nelson. It is highly probable that had it been given on the quarterdeck of his ship, the King would have been treated to a vocabulary that would have impressed him with ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... 13). Even with Jeremiah, who as a rule does not consider sacrifice and drawing near to Jehovah (Numbers xvi 5) as every man's business, the king as such is held to be also the supreme priest; for at the beginning of the exile and the foreign domination his hope for the future is: "Their potentate shall be of themselves, and their governor shall proceed from the midst of them, and I will cause him to draw near, and he shall approach unto me; for who else should have the courage to approach unto me? saith the Lord" (xxx. 21). Ezekiel is the first to protest ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... business into the hands of the proesti and demogeronts in office. The primates, who already exercised great official authority, instantly appropriated that which had been hitherto exercised by murdered voivodes and beys. Every primate strove to make himself a little independent potentate, and every captain of a district assumed the powers of a commander-in-chief. The Revolution, before six months had passed, seemed to have peopled Greece with a host of little Ali Pashas. When the primate ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... witnesses. [6:13]I charge you before the God who gives life to all [creatures], and Christ Jesus who made the good profession before Pontius Pilate, [6:14]that you keep the charge without spot, without blame, till the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, [6:15]which the blessed and only Potentate will show in its times, the King of kings and Lord of Lords, [6:16]who only has immortality, dwelling in light unapproachable, whom no man has seen nor can see; to whom be ...
— The New Testament • Various
... built upon Peter, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. Yes, I know it is a flattering and a pleasant thought that this little nation should have her own Church; and it is humbling and bitter that England should be called to submit to a foreign potentate in the affairs of faith—Nay, cry they like the Jews of old, not Christ but Barabbas—we will not have this Man to reign over us. And yet this is God's will and not that. Mark me, Mr. Norris, what you hope ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... not wavered from Thayor, had not yet greeted him. That a man so quiet and unostentatious belonged to the favoured rich was a new experience to him. He was also waiting for some sign of recognition from the financial potentate, the democracy of the ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... change his state, did not become a potentate, nor fill his purse with golden crowns. He was thankful enough to use his remaining wish to a more humble purpose, and forthwith relieved his wife ...
— The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault • Charles Perrault
... you, my dear Prince, how much time elapsed between this and the arrival of the home-grown Potentate—as you must allow me to call him until we meet and I can whisper his august name. But I know that shortly after his arrival, while I still loafed in my recess and hoped that Violet would soon drift in my direction and allow ...
— The Delectable Duchy • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
