"Servile" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... trouble to say that we must fight the Devil with fire; though, when the Devil is incarnate in human beings, that policy has never been very successful at Smithfield or elsewhere. But in trying the fiery cure of a servile insurrection, we should run the risk of converting the whole white population of the South into devils of the most desperate sort, with whom any kind of reconciliation, even truce, would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... The creature was servile—with almost a groveling servility. But one felt that this servility resulted from something potent and secret. One looked to see Rodman take Solomon's ring out of ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... The crowd admire his wit, his sense: Each word hath weight and consequence. The flatterer all his art displays; He who hath power, is sure of praise. A Fox stepped forth before the rest, And thus the servile throng addressed:— ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... toil, often extending from sunrise to sunset, he had little chance of ever getting this sum together. The consequence was that the merchants became the burgher class; and all the records of the time seem to prove conclusively that the merchants were servile instruments of the patroons whose patronage and favor they assiduously courted. This deliberately pursued policy of degrading and despoiling the laboring class incited bitter hatreds and resentments, the effects of which ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... sixteenth century was but a servile instrument of the Crown. The great barons were dead. Henry VIII. put to death Sir Thomas More and all who questioned the royal absolutism. Elizabeth, equally despotic, had by good fortune the services of the first generation of professional statesmen that England produced. These statesmen—Burleigh, ...
— The Rise of the Democracy • Joseph Clayton
... sympathized with her) "much abridged." The kitchen maid was dismissed, and the tall, delicate Elizabeth was driven to the drudgery of kitchen and washroom, and ordered to "be quiet and diligent as a servant," under charge of having proved herself "unworthy of a daughter's place in the family!" To this servile toil Elizabeth submitted without a murmur, and patiently plodded on, her strong constitution and heroic courage and steady faith bearing her up. But the accusation of "ingratitude and disobedience" was so false and severe as to be very depressing to her spirits. And, never ...
— Elizabeth: The Disinherited Daugheter • E. Ben Ez-er
... Roman model; and by it alone she wished herself, and those who were under her protection, to be judged. Next—and this count is altogether to her honour—law, such as it was, was too often administered, especially by the Franks, capriciously and brutally; while the servile population, always the great majority, can hardly be said to have been under the protection of law at all. No one can read the pages of Fredegarius, or Gregory of Tours, without seeing that there must have been cases weekly, even daily, which called on the clergy, in the name of justice and humanity, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... secret of each; as the painter searches out the secret of Raphael, Murillo, and Rembrandt; so the author analyzes the masterpieces of literature to discover the secret of Irving, of Eliot, and of Burke. Not that an author is to be a servile imitator of any man's manner; but that, having knowledge of all the secrets of composition, he shall so be enabled to set forth for others his own thought in all the beauty and perfection in ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... beginning show; A seed which, we may hope, will soon conceive A Julius, Alexander, Scipio. Who thee Alcina's bondsman could believe; And (for the world the shameful fact might know) That all should, manifest to sight, perceive Upon thy neck and arms the servile chains, Wherewith she at her will her ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... All free-born people in every age and clime have a contempt for slaves. The sole reason of the persistence of the caste feeling is that the black man belongs to a race which has been enslaved." The inference is, "therefore your character is a servile character." ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 44, No. 5, May 1890 • Various
... as in a game of chess; We serve our friends but where our profit is. When fortune smiles, we're yours, and yours alone; But when she frowns, the servile herd are gone. So, in a play, they act with mimick art, Father, or son, or griping miser's part: But when at last the comic scenes are o'er, They quit ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... if you—want me to," she answered with the new servile listlessness; and he wondered again whether she was trying to exact some novel abandonment of adoration or to exhaust him by passive resistance. "I believe we have ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... succeeded no better than the previous compromises. Even if the nobles had wished to remain quiet, they could not. Their lordship over a servile class made them independent of all ordinary labor and all care arising from labor; some exercise of mind and body they must have; Conde took this needed exercise by attempting to seize the city of Poitiers, and, when the burgesses were ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 11 • Various
... of a retreat, when Mme de Stael came to release him from the ambuscade into which he had fallen. She retained him near the door, and there was a grave conversation on the English constitution. Mme de Stael could not reconcile the idea of political liberty, with the prevalence of servile forms remaining in the individual relationships of a society so jealous of ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 445 - Volume 18, New Series, July 10, 1852 • Various
... Emperors do not always trouble themselves with the Affairs of State; for they sometimes pass their whole Lives in a continued Round of indolent Pleasures, while their Favourites govern all. I don't doubt but you have already made your Observation upon the servile Crowd who attend my Motions, who wait upon my Commands, with an Obsequiousness that perhaps is not practised in your Parts of the World, betwixt Creatures of the same Species, yet many of them hate me, as I do them,—perhaps you'll think this strange; but when the secret Springs of this Attachment ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... spear, or lance, The quips and cranks most laughed at have to him no mirth; He gives a regal yawn as fairest women dance; Music has outpoured all its notes, the soft and loud, But dully on his wearied ear its accents roll, As dully as the praises of the servile crowd Who falsely sing the purity of his black soul. He has had before his dais from the prison brought Two thieves, whose terror makes their chains to loudly ring, Then gaping most unkingly, he dismissed ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... notion of the town, They reason and conclude by precedent, And own stale nonsense which they ne'er invent. Some judge of authors names not works, and then Nor praise nor blame the writing, but the men. Of all this servile herd the worst is he That in proud dullness joins with quality A constant critic at the great man's board, To fetch and carry nonsense for my lord What woful stuff this madrigal would be, In some ...
— An Essay on Criticism • Alexander Pope
... which either they or we must change our sentiments, or one or both must fall. And what is a Tory? Good God! what is he? I should not be afraid to go with a hundred Whigs against a thousand Tories, were they to attempt to get into arms. Every Tory is a coward; for servile, slavish, self-interested fear is the foundation of Toryism; and a man under such influence, though he may be cruel, never can ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... interviews—because they seemed to exercise an occult influence upon the gullible public. "Law," "Peace," "Order," "The Greatest Good to the Greatest Number," he had used them all as an Indian medicine-man shakes bone rattles, and waves a cow's tail before the tribe, laughing behind his gaping mask at the servile acceptance of his prophecies. One and all these Cunjar Gods he had believed to be only bits of shell and plaited rope, had come to life—they were gods, real presences, real powers. He had invoked them only to deceive others—and, ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... and who, even now slaves to his face, were cynics behind his back. "They stood before him while he sate," says his biographer; "all these Barons, bareheaded; their hands crossed on their breasts; their looks downcast;—oh, how frightened they were!"—a picture more disgraceful to the servile cowardice of the nobles than the haughty sternness of the Tribune. It might be that he deemed it policy to break the spirit of his foes, and to awe those whom it was ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... It met in November 1621, and after passing a resolution in support of their privileges, which James tore out of the Journals with his own hand, and granting the usual supplies, was dissolved on the 6th of January 1622. Waller was probably as silent and servile as any of his neighbours. He began, however, to feel his way as a courtier, and overheard some curious and not very canonical talk of James with his lords and bishops, the record of which reminds you of some of the richer scenes of the "Fortunes ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... which ends by delegating the authority of the State to a reactionary triumvirate of bureaucracy, jingoism and vulgarity (or Tory, Landowner and Journalist). The guarantees of democracy, the rights of free thought and free speech, every sort of civil liberty and every defence against the servile state, will all have to be suppressed in the interests of the nation at war. It is the old story of the conversion of Thais by Paphnutius: the preacher snatches lovely Thais from the burning, but himself is damned—"si hideux qu'en passant la main sur son visage, il sentit sa laideur." ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... his low voice rose, his arm uplifted fiercely for an instant in dire menace. Then, quick as lightning flashes, all was transformed. The eyes were bent upon the carpet, the arms folded, the voice sunk, soft and servile. ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... the subject of slavery; that you will be pleased to countenance the restoration of liberty to these unhappy men, who alone in this land of freedom are degraded into perpetual bondage, and who, amidst the general joy of surrounding freemen, are groaning in servile subjection; that you will devise means for removing this inconsistency from the character of the American people; that you will promote mercy and justice towards this distressed race; and that you will step to the very verge of the power vested in you for discouraging every species of traffic ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... Arsinoe, And the poor glow-worm light of some faint jewels Before the light of love, and soul of beauty— O how it vexes me! He is no soldier: All honorable soldiers are Love's servants. He is a merchant, a mere wandering merchant, Servile to gain; he trades for poor commodities, And makes his conquests thefts! Some fortunate captains That quarter with him, and are truly valiant. Have flung the name of "Happy Caesar" on him; Himself ne'er ...
— Characteristics of Women - Moral, Poetical, and Historical • Anna Jameson
... are, and always have been, a servile race. They are lazy in disposition, for the most part of unprepossessing appearance, and their country has the Kafue River on the east, and the Zambesi on the south, as natural boundaries. As carriers they do ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... imitation of the movements of clodhoppers and ragamuffins, the realist of the fifteenth century would wander hopelessly were it not for the antique. Genius and science are of no avail; the position of Christ in baptism in the paintings of Verrocchio and Ghirlandajo is mean and servile; the movements of the "Thunder-stricken" in Signorelli's lunettes is an inconceivable mixture of the brutish, the melodramatic, and the comic; the magnificently drawn youth at the door of the prison in Filippino's Liberation of ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... (though lowly) attending upon youth (though gilded) at its meals in this way—not old enough indeed to have pondered at all upon the relations of Capital and Labour or of the domineering and the servile—he had reflected a good deal upon the cut and fit of clothes, and there was something about the waiting-boy's evening coat that outraged his critical sense. Nor did the fact that the other's indifferent tailoring throw the perfection of his own into such brilliant ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... brave and prudent. Now if you hand over the legions and the offices to such men, there will be danger that both you and your government will be overthrown. It is not possible for a valuable man to be produced without good sense, and he cannot acquire any great good sense from servile practices. But again, if he becomes a man of sense, he cannot fail to desire liberty and to hate all masters. If, on the other hand, you entrust nothing to these men, but put affairs in charge of the worthless and chance comers, you will very quickly incur the anger of the ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... himself free he determined to start again on his travels. On reaching Vienna, the Sardinian minister offered to introduce him to Metastasio; but he cared nothing at that time for any Italian author, and, moreover, had taken a great dislike to the poet, from having seen him make a servile genuflexion to the Empress Maria Theresa in the Imperial Gardens at Schoenbrunn. On entering the dominions of Frederick the Great, he was made extremely indignant by the military despotism that reigned there. When presented ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... Germanicus thought it behooved him to learn the sentiments of the soldiers, and deliberated with himself how to get at the truth; "the reports of the tribunes and centurions were oftener agreeable than true; the freedmen had servile spirits; friends were apt to flatter; if an assembly were called, there, too, the counsel proposed by a few was carried by the clamorous plaudits of the rest. The minds of soldiers could, then, only be thoroughly known when, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... heart, thence to Atheism, thence to gross idolatry, onward to selfish gratification, violent rapacity, lust of conquest, and luxury, licentiousness, and effeminacy begotten of its spoils; then military tyranny, civil war, servile revolt, anarchy, famine and pestilence, and the sword of less debauched neighbors, Christ's iron scepter, hurl them down from the pinnacle of greatness, to dash them in pieces against each other, in the valley of destruction; and there they lie, wrecks of nations, ruins of empires, ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... taken in foreign wars, fugitives from other clans, and tramps, fell into the lowest ranks of the fuidre—"serfs." It was as a captive that Saint Patrick was brought in his youth to Ireland. The law allowed, rather than entitled, a flaith to keep unfree people for servile occupations and the performance of unskilled labor for the public benefit. In reality they worked for his personal profit, oftentimes at the expense of the clan. They lived on his land, and he was responsible for their conduct. By analogy, the distinctions saer and ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... conversation with any of the party would only give Balmawhapple a wished-for opportunity to display the insolence of authority, and the sulky spite of a temper naturally dogged, and rendered more so by habits of low indulgence and the incense of servile adulation. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... of society among the Anglo-Saxons were such as belonged to birth, office, or property, and such as were occupied by a freeman, a freedman, or one of the servile description. It is to be lamented in the review of these different classes, that a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon population was in a state of abject slavery: they were bought and sold with land, and were conveyed in the grants of it promiscuously with the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... flatter himself with being able to render you happy away from these dear scenes of tumult? What an inconceivable character is that of Corinne! profound in sentiment, but frivolous in taste; independent from innate pride, yet servile from the need of distraction! She is a sorceress whose spells alternately alarm and then allay the fears which they have created; who dazzles our view in native sublimity, and then, all of a sudden disappears from that region where she is without her ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... at once, and there was no further bother. It was strange the relations which existed between this curiously-assorted pair. There could be no doubt that Hervey hated the dog, and the dog's regard for its master was of doubtful quality. As a rule, it would fawn in a most servile manner, but its attitude, the moment its master's back was turned, was always morose and even truculent. Hervey had told his sister that the dog was as treacherous as an Indian. But Hervey was not a keen observer, or he would have added, "and ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... cruel injustice to which the feet are subjected, and the extraordinary distortions and diseases to which they are liable in consequence. The foot's fingers are the slaves in the republic of the body. Their black leathern integument is only the mask of their servile condition. They bear the burdens, while the hands, their white masters, handle the money and wear the rings. They are crowded promiscuously in narrow prisons, while each of the hand's fingers claims its separate apartment, leading ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... and the rest of the fine arts, gradually revived. While inspired, perhaps, with a taste for sculpture by means of the scattered remains of Grecian art, the Roman artists drew, at the same time, from their own resources, and were by no means servile copyists of the sculptors of a former age. The first academy of the art was founded at Florence, in 1350, and at the close of the same century, sculpture was firmly established in Italy, and itinerant sculptors, not unskilful in their art, wandered from ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... towards a commercial feudalism and to the fourth phase of our civilization. The economists accustomed to reverence everything which comes in the name and under the sanction of commerce, will see this new order spring up without alarm, and will consecrate their servile pens to the celebration of its praises. Its debut will be one of brilliant promise, but the result will be an industrial inquisition, subordinating the whole people to the interests of the ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... been transacted in England under Plantagenets and Stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew by the Parliament of Ireland in the eighteenth century. That Parliament, indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. It was corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. But when we have said all this, and said it truly, there is more to tell. It was alive, and it was national. Even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate ...
— Handbook of Home Rule (1887) • W. E. Gladstone et al.
... a fort, the ruins of whose walls may yet be traced. And the governor thereof had reduced the nurse of Saint Patrick under the yoke of slavery, and compelled her to be a servant unto him. And among other servile works enjoined to her, he had commanded her to clean with shovels all the offices within the fort, and to carry forth the soil from the stables. But the woman, having an ingenuous mind, and understanding that all power was from God, and that all things were ordained of God, ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... had at Garden City to keep the place neat, would have a business of his own. But here he is a sort of duke downstairs. He sits at the head of the servants' table and orders them around and that's worth more than money to an Old World servile mind. ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... bicycling there myself to see the place so I pointed out the way and rode on at once, for there was something so utterly servile about them both that I did not care for their company. They seemed by their wretched mien to have been persecuted or utterly neglected for many years, I thought that very likely they had done long ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... from war or strife with the elements, or else they devoted themselves to the salvation of their souls. But when the ideas of the Middle Ages had decayed, when improved arts of life had freed men from servile subjection to daily needs, when the bondage of religious tyranny had been thrown off and political liberty allowed the full development of tastes and instincts, when, moreover, the classical traditions had lost their power, and courts and coteries became too narrow ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... ardour and tried to banish his grievances against her. He assured her that all her alarm and tribulation were not his fault, but her own; and her responsive agreement and servile tact, by its self-evidence defeated its own object and fretted the man's nerves, despite his kindly feelings. For Sabina, in her unspeakable thankfulness at the turn of events, sank from herself and was obsequious. When they met he kissed her and presently, ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... least warlike of presidents, and he loved the French with a servile devotion. But his party was strongest in precisely those parts of the country where the mouth of the Mississippi was held to be of right the property of the United States; and the pressure of public opinion was too strong for Jefferson to think of resisting it. The ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... the sisters had commented upon it in a spirit somewhat akin to that of their employers; but they spoke without rancour, without scandalmongering. They knew themselves superior to the women who had grudgingly paid them, and often smiled at recollections which would have moved the servile ...
— The Odd Women • George Gissing
... a pleased smile. "When I come from France I will speak more to thee. Meanwhile, be courteous to all men, servile to none. Now to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VI. • Various
... vast empires. Under the Tsars a territory which was almost three times the size of the United States of America was occupied by a people who, with the exception of a few cases of individual revolt, were accustomed to the most servile obedience. Under Nicholas II a few men exercised rule in a most despotic form over more than 180,000,000 individuals spread over an immense territory. All obeyed blindly. Centralization was so great, and the obedience to the central power so absolute, that ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... poor. Even modern literature is held in thraldom by the banquetings of modern booksellers and publishers, who by this method contrive to cram the critics with their crudities, and direct the operation of their servile pens in the cutting up of poor authors. At the Publisher's Club, held at the Albion, Dr. Kitchener and Will Jerdau rule the roast; here these worthies may be heard commenting with 88profound critical consistency on culinaries and the classics, gurgling down ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... tracts in which the study of the Scriptures is enforced and their denial to the laity by Romanists assailed. But throughout the South it is criminal to teach a slave to read; throughout the South no book could be distributed among the servile population more incendiary than the Bible, if they could only read it. Will not our Southern brethren take alarm? The Society is reduced to the dilemma of either denying that the African has a soul to be saved, or of consenting to the terrible mockery of assuring ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... crossed ever so lightly, a spirit of antagonism and obstinacy was instantly aroused, which it sometimes took days to overcome, and was often made worse by servile coaxing and bribing on the part of those who had the care of her, this being considered the easiest way to ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature. His English translator in 1776 declares that "he meets with a much more favourable entertainment in England than in his native country, a servile nation that has lost all sense of liberty." Like many other notions current in 1776, this theory of Montaigne's popularity at home and abroad has lost its truth. Perhaps it would be more true to say that Montaigne is one of the ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang
... please! Always remember that the service on which we are engaged has no soul and a very long arm." Then dropping into the persuasive and servile tone of the maitre d'hotel: "I propose, Mr. Rebener, that you allow me to send you up a nice little lunch, some melon, say, a salmon mayonnaise or a filet du sole au vin blanc and a noisette d'agneau and a nice little sweet, and you must ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... three points of attack. Cimber, to judge from Cicero's invective, was suspected of having risen from servile parentage, and of trying, as freedmen then frequently did, to pass as a descendant of some unfortunate barbarian prince. Since his brogue was Celtic (tau Gallicum) he could readily make a plausible story of ...
— Vergil - A Biography • Tenney Frank
... kinds of crime in France are referable in no small degree to the absence of great motives,—the limited spheres and hopeless routine involved in arbitrary government, unsustained by any elevated sentiment. Such a rule makes literature servile, enterprise mercenary, and manners profligate: all history proves this. It is not, therefore, rational to infer, from the apparent want of ability in the nation to take care of its own affairs, that a military ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the throat; this is the revolutionary tribunal, an exceptional court like the extraordinary commissions of the ancient regime, only far more terrible. Aided by its police gang, the Committee of Public Safety itself selects the sixteen judges and sixty jurymen[11122] from among the most servile, the most furious, or the most brutal of the fanatics:[11123] Fouquier-Tinville, Hermann, Dumas, Payan, Coffinhal, Fleuriot-Lescot, and, lower down on the scale, apostate priests, renegade nobles, disappointed artists, infatuated ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... when he down declines she droops and mourns, Bedewed, as 'twere, with tears till he returns; And how she veils her flowers when he is gone. When this I meditate, methinks the flowers Have spirits far more generous than ours, And give us fair examples to despise The servile fawnings and idolatries Wherewith we court these earthly things below, Which merit not ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... a man of average or perhaps slightly less than average intelligence. He was quiet, very respectful, not to say servile, entirely devoid of impulsiveness of any form, and averse to quarrels, on which account he was rather despised by his companions. His natural affections were normal, and he was a good son and brother; ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... recorded the notable events that happened in his work, or person, and as he rode over the rough roads, the broad sky became his study where he read many volumes every year. These were not done through any servile imitation, but because of an admiration and unconscious hero worship which compelled him to follow where he admired. Wesley was to William Black a saint, an ecclesiastical statesman, an acute and ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean
... hall or bower, The Passions own thy power, Love, only Love her forceless numbers mean: For thou hast left her shrine; 40 Nor olive more, nor vine, Shall gain thy feet to bless the servile scene. ...
— The Poetical Works of William Collins - With a Memoir • William Collins
... doing anything of the kind. The Americans declared they could not see with indifference any state other than Spain in possession of Cuba, and further their disposition to interpose their power should war be conducted in Cuba in a devastating manner, and with a view to the excitement of a servile war. ...
— A Political Diary 1828-1830, Volume II • Edward Law (Lord Ellenborough)
... villages half forest with a brawl of streams down their streets, villages laced with avenues of cedar, villages of garden, of roses and wonderful flowers and the perpetual humming of bees. And through all the world go our children, our sons the old world would have made into servile clerks and shopmen, plough drudges and servants; our daughters who were erst anaemic drudges, prostitutes, sluts, anxiety-racked mothers or sere, repining failures; they go about this world glad and brave, learning, living, doing, happy and ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio had contained a provision which prohibited the use of servile labor therein, subject to the condition of the extraditions of fugitives from service due in any other part of the United States. Subsequently to the adoption of the Constitution this provision ceased to remain as a law, for its operation as such ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... tradition in Parliament, adopted also in the United States Senate, that silence is quite becoming to a member during his first session. Disraeli had a motto to the effect that it is better to be impudent than servile, and in order to teach Parliament that in the presence of personality all rules are waived, he very shortly indulged him in an exceeding spread-eagle speech. But he had not spoken five minutes before ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... strove to be as we are not, Loyal, and honourable, and even just. My webs of life in reveries were dyed As veils in vats of purple: so there stole Serene and sumptuous and mysterious pride Through the imperial vesture of my soul.— And lo! like any servile fool I crave The dark strange rapture of the ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... Had Philo really been ploughing the sand, and was an agreement between faith and reason, between religion and philosophy, impossible? Can the two finest creations of the mind only be combined on the terms that one is subordinate, or rather servile, to the other? In Judaism, if anywhere, the combination should be possible, for Judaism has as its basis an intuitional conception of God, which is in harmony with the philosophical conception of the universe, and it has little dogma besides. The neo-Platonists and the Church Fathers ...
— Philo-Judaeus of Alexandria • Norman Bentwich
... an unsatisfactory company, where benevolence took spasmodic forms, where charity was assumed as a regular uniform by loud professors and speculators in cheap notoriety, vehement in profession, restless and vain in action, servile in the last degree of meanness to the great, adulatory of one another, and intolerable to those who were anxious quietly to help the weak from failing rather than with a great deal of bluster and self-laudation to raise them up a little way when they were down, he plainly told ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... she managed to make friends of the servants by making them an occasional small present, and always gossiping with them for a few minutes before going into the drawing-room. This familiarity, by which she uncompromisingly put herself on their level, conciliated their servile good-nature, which is indispensable to a parasite. "She is a good, steady woman," ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... man is free from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall: Lord of himself, though not of lands, And, having nothing, ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... queen and woman: though my life Were taken, these thou couldst not take again, The gifts thou gavest me. More am I than wife, Whom, till my tyrant by thy strength were slain And by thy love my servile shame cast out, My naked sorrows clothed and girt about With princelier pride than binds the brows of queens, Thou sawest of all things least and lowest alive. ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... A friend of ours, whom the author never saw or heard of, was at once recognized by his own family as the original of Mr. Bennet, and we do not know if he has yet got rid of the nickname. A Mr. Collins, too, a formal, conceited, yet servile young sprig of divinity, is drawn with the same force and precision. The story of the piece consists chiefly in the fates of the second sister, to whom a man of high birth, large fortune, but haughty and reserved ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... these printers, to which neither economists nor legists have ever risen. If our legislators had introduced into their codes the principle of distributive justice which governs printing-offices; if they had observed the popular instincts,—not for the sake of servile imitation, but in order to reform and generalize them,—long ere this liberty and equality would have been established on an immovable basis, and we should not now be disputing about the right of property and ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... and are espoused by a state,—nought they were while alone, but worse now when they have crept into the bed and bosom of the state; her roots were nought before, but now she is planted in rank mould, and will shoot forth her unsavoury branches and blossoms,—and when handmaids, kept in a servile estate because of their disposition and quality, get their masters ushered out, and they become heirs, at least possessors of the inheritance or trust. Ver. 33 shows how necessarily war and contention follow upon unnecessary provocations ...
— The Works of the Rev. Hugh Binning • Hugh Binning
... play. In a very short time he appeared in a situation worthy of his understanding and of his heart. From a family whose name was associated in the public mind with tyranny and corruption, from a party of which the theory and the practice were equally servile, from the midst of the Luttrells, the Dysons, the Barringtons, came forth the greatest parliamentary defender ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... the interesting legends regarding King Solomon concerned his dominion over the Jinns. These people, of whom so much has been written and handed down by word of mouth, and who were supposed by subsequent generations to be a race of servile demons, were, in reality, savage natives of surrounding countries, who were forced by the king to work on his great buildings and other enterprises, and who occupied very much the position of the coolies of the present day. But that story of the dead Solomon and ...
— The Vizier of the Two-Horned Alexander • Frank R. Stockton
... proceeded the military caste. The business of this class is to defend their country when attacked by enemies. From his breast proceeded the third caste, consisting of farmers and merchants. From his feet, the member of inferiority, proceeded the Sudras, or servile caste. Carpenters, braziers, weavers, dyers, and the manual cultivators of the soil, are ...
— Dr. Scudder's Tales for Little Readers, About the Heathen. • Dr. John Scudder
... elbow on the velvet cushioned rail, watched the dancers for a while, then her unamused and almost expressionless gaze swept the tables below with a leisurely absence of interest which might have been mistaken for insolence—and envied as such by a servile ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... this way imbued with sentiments which could only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41] he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of "Fuerstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. So ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun
... theatre which exhibits, in full operation, two radically different political systems: the one resting on the basis of servile or slave labor; the other on the basis of voluntary labor ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... oppressed, incidentally, by the towering dignity of her lord: It is the duty of an artist to contemplate the works of a renowned predecessor or contemporary with unaffected reverence, but not with servile devotion, and Miss Smith occasionally varied, and with advantage, from the model that was before her. When Macbeth, incited to the murder of Duncan, interposes—"if we should fail," Mrs. Siddons with cool promptitude replies ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol. I. No. 3. March 1810 • Various
... triumph of that party which proclaims the Constitution a covenant with death and an agreement with hell!—of that party which tolled the bells, and fired the minute guns, and draped its churches with black, and all-hailed as saint and martyr the instigator of a bloody and servile insurrection in a sister State, the felon and murderer, John Brown! The Radical, the Black Republican, faction, sectional rule, fanaticism, violation of the Constitution, aggression, tyranny, and wrong—all these are in the bosom of that cloud!—The ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... property. Neither his person, nor his politics, nor his absence of culture, found favour in Richard Calmady's sight. And to-day, being somewhat on edge, the brewer's large, blustering presence and manner—at once patronising and servile—struck him as peculiarly odious. Image betrayed an evil tendency to emphasise his remarks by slapping his acquaintances upon the back. He was also guilty of supposing a defect of hearing in all persons older than, ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... or general indifference, I know not, but he made me no kind of compliment there; and, methinks, the young ladies look somewhat highly upon me. So I went away without bidding adieu to anybody, being desirous not to be thought too servile. But I do hope and believe that my Lord do yet value me as high as ever, though he dare not admit me to the freedom he once did, and that my Lady is still the same woman. So rode home and there found my uncle Wight. 'Tis an odd thing as my wife tells me his caressing ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... must ask the reader to follow all these references to his future wife; they are essential to the comprehension of Burns's character and fate. In June, we find him back at Mauchline, a famous man. There, the Armour family greeted him with a "mean, servile compliance," which increased his former disgust. Jean was not less compliant; a second time the poor girl submitted to the fascination of the man whom she did not love, and whom she had so cruelly insulted little more than a year ago; and, though Burns took advantage of her weakness, it was in the ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson
... am bored. Oh God! how I am bored! I am bored by our laws and customs. I am bored by our rotten empire and its empty monarchy. I am bored by its parades and its flags and its sham enthusiasms. I am bored by London and its life, by its smart life and by its servile life alike. I am bored by theatres and by books and by every sort of thing that people call pleasure. I am bored by the brag of people and the claims of people and the feelings of people. Damn people! ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells
... enforced which prohibit the immigration of a servile class to compete with American labor, with no intention of acquiring citizenship, and bringing with them and retaining habits and customs repugnant to ...
— U.S. Presidential Inaugural Addresses • Various
... ended, Verres was sent as governor to Sicily. By rights he should have remained there twelve months only, but his successor was detained by the Servile war in Italy, and his stay was thus extended to nearly three years, three years into which he crowded an incredible number of cruelties and robberies. Sicily was perhaps the wealthiest of all the provinces. Its fertile wheat-fields yielded harvests which, now that agriculture ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... mere mathematician is the most servile of mortals. He is useful, but cannot create, or even discover. He weighs and measures. Project one of his angles into space, and, though it may reach within ten feet of a blazing star that dazzles men with eyes, yet he will neither see nor know ...
— Bart Ridgeley - A Story of Northern Ohio • A. G. Riddle
... Welcome. My Friend, an honest plain Man, not being qualified to pass away his Time without the Reliefs of Business, has grafted the Farmer upon the Gentleman, and brought himself to submit even to the servile Parts of that Employment, such as inspecting his Plough, and the like. This necessarily takes up some of his Hours every Day; and as I have no Relish for such Diversions, I used at these Times to retire either to my Chamber, or a shady Walk near the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... war was going on there was dreadful work at home. The slaves had, for the second time, broken into insurrection. This servile war was mainly in Sicily, where thousands of slaves were slain. Of the captives, many were taken to Rome to fight with wild beasts in the arena, but they disappointed the eager spectators by killing each other. This outbreak only made slavery at ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... pervades the whole Utopian organisation, namely, a universal maximum of individual freedom. Whatever far-reaching movements the State or great rich men or private corporations may make, the starvation by any complication of employment, the unwilling deportation, the destruction of alternatives to servile submissions, must not ensue. Beyond such qualifications, the object of Modern Utopian statesmanship will be to secure to a man the freedom given by all his legitimate property, that is to say, by all the values his toil or ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells
... expression. He was smiling, and his smile showed small white teeth; and Paul felt in a moment that he could trust him, and that the man was friendly disposed to himself and all the world; friendly, not in a servile way, as one who wished to please, but in a sort of prodigal, royal way, as one who had great gifts to bestow, and was liberal of them, and looked to be made welcome. The other figure was that of ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... long since dead, but revived by a miracle for a brief Botticellian hour. Madonna and Venus! The Christ Child and Bacchus! Under which king? The artist never frankly tells us. The legends of fauns turned monks, of the gods at servile labour in a world that had forgotten them, are revived, but with more sublimated ecstasy than by Heine, when we stand before Botticelli and listen to ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... servile before Gods and divine spurnings, or before men and stupid human opinions: at ALL kinds of slaves doth ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... servile wonder were exchanged by the sailors, as this was said; and with fascinated eyes they awaited whatever magic might follow. ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... contribution; yet nearly all of all parties want alike the sagacity to discover that in striking America you shake Europe; that kings will come out of the war either to be victims or to be despots; and that within a quarter of a century they will be hunted down like vermin by the most servile nations, or slain in their palaces by their own courtiers. In a peace of twenty years you might have paid off the greater part of your National Debt, indeed as much of it as it would be expedient to discharge, and you would have left your old enemy ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... 28. That I eat not broken victuals. Among the kinds of food proscribed to a Brahmin are, "the food of a servile man and the orts ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... few, The muse shall weave her brightest wreaths for you, Who in Humanity's bland cause unite, Nor heed the shaft by interest aimed or spite; Like the great Pattern of Benevolence, Hygeia's blessings to the poor dispense; And though opposed by folly's servile brood, ENJOY THE LUXURY OF ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... as house- porter, and was very well content with his lot, when suddenly an unexpected incident occurred. . . . One fine summer day the old lady was walking up and down the drawing-room with her dependants. She was in high spirits; she laughed and made jokes. Her servile companions laughed and joked too, but they did not feel particularly mirthful; the household did not much like it, when their mistress was in a lively mood, for, to begin with, she expected from every one prompt and complete participation in her merriment, and was furious if any ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... and envy; envy darts a sting, Which makes a swain as wretched as a king. I envy none their pageantry and show; I envy none the gilding of their woe. Give me, indulgent gods! with mind serene, And guiltless heart, to range the sylvan scene; No splendid poverty, no smiling care, No well-bred hate, or servile grandeur, there: There pleasing objects useful thought suggest; The sense is ravish'd, and the soul is blest; On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; In every rill a sweet instruction flows. But some, untaught, o'erhear the whisp'ring rill, ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... slavery is a state little favorable to population. (See Hume's Essay, and Malthus on population, i. 334.—G.) The testimony of Appian (B.C. l. i. c. 7) is decisive in favor of the rapid multiplication of the agricultural slaves; it is confirmed by the numbers engaged in the servile wars. Compare also Blair, p. 119; likewise Columella ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... pains! By your sons in servile chains, We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurpers low! Tyrants fall in every foe! Liberty's in every blow! Let us ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... that he probably does not intend to visit again. He knows perfectly well that women and children are afraid of him, and as a rule is very willing to work upon that fear—though the sight of a man, or of a dog with character, is sufficient to make him the most servile of his race. But where he meets a lonely woman he is a ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... thing's but just, so ill deserv'st thou it. I, and thy brethren here, have no such mind, Nor such prodigious worth in David find, That we to him should our just rights resign, Or think God's choice not made so well as thine. Shame of thy house and tribe! hence from mine eye; To thy false friend and servile master fly; He's ere this time in arms expecting thee; Haste, for those arms are raised to ruin me. Thy sin that way will nobler much appear, Than to remain his spy and agent here. When I think this, Nature, by thee forsook, Forsakes me too.' With that his spear he took To strike ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... are but the magnitude of Me, The width of My extension, the surround Of My dense splendour. Rolling, rolling round, To steeped infinity, and out beyond My own strong comprehension, you are bond And servile to My doings. Let you swing More wide and ever wide, you do but fling Around this instant Me, and measure still The breadth and ...
— Georgian Poetry 1911-12 • Various
... royal blood of two guests and allies, inhumanly murdered by their order, and in their presence. The fate of Gabinius, and of Para, was the same: but the cruel death of their sovereign was resented in a very different manner by the servile temper of the Armenians, and the free and daring spirit of the Germans. The Quadi were much declined from that formidable power, which, in the time of Marcus Antoninus, had spread terror to the gates of Rome. But they still possessed arms and courage; their courage was animated by despair, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in all the direct opposite of his father. As ambitious as Charles, but with less knowledge of men and of the rights of man, he had formed to himself a notion of royal authority which regarded men as simply the servile instruments of despotic will, and was outraged by every symptom of liberty. Born in Spain, and educated under the iron discipline of the monks, he demanded of others the same gloomy formality and reserve as marked his own character. The cheerful merriment of his Flemish subjects was as ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a grave, puzzled expression. The native servants she had been used to in India were not in the least like this. They were obsequious and servile and did not presume to talk to their masters as if they were their equals. They made salaams and called them "protector of the poor" and names of that sort. Indian servants were commanded to do things, not asked. It was not the custom to say "please" and "thank you" and Mary had always ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... were by this, or any other, History to be shown essentially erroneous in our politics, who, that calls himself a Briton, can be deemed such an impious slave, as to conceal the destructive evil? The editor of this work disdains and abhors the servile thought, and wishes to live no longer than he dares to think, speak, write, and, in all things, to ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... by trading companies in England,—at first a great monopoly headed by the Duke of York, then rival companies. The colonists made some attempts to check the traffic,—growing alarmed at the great infusion of a servile and barbaric population. Virginia long tried to discourage it by putting a heavy import tax on slaves, which was constantly overruled by the English government under the influence of the trading companies. At a later day every one tried ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... remains of the almost destroyed work sufficient to guide him satisfactorily in this respect, or whether their excellence as now seen be due to his own conception, it is clear that the principles of taste on which he has formed his style are free from faults which might have resulted from a servile following of the manner of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... discern and strive to develop the personality of the pupil, will be on the alert to discover latent features of originality and character. He will respect and encourage individuality, rather than insist upon the servile imitation of some model—even though that model be himself. As the distinguished artist Victor Maurel has justly observed: "Of all the bad forms of teaching singing, that by imitation is ...
— Style in Singing • W. E. Haslam
... a scourge sent to punish us for past sins of the race. Certainly women had a very bad time in days gone by—they were slaves; and at odd moments I am tempted to conclude that the slave instinct survives in some of them, and they take their revenge in true servile fashion. This line of thought would carry me back over more ages than I care to traverse; I am content with knowing that the shrews are in a minority, and that the majority of my countrywomen ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... her with amazement and supreme contempt at this servile appeal, for so it seemed ...
— True Love's Reward • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself until it shall pervade the masses ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Buchanan • James Buchanan
... loud and insolent command, and maintain a haughty demeanor, which perhaps might have been excused in the great Marcellus after the conquest of Syracuse. Sometimes these heroes undertake more arduous achievements: they visit their estates in Italy, and procure themselves, by servile hands, the amusements of the chase. And if at any time, especially on a hot day, they have the courage to sail in their gilded galleys from the Lucrine Lake to their elegant villas on the sea-coast of Puteoli and Cargeta, they compare ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... he combined humility and dignity; and I think that the explanation of this extraordinary degree of success in a very difficult combination was due to the fact that at the bottom his humility was really the outward expression, not of a servile attitude toward any man, but of the spiritual fact that in very truth he walked humbly ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe
... machine was again in good working order. Lorne even profited, in the opinion of many, by the fact of his youth, with its promise of energy and initiative, since Mr Farquharson had lately been showing the defects as well as the qualities of age and experience, and the charge of servile timidity was already in the mouths of ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... partisans; the interest of the disbanded soldier was sold to the speculator; injustice was acted under the pretence of faith; and the chief of the army became the patron of the fraud.(2) From such a beginning what else could be expected, than what has happened? A mean and servile submission to the insults of one nation; ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... Gifts, commended every single Spaniard to make choice of as many of these People, as he had a mind to, that during their stay there, they might use them as Servants, and forced to undergo the most servile Offices they should impose on them. Every one cull'd out a Hundred, or Fifty, according as he thought convenient for his peculiar service, and these wretched Indians did serve the Spaniards with their utmost strength and endeavour; so that there could be nothing ...
— A Brief Account of the Destruction of the Indies • Bartolome de las Casas
... sacred, as sacred as the cradle of the first-born, which even the officers of the law have orders to respect. The silence of the tomb reigns in the city, the public places are deserted, and the theatres re-echo alone with servile applause of royalism, that triumphs alike on the stage and in our streets. You were impatient, Bailly, and you treacherous, La Fayette, to employ that terrible weapon, martial law, so dangerous, so difficult to be wielded. No, no, nought can ever efface the indelible stain of the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... on Thursday. I think that her fault is that she flatters a little too much. And flattery to one whose ears have so long been excoriated by abuse does not sound safe. However, all is right when she speaks of you. And the point she most eulogised in you is that which I have heard many a servile coward who could never go and do likewise" [no indication is to be found either in this letter or elsewhere to whom she alludes], "select for the same purpose, namely, your straightforward, unflinching, courageous ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... nor is any human life long enough to follow out consecutively, all the immeasurable blessings and the unspeakable good which have resolved to mankind from the ever-memorable victories of little Greece over the rolling masses of servile Asia, which were nigh sweeping over Europe like the high tides of a swollen sea, carrying its choking sand over all the germs of civilization, liberty, and taste, and nearly all that is good and noble. Think what we should have been had Europe become ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... appearing near us. 'Serve him right. Transgression—punishment—bang! Pitiless, pitiless. That's the only way. This will prevent all conflagrations for the future. I was just telling the manager...' He noticed my companion, and became crestfallen all at once. 'Not in bed yet,' he said, with a kind of servile heartiness; 'it's so natural. Ha! Danger—agitation.' He vanished. I went on to the riverside, and the other followed me. I heard a scathing murmur at my ear, 'Heap of muffs—go to.' The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... could put brought a different answer. Dudley was puzzled. The woman was in her right mind; she was no liar—of this servile vice at least she was free. ...
— The Colonel's Dream • Charles W. Chesnutt
... changed; the Palace was always the same; there were the same faces, the same porter with the wan complexion, the same attendants, at once haughty and servile. Nevertheless, nobody recognized him. This priest, browned by the sun, old before his years through disappointment, almost bent beneath the load of his secret troubles, was different from the young and brilliant ...
— The Grip of Desire • Hector France
... Altogether he made a very fine fellow, carrying to a great extent the elegancies of vice: a bit of a poet, like every one else; a good servant of the state, a good servant to the prince; assiduous at feasts, at galas, at ladies' receptions, at ceremonies, and in battle; servile in a gentlemanlike way; very haughty; with eyesight dull or keen, according to the object examined; inclined to integrity; obsequious or arrogant, as occasion required; frank and sincere on first acquaintance, with the power of assuming ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... esteemed. In their intercourse with the outer world they have become, as it were, degraded, humiliated; and when they go out of the valley to earn wages, it is to take the position of an inferior and almost servile race. The reason is that the employing class, as a whole, has moved on, leaving the labourers where they were, until now a great gulf divides them. Merely in relative wealth, if that were all, the difference has widened enormously. Seventy or eighty years ago, I have heard say, the shopkeeper ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... other comestibles because decorated by the cook with a paper frill and bow of ribbon! The atmosphere which Lord Reginald Wrotham brought with him into the common-room of the bar was redolent of tobacco-smoke and whisky, yet, judging from the various propitiatory, timid, anxious, or servile looks cast upon him by all and sundry, it might have been fragrant and sacred incense wafted from the altars of the goddess Fortune to her waiting votaries. Helmsley's spirit rose up in contempt against the effete dandy as he watched him leaning ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... with the code of Menu which was probably drawn up in the 9th century B.C. In the society described, the first feature that strikes us is the division into four castes—the sacerdotal, the military, the industrial, and the servile. The Bramin is above all others even kings. In theory he is excluded from the world during three parts of his life. In practice he is the instructor of kings, the interpreter of the military class; the king, his ministers, and the soldiers. Third are the Veisyas who conduct all agricultural ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... she said. "There's too much servility in it. And yet one may pay these courtesies and not be servile. I always 'sir'd' your father, and he knew I did it because I wanted to, not because I had to. And I shall do the same with you once we understand each other. The position I want to make clear is this: I don't admit ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... by the same rule men may in all other things put what restrictions they please upon the laws of God. If by the Mosaical law, though it was rough and severe, as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and servile nation, men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine that in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us with the tenderness of a father, He has given us a greater license to cruelty than He did to the Jews. Upon these reasons it is, that I think ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... Government whose presence alone prevents an outbreak of sectarian strife for "sedulously fomenting" religious animosities with a view to arresting the Nationalist movement. Similarly, the constitution of the Universities has been changed with a view to rendering the youth of India "stupid and servile" instead of ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... oblation. With Purusha as victim, they performed A sacrifice. When they divided him, How did they cut him up? What was his mouth? What were his arms? And what, his thighs and feet? The Brahman was his mouth; the kingly soldier Was made his arms; the husbandman, his thighs; The servile ...
— New Ideas in India During the Nineteenth Century - A Study of Social, Political, and Religious Developments • John Morrison
... thing the knowing ones said was that Verdi was touched with Wagnerism, and that he had studied "Lohengrin" with painstaking care. If Verdi was influenced by Wagner it was for good; but there was no servile imitation in it. The "Aida" is rich in melody, reveals a fine balance between singers and orchestra, and the "local color" is correct even to the chorus of Congo slaves that was introduced at the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... History of the World, and by a curious misconstruction of motive was intended to remove from the King's mind the unpleasant impression caused by those parables of Ahab and of Ninias. It had, however, as we shall see, the very opposite result. The preface to the King expresses an almost servile desire to please: 'it would be more dog-like than man-like to bite the stone that struck me, to wit the borrowed authority of my sovereign misinformed.' But Raleigh was curiously misinformed himself regarding the ways and wishes of James. His dialogue takes for its starting-point the trial ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... to make my Work appear of a trifling Nature, has been an Attempt to depreciate Literal Criticism. To this End, and to pay a servile Compliment to Mr. Pope, an Anonymous Writer has, like a Scotch Pedlar in Wit, unbraced his Pack on the Subject. But, that his Virulence might not seem to be levelled singly at Me, he has done Me the Honour ...
— Preface to the Works of Shakespeare (1734) • Lewis Theobald
... se courba jamais. En vain de la faveur du plus grand des monarques 425 Tout rvre genoux les glorieuses marques; Lorsque d'un saint respect tous les Persans touchs N'osent lever leurs fronts la terre attachs, Lui, fierement assis, et la tte immobile, Traite tous ces honneurs d'impit servile, 430 Prsente mes regards un front sditieux, Et ne daignerait pas au moins baisser les yeux. Du palais cepeudant il assige la porte: A quelque heure que j'entre, Hydaspe, ou que je sorte, Son visage ...
— Esther • Jean Racine
... his flattery, his presents and his servile devotion to the interests of the khan, secured a decree of dethronement against his brother and his own appointment as grand prince. Then, with a combined army of Tartars and Russians, he marched upon Novgorod to take possession of the crown. Resistance ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... frontier, and just from a hard trip in an ox-wagon, with very short rations indeed, this profusion of good things was a real delight. Sandy's mouth watered, but he gently sighed to himself, "'Most takes away my appetite." The polite, even servile, waiters pressed the lads with the best of everything on the generous board; and Sandy's cup of happiness was full when a jolly darky, his ebony face shining with good-nature, brought him some frosted cake, charlotte russe, ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... who wore the pileus, the cap of a freed slave, and so have regarded the Roman governor by whom Jesus was tried as a man who had been raised from the ranks of slavery. The worst condemnation of slavery is, that it degrades the characters of its victims, developing the servile vices of cowardice, meanness, and cruelty—all of which vices are manifest in Pilate's character. But such a promotion as this theory implies would be most improbable. A more likely explanation connects the name with pilum, a javelin. The earlier name Pontius suggests the family of ...
— Men of the Bible; Some Lesser-Known Characters • George Milligan, J. G. Greenhough, Alfred Rowland, Walter F.
... if that high thought were 50 Linked to a servile mass of matter—and, Knowing such things, aspiring to such things, And science still beyond them, were chained down To the most gross and petty paltry wants, All foul and fulsome—and the very best Of thine enjoyments a sweet degradation, A most enervating and filthy cheat To lure ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... this conduct will furnish a dangerous precedent of preference granted to Hanover above other nations; and that this preference may gradually be advanced, till in time Hanover may, by a servile ministry, be preferred to Britain itself, and that, therefore, all such partiality ought to be crushed in the beginning, and its authors pursued with ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 11. - Parlimentary Debates II. • Samuel Johnson
... pleased him, provided they were neither parasitic nor servile, and perhaps there was a grain of truth in his theory that the inferior and decadent writer, who is more subjective, though unfinished, distills a more irritating aperient and acid balm than the artist of the same period who is truly ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... of Justinian, influenced largely by the teaching of Christianity, did a great deal to relieve the burdens of slavery. "We do not transfer persons from a free condition into a servile—we have so much at heart to raise slaves to liberty." In the words of one of the Early Fathers of the Church, "No Christian is a slave; those born ...
— Outlines of Greek and Roman Medicine • James Sands Elliott
... the labours of these men without finding abundant cause of reflection on the miseries which our nature can overcome. Let me for a moment quit the cold track of narrative. Let me not fritter away by servile adaptation those reflections and the feelings they gave birth to. Let me transcribe them fresh as they arose, ardent and generous, though hopeless and romantic. I every day see wretches pale with disease and wasted with famine, struggle against the horror's of their situation. ...
— A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson • Watkin Tench
... live with thy sisters, or whether thou remaine with the Serpent and in the end be swallowed into the gulfe of his body. And if it be so that thy solitary life, thy conversation with voices, this servile and dangerous pleasure, and the love of the Serpent doe more delight thee, say not but that we have played the parts of naturall sisters in ...
— The Golden Asse • Lucius Apuleius
... mutiny were stationed. On the junction of the two brigades, the horrors of Meerut were repeated in the imperial city, and every European who could be found was massacred with revolting barbarity. In fact, the spirit was that of a servile war. Annihilation of the ruling race was felt to be the only chance of safety or impunity; so no one of the ruling race was spared. Many, however, effected their escape, and, after all sorts of perils and sufferings, succeeded in reaching military ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... from doctor and theologian. Again, why? Because, my friends, the human mind is inert, despite its seemingly tremendous material activity. And its inertia is the result of its own self-mesmerism, its own servile submission to beliefs which, as Balfour has shown, have grown up under every kind of influence except that of genuine evidence. Chief of these are the prevalent religious beliefs, which we are asked ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise, or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands; And having nothing, yet ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... Mademoiselle de la Valliere assumed the title of Duchess. What a fuss she made at this time! All that was styled disinterestedness, modesty. Not a bit of it. It was pusillanimity and a sense of servile fear. La Valliere would have liked to enjoy her handsome lover in the shade and security of mystery, without exposing herself to the satire of courtiers and of the public, and, above all, to the reproaches of her family and relatives, who nearly ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... women are indicative of the state of society in general, and of the estimation in which they are held in particular. If the other sex treat them as slaves, they will become servile and contemptible, a certain degree of self-respect being essential to the preservation of real dignity of character. The way to render human beings of any class despicable is to undervalue them; for disesteem will superinduce ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox
... eyes dwelt on Stampa with a new timidity. He found difficulty in straightening his limbs. He was quite insensible of his ridiculous aspect. His clothing, even his hair, was matted with soft snow. In a curiously servile way, he stooped to pick up ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... a good member of parliament is, let me tell you, no easy task; especially at this time, when there is so strong a disposition to run into the perilous extremes of servile compliance or wild popularity. To unite circumspection with vigour is absolutely necessary; but it is extremely difficult. We are now members for a rich commercial CITY; this city, however, is but a part of a rich commercial NATION, the interests of which are various, multiform, ...
— Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke. • Edmund Burke
... it; and how far (as to the spirit in which he has conducted his inquiries, and applied a general principle to particular objects) he has only drawn fair and inevitable conclusions from it, or endeavoured to tamper with and wrest it to sinister and servile purposes. A writer who shrinks from following up a well-founded principle into its untoward consequences from timidity or false delicacy, is not worthy of the name of a philosopher: a writer who assumes ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... beauty, harmony, and proportion in their writings, both as to style and sentiment, that if we had attempted to caricature them, nobody would have recognised the likeness; and if we had endeavoured to give a servile copy of their manner, it would only have amounted, at best, to a tame and unamusing portrait, which it was not our object to present. Although fully aware that their names would, in the theatrical phrase, have conferred great strength upon our bill, we ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... foreign sovereigns, princes an' potentates an' especially Mack th' Wanst, or Twict, iv th' United States an' Sulu an' all his wur-ruks an' he come out iv th' coort with his hat cocked over his eye, with a step jaunty and high, afther years iv servile ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... rich were individually responsible for misery and social wrong. "I had been told that life was easy and with abundant opportunity for all intellects and all energies," he declared at his trial, "but experience has shown me that only the cynics and the servile can make a place for themselves at the banquet. I had been told that social institutions were based on justice and equality, and I have seen about me only lies and deceit. Each day robbed me of an illusion. Everywhere I went I was witness of the ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... into castes rules here almost as imperiously as it does in India, and it will require generations of close contact with a more cultured and democratic people before these servile ideas can be obliterated. Though we hear little or nothing said about this matter, yet to an observant eye it has daily and hourly demonstration. The native Indians of Mexico are of a different race ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou |
