"Sycophant" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... such severity was only veiled adulation. When Juvenal ridicules the senate of Domitian, [25] we may believe that he desired to stimulate to independence the senate of his day; and when he speaks of Trajan, it is in language of enthusiastic praise. [26] Flattery it is not, for Juvenal is no sycophant, nor would Trajan have liked him better if he had been one. Indeed, with all his invective he keeps strictly to truth; his painting of the emperors is from the life. It is highly coloured, but not out of drawing. Juvenal's Domitian is nearer ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... waiting to see his way clear. He came of that old round-head stock which, wanting its way always, ready to meddle with everything, never contented, ready to play the sycophant to gain power, selfish and arrogant in the use of it, is, nevertheless, found giving shape, action, and momentum to all our great enterprises. Out of all the trouble Chapman had caused Nyack, there had come some good that would be turned to account in the future. Misfortune had bowed, not broken ...
— The Von Toodleburgs - Or, The History of a Very Distinguished Family • F. Colburn Adams
... show disrespect to his wife, although the Emperor's daughter; has put ill-will between him and the royal family. And if Briennius bears no longer the fame of a rational man, and the renown of a good leader, he is deprived of both by following the advice of this artful sycophant." ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... then; since Caesar bids me, I obey! Again and again I have warned you, Caesar. If I were less your slave and more your sycophant I would have tired of warning you. But none shall say of Marcia that her Caesar met Nero's fate, whose women ran away and left him. Not while Marcia lives shall Commodus declare he ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... his steps noiselessly, he went out into the open air. Could it be true? Had his ears deceived him? Was it possible that the beautiful woman on whom he had lavished all the first love of his life could be capable of playing with him in such a fashion? Jack was his rival! He was a sycophant! a hypocrite! a villian! ...
— Yorkshire Tales. Third Series - Amusing sketches of Yorkshire Life in the Yorkshire Dialect • John Hartley
... scourge, their accuser, and their unrelenting foe. And among this class of men are our most bitter foes. What friends we have are to be found at the fireside of virtue—among sober, sedate, and thinking men, and among the brave and honorable. We have never been the slave or sycophant of any man or party, as our immense band of subscribers, numbering thousands, ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow
... at our leisure. He is on the verge of fifty, and has recently undergone his metamorphosis into the clerical form. Rather a paradoxical specimen, if you observe him narrowly: a sort of cross between a sycophant and a psalmist; a poet whose imagination is alternately fired by the "Last Day" and by a creation of peers, who fluctuates between rhapsodic applause of King George and rhapsodic applause of Jehovah. After spending "a foolish youth, the sport of peers and poets," after being a hanger-on ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... served by his dependant and sycophant, Mr. Diao, who is a weak, physically decadent man who can neither offend by word nor deed the man from whom he has had so much. His manner is too servile to allow one to place much confidence in him, but he is a believer, ...
— The Fulfilment of a Dream of Pastor Hsi's - The Story of the Work in Hwochow • A. Mildred Cable
... supplicating style of the slaves in the comedy; but when they are called upon to pay, they assume the royal and tragic declamations of the grandsons of Hercules. If the demand is repeated, they readily procure some trusty sycophant to maintain a charge of poison or magic against the insolent creditor, who is seldom released from prison until he has signed a discharge of the whole debt. And these vices are mixed with a puerile superstition ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... determined to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilification of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He is, says Luther, "truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real Apollyon, a beast, a most horrid impostor on mankind, one in whom there is scarcely any philosophy, a public and professed liar, a goat, a complete epicure, this twice execrable Aristotle." ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... Of the latter, it must be admitted, he had more than enough—or, at least, men to whom he was intensely antipathetic. One eminent journalist—more eminent than Mark himself—writes him down "a mealy-mouthed sycophant;" and another, hardly less popular, went further still in his denunciation, and, if he were to be believed, Mark Lemon must have been one of the most accomplished humbugs of his time. "There was nothing good about Mark," said ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... in the nature of a patrol; while my lord, who lay in the chamber above me, got out of bed and tripped to the window at the sound of every coach that chanced to pass through the street. H—, who was consummate in the arts of a sycophant, began to court my favour, by condoling my affliction, and assuring me, that the only method by which I could regain my liberty was a cheerful compliance with the humour of my lord. I was fully convinced ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... his equals. It is well to study this man, and to remember that he was not always vile. The Prince of Cond, had these manners and a generous, great heart as well. Gentleness really belongs to virtue, and a sycophant can hardly imitate it well. The perfect gentleman is he who has a strong heart under the silken doublet of a ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... whose signature leads on all Regulation manifestoes just prior to the Battle of Alamance, was a sycophant of Husband, to whom he addressed fulsome letters; and in the real battle for democracy—the War of Independence—he was a Tory. The Colonial Records show that those who, "like the mammoth," shook from them the ethical ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... sweetness of mercy brewed bitter destruction, and the frightened rulers come back; Each comes in state with his train—hangman, priest, tax-gatherer, Soldier, lawyer, lord, jailer, and sycophant. ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... which he called the "History of Napoleon Bonaparte," in which he plays the sycophant to all the legitimate crowned heads in Europe, whatever their crimes, vices, or miserable imbecilities, he, in his abhorrence of everything low which by its own vigour makes itself illustrious, calls Murat ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... benign one, could not have been sincere in the bitter and stinging personalities of his satires. Horace seems to be personal, but is not. Neither is Juvenal; the names he employs are mere allegoric names. Draco is any bloody fellow; Favonius is any sycophant: but Pope ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey
... to his subordinates, but a cringing sycophant to those over him. Stanton's office was not a ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... system of procedure. The first who was tried under the new system was Rockwood. He was defended by Sir Bartholomew Shower, who in the preceding reign had made himself unenviably conspicuous as a servile and cruel sycophant, who had obtained from James the Recordership of London when Holt honourably resigned it, and who had, as Recorder, sent soldiers to the gibbet for breaches of military discipline. By his servile cruelty he had earned the nickname of the Manhunter. Shower deserved, if any offender ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... a man who wrote in that spirit two centuries before the French Revolution would not be a sycophant in courts,—which, perhaps, helps to explain the conspiracy of silence that obscured ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... because he might get to India, stick pigs, and shoot tigers. Shooting! hunting! Gould's words made his nerves tingle from head to foot with excitement. And he had thought the fellow who now offered him a taste of such pleasures a muff, a bore, a sycophant, and done his best to avoid him! How wrong ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... with great firmness, Mr. Pitt's motion for the adjustment of the Prince of Wales's debts, and moved for the reduction of the Prince's income. He professed himself ready to support the real splendour of the royal family "as any slippery sycophant of a court;" but said he thought there was more true dignity in manifesting a heart alive to the distresses of millions, than in all those trappings which encumber royalty without adorning it. He asked whether ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - No. 555, Supplement to Volume 19 • Various
... addresses his hearers directly as 'Messieurs,' where the context also makes it evident that the word is emphatic, that he is distinctly conscious of addressing those who are above him in rank, and that the proper translation is 'gentles,' or even 'masters'; yet no poet ever lived who was less of a sycophant." ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... tailor's bill for gewgaws to grace a court pageant; and the nominal inheritor of the wide domains and honours of his lordship's house, is an obscure and useless, though good-natured dependent upon Hebrew usurers and Gentile pettifoggers—a mere cumberer of the ground—a sycophant ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... aftermath in the way of private communion served well to sober and humble Sally in her own esteem. Outside the immediate field of her reverie she was now conscious of the words "sycophant" and "parasite" buzzing like mosquitoes about the head of some frantic wooer of sleep, elusive, pitiless, exasperating, making it just so much more difficult to concentrate upon this importunate ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... doubt of it. The unwelcome truth has long been suppressed by interested parties who find their account in playing sycophant to that self-satisfied tyrant Modern Man; but to the impartial philosopher it is as plain as the nose upon an elephant's face that our ancestors ate one another. The custom of the Fiji Islanders, which is their only stock-in-trade, their only claim to notoriety, ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... master-sycophant profoundly learned in the art of playing upon his master's moods, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... secure me in those jealous times from suspicion and obloquy, which did not stop at me, but extended to my excellent friend, whose perfect innocence was even adduced as a proof of his guilt. One of the many busy sycophants of that day,—(I here use the word sycophant in its original sense, as a wretch who flatters the prevailing party by informing against his neighbours, under pretence that they are exporters of prohibited figs or fancies,—for the moral application ...
— Biographia Literaria • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... and even more careful and prudent as to how I say it. I may not be able to say all I think, but I am not going to say anything I do not think. And I would rather a thousand times be a free soul in jail than a sycophant or coward on the streets. They may put those boys in jail and some of the rest of us in jail, but they cannot put the Socialist movement in jail. Those prison bars separate their bodies from ours, but their souls are ...
— The Debs Decision • Scott Nearing
... have, and can still shake hands with the murderers, then are you unworthy the name of husband, father, friend, or lover, and, whatever may be your rank or title in life, you have the heart of a coward and the spirit of a sycophant. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... it is only by contrast to you, the questioner, who are mighty, exalted, and powerful. For downright fawning obsequiousness, or delicate, implied, fine-strung, subtle flattery, I will back a Hindoo sycophant against the courtier or place-hunter of every other nation. It is very annoying at times, if you are in a hurry, and particularly want a direct answer to a plain question, to hear the old old story, 'I am a poor man,' but there is nothing for it but ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the impression that the majority of the Negroes are leaving the South. Eager as these Negroes seem to go, there is no unanimity of opinion as to whether migration is the best policy. The sycophant, toady class of Negroes naturally advise the blacks to remain in the South to serve their white neighbors. The radical protagonists of the equal-rights-for-all element urge them to come North by all means. Then there are the thinking Negroes, ...
— A Century of Negro Migration • Carter G. Woodson
... laughter, above which Emmeline's crow rose loud and clear, and as the waiter hastened away, suddenly transformed into a sycophant, poppa remarked, "I see you've got those hotel tickets, too. Let me give you a little pointer. Say nothing about it until next day. They are like that sometimes. In being deprived of the opportunity of swindling us, they feel ...
— A Voyage of Consolation - (being in the nature of a sequel to the experiences of 'An - American girl in London') • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... sister, and in 874 ff. and 1216 ff. the meretrix plays matrona. Sagaristio and the daughter of the leno impersonate Persians (Per. 549 ff.), Collabiscus becomes a Spartan (Poen. 578 ff.), Simia as Harpax gets Ballio's money (Ps. 905 ff.), the sycophant is garbed as messenger (Trin. 843 ff.), Phronesium elaborately pretends to be a mother (Truc. 499 ff.). A swindle is almost invariably the object in view. But we have said enough on this score: no one who knows the plays at all can fail to recognize ...
— The Dramatic Values in Plautus • Wilton Wallace Blancke
... "Friend," said the sycophant, "'tis true One time I lived in town like you. I was a courtier born and bred, And kings have bent to me the head. I knew each lord and lady's passion, And fostered every vice in fashion. But Jove ...
— Fables of John Gay - (Somewhat Altered) • John Gay
... make." Yet there was his boyhood friend, Jonathan Sewall, already attorney-general, "rewarded ... with six thousand pounds a year, for propagating as many ... slanders against his country as ever fell from the pen of a sycophant." And the Hutchinsons and Olivers! With what concentrated bitterness does the young lawyer write of these men who, he is convinced, had submitted to be ministerial tools for the aggrandizement, of their families. His bitterness is the greater, and his conscious rectitude the more obtrusive, ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... superstition renders him a useless being, makes him an abject slave, causes him to tremble under its terrors, or else turns him into a furious fanatic, who is at once cruel, intolerant, and inhuman: in a great number of states arbitrary power crushes him, obliges him to become a cringing sycophant, renders him completely vicious: in those despotic states the law rarely visits crime with punishment, except in those who are too feeble to oppose its course? or when it has become incapable of restraining ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... charged to preach the funeral sermon, was apparently desirous of being as obliging as the doctors. His homily led off with such fulsome praise of Monsieur, that, from that day forward, he lost all his credit, and sensible people thereafter only looked upon him as a vile sycophant, a mere ...
— The Memoirs of Madame de Montespan, Complete • Madame La Marquise De Montespan
... answer no good purpose, and as exhibiting an extraordinary degree of arrogance, by dictating to future parliaments, and prescribing to future ministers a mode of action to be adopted some thirty years hence. He remarked:—"None but a novice, a sycophant, a mere reptile of a minister, would allow this act to prevent him doing what, in his own judgment, circumstances might require at the time; and a change in the situation of the country might render that which is proper at one time inapplicable at another. In short, the scheme is nugatory and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... discourses on reason and religion? from my own son, too! No, by the Holy Trinity! thou art no son of mine. If thou touchest my knee again, I crack thy knuckles with this tobacco-stopper: I wish it were a sledge-hammer for thy sake. Off, sycophant! Off, ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Instances of such names are Onkar (the god Siva), Deshmukh and Chaudhari, headman, Hazari (a leader of 1000 horse), Gore (fair-coloured), Dongardiya (a lamp on a hill), Pinjara (a cotton-cleaner), Gadria (a shepherd), Khaparia (a tyler), Khawasi (a barber), Chiknya (a sycophant), Kinkar (a slave), Dukhi (penurious), Suplya toplya (a basket and fan maker), Kasai (a butcher), Gohattya (a cow-killer), and Kalebhut (black devil). Among the territorial sections may be mentioned Sonpuria, from Sonpur, and Patharia, from the hill country. The name ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... popular notion that Major Belwether was a wit. The sycophant of the outer world seldom even awaited his first word before bursting into premature mirth. Besides he ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... sympathetic understanding; on the other, they were as far apart as the poles. No poor man, however civilised he may be, can range himself on the side of wealth, unless he is either a fortune hunter or a sycophant, and Leigh was neither. At the present moment he merely felt, with a sinking of spirit, the existence of an artificial barrier between them of which he had previously been but ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... The business, except for the final adjustment which would come after his death, was in Robert's hands. The latter was consistently agreeable to his sisters and their husbands and to his father, in view of the eventual control he hoped to obtain. He was not a sycophant in any sense of the word, but a shrewd, cold business man, far shrewder than his brother gave him credit for. He was already richer than any two of the other children put together, but he chose to keep his ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... not a sycophant hanging round White Hall! 'Twas sheer good luck and no merit of mine that got me the guardianship of Sue. Lord Middlesborough, her kinsman, wanted it; the Courts would have given her to him, but old Noll thought him too much of a 'gentleman,' whilst I—an out-at-elbows ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... I had been a fellow-victim of a deeply laid and most foul plot. That I had been purposely marked down with the aid of De Gex's accomplice and sycophant, Gaston Suzor, was made more than plain ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux |
