"Arrogate" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "Grown-ups" arrogate entirely too much to themselves. I know this is so. I discovered it for a fact when I was not more than "knee-high to a grasshopper" myself. I knew, for example, that a certain amount of dirt on my face and hands in no way interfered ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... from the reign of Charles II, did not arrogate to itself the right to retire behind trees from the long line of the single village street; but being taller than the other houses it brought the street to a dignified conclusion, and it was not unworthy ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... do not know that I have a right to arrogate greater purity for myself than for our Mussalman brethren. But I do admit that they do not believe in my doctrine of non-violence to the full extent. For them it is a weapon of the weak, an expedient. They consider non-co-operation without ...
— Freedom's Battle - Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches on the Present Situation • Mahatma Gandhi
... much, because the early, very early part of my life was passed among what are reproachfully termed "low people." If I describe them faithfully, they must still appear low to those who arrogate to themselves the epithet of "high." For myself; I hold that there is nothing low under the sun, except meanness. Where there is utility there ought to be honour. The utility of the humble artisan has never been denied, though too often despised, and too ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... audience was greatly impressed and filed out slowly. They did not say, "What a masterpiece!" but "What an orchestra leader!" Nowadays people go to see a conductor direct the orchestra just as they go to hear a tenor, and they arrogate to themselves the right to judge the conductors as they do the tenors. But what a fine sport it is! The qualities of an orchestra conductor which the public appreciates are his elegance, his gestures, his precision, and ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... grounds even, were mankind deserving of the title "rational," which they arrogate to themselves, there can be no question that they would consider, as the most necessary of all branches of instruction for themselves and for their children, that which professes to acquaint them with the conditions of the existence they prize so highly—which teaches them how to avoid disease ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... means arrogate such universal authority as did Muromachi. The Court nobles in the middle of the fourteenth century had no functions except those of a ceremonial nature and were frankly despised by the haughty bushi. It is on record that Doki Yorito, meeting the cortege of the retired Emperor Kogon, pretended ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi
... from different points of view. No human being can see beyond his own point of view. Only God sees life as a whole, sees how its seeming inconsistencies and injustices blend into a harmony. Your mistake—pardon an old woman's criticism of experience upon inexperience—your mistake is that you arrogate to yourself divine wisdom and set up a personal opinion ...
— The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig • David Graham Phillips
... "that my words are the utterance of their sentiments." "They mean," cried Lorn, "that the prowess of the haughty boaster, whom their intoxicated gratitude raised from the dust, shall not avail him against the indignation of a nation over which he dares to arrogate ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... enterprise and settlement in the northern portion of the United States. At present, however, the Sioux are strangers at Fort Ellice, and have not yet assumed those rights of proprietorship which other tribes, longer resident, arrogate to themselves. The Salteaux, who inhabit the country lying west of Manitoba, partake partly of the character of Thickwood, and partly of Prairie Indians—the buffalo no longer exists in that portion of the country, the Indian camps are small, and the authority of the ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... to no miracles and expect none; nor do I arrogate to myself any so-called super-natural secrets or powers; I simply maintain that, aided by the erudition of the great scientists of the past and present, this system has finally been brought to a point which should rightly have been always the chief ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... place where the engineer was at work; he mentioned in private his suspicions to the general, who gave orders in consequence. The old mine was discovered, cleared out, and by these means the town was taken the day before the time appointed. Basile did not arrogate to himself any of the glory of this success; he kept his general's secret and his confidence. Upon their return to Paris, after a fortunate campaign, the general was more grateful than some others have been, perhaps because more room was given by Basile's prudence ...
— Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales • Maria Edgeworth
... their faith to her beauty, yet already Dora had been preferred before her, though it was only by the head of "Robinson's." Was it possible that now it might be Rose, unsuspecting, unconsulted? Could her own mother and sisters be so unfair as to arrogate to themselves the settlement of her affairs without her consent or knowledge, without so much as admitting her ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... it is our lot to behold. Forced at the point of the bayonet to arrogate to herself the illegal claims she had vainly sought to establish by popular suffrage, as reserved rights, in 1787, and the resolutions of 1798, the Secession Ordinance was nominally passed and summarily enforced, despite the protests of the citizens and the withdrawal of the western counties; ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... advance guard, of securing the position of his main army, and of defending its flanks and rear. The paying public thus found itself curiously intermixed and imprisoned by these hosts of claqueurs, and victory usually crowned the efforts of M. Auguste, who was careful to arrogate to himself the results of the evening's proceedings. "What a splendid success I have achieved!" he would say; completely ignoring the efforts of the composer, the artists of the theatre, and the manager, who were perhaps entitled to some share ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... to the God who, being spirit, could act upon a clay-bound mind only through the highest human thing that love could know. Men, as well as women, have misunderstood and misinterpreted this. The love that "is not puffed up," "doth not behave itself unseemly," cannot proclaim its own virtue—to arrogate it is to lose it. But the secret of the Lord has been with those who feared Him, and it has led the world aright in spite of ...
— Woman and the Republic • Helen Kendrick Johnson
... joy in current literature and philosophy. Men have revived the splendour of Greek self-assertion at the same time that they have revived the bitterness of Greek pessimism. A literature has arisen which commands us all to arrogate to ourselves the liberty of self-sufficing deities at the same time that it exhibits us to ourselves as dingy maniacs who ought to be chained up like dogs. It is certainly a curious state of things altogether. When we are genuinely happy, we think we are unworthy of ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... within a stone's throw of it, and yet never have its existence brought to your mind; and it had a life all its own. The ecclesiastical lawyers were called doctors and proctors, instead of barristers and attorneys; and although the former did not arrogate to themselves a higher rank socially and professionally than that of barrister, a proctor considered himself a great many cuts above an attorney, and indeed was, for the most part, the equal of the best class of attorneys. Proctors, it will be borne in mind, are sketched ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... Hitherto, when the Popes enjoyed their temporal sovereignty, the Cardinal Camerlingo, or high chamberlain, directed everything from the time of the Pope's decease until the election of a successor. It was the purpose of the ministry to arrogate to themselves the attributes of this high dignitary, who acted, temporarily, as the Sovereign of Rome. For the attainment of their end, fraud, lying and forgery were freely had recourse to. It being understood that there ...
— Pius IX. And His Time • The Rev. AEneas MacDonell
... of fancy I often think a salesman is more truly a creative artist than many of those who arrogate the title to themselves. He uses words, on one hand, and the receptivity of prospects on the other, to mold a cohesive and satisfying whole, a work of Art, signed and dated on the dotted line. Like any such work, the creation implies thoughtful and careful preparation. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... relying for its distinctive features upon the accidents rather than the essentials of life, failed to justify its pretentions as a serious and independent form of art. The trivial toy of a courtly coterie, it attempted to arrogate to itself the position of a philosophy, and in so doing exposed itself to the ridicule of succeeding ages. Men with a stern purpose in life turned wearily from the sickly amours of romantic poets who dreamed that human happiness found its place in the ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg
... the other, Madame de Maintenon, whose sole solicitude was to insure repose to Louis XIV., by plucking out one after another all the thorns from his crown, reminded her that she was born a Frenchwoman, and that she owed too much to the Great King to arrogate to herself the right of contradicting him. A subject of Louis XIV., did she dare combat at Madrid the plans decided upon at Versailles? The governess of the heir to the crown of Spain, could she concur by her advice in despoiling the infant whose first caresses she was receiving? Madame ...
— Political Women, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Sutherland Menzies
... been better for Herbert to stop disputing, and to have taken no notice of Oscar's words. But Herbert was not perfect. He had plenty of spirit, and he was provoked by the airs Oscar chose to assume, and by no means inclined to allow him to arrogate a superiority over himself, merely on account of his wealth. Though manly and generous, he was quick to resent an insult, and accordingly, when Oscar dared to repeat what he had said, he instantly accepted ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... all! The man who, by the exclusion of others from the space he calls his, would grasp any portion of the earth as his own, befools himself in the attempt. The very bread he has swallowed cannot so in any real sense be his. There does not exist such a power of possessing as he would arrogate. There is not such a sense of having as that of which he has conceived the shadow in his degenerate and lapsing imagination. The real owner of his demesne is that pedlar passing his gate, into a ...
— Hope of the Gospel • George MacDonald
... despotism in the urgency of the very reproaches by which, he aimed at goading the oppressed into rebellion against the oppressor. Looking at him still more fixedly than I had yet done, I saw written in his eye and mien a resolution to arrogate to himself a freedom so unlimited that it might often trench on the just liberty of his neighbours. I rapidly ran over these thoughts, and then I laughed a low and involuntary laugh, moved thereto by a slight inward ...
— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell
... age, says the Roman, which is obliged to appeal to its grey hairs as its only claim to the respect of its juniors. "Neither hoar hairs nor wrinkles can arrogate reverence as their right. It is the life whose opening years have been honourably spent which reaps the reward of ...
— Cicero - Ancient Classics for English Readers • Rev. W. Lucas Collins
... abolition, and unjust laws are the only serious enemies that Law ever had. With history before us, it is no treason to question the infallibility of a court; for courts are never wiser or more venerable than the men composing them, and a decision that reverses precedent cannot arrogate to itself any immunity from reversal. Truth is ...
— The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry, Volume V - Political Essays • James Russell Lowell
... struggle between "the spirit" which is entirely good and "the flesh" which is entirely evil. To the philosophy of the complex vision this doctrine appears false and misleading. It detects in this doctrine, as I have hinted, an attempt of the conscience to arrogate to itself the whole field of experience and to negate all the other attributes, especially ...
— The Complex Vision • John Cowper Powys
... original; i. e., not original at all. Mother Earth is still spinning through space at the gait originally imparted to her by the sun's superior force. Mankind on her outer rind spins with her. Because we have invented steam and electric cars, we must not arrogate to ourselves the discovery of speed. What has speed to do with painting on a flat surface, painting in two dimensions of space? Wait a bit! We are coming to the ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... has been? Can you eradicate from memory and from history the fact that in March, 1834, a majority of the Senate of the United States passed the resolution which excites your enmity? Is it your vain and wicked object to arrogate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past which has been denied to Omnipotence itself? Do you intend to thrust your hands into our hearts, and to pluck out the deeply rooted convictions which are there? Or is it your design merely to stigmatize us? You ...
— Henry Clay's Remarks in House and Senate • Henry Clay
... feat accomplished by that man of deep revenge, who is not alone in his bitter hatred and contempt for the base among those who, like spaniels, crawl and kiss the dust at the instigation of their superiors, and yet arrogate to themselves a claim to be considered gentlemen and men of honor and independence—it has, I repeat, been assumed that the feat attributed to him in connection with the flag-staff of the fort was impossible. No one who has ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... all-sufficient atonement made once for all for us by Christ on Calvary, and through His mediation we are assured of perfect forgiveness. These impious sacerdotalists, for the sake of gaining influence over the minds of those they hope to deceive, step in, and daringly arrogate to themselves the position which our loving Lord desires alone to hold. But I must not continue the subject—I know that it is not necessary to say this to you. Should you ever be perplexed, or require assistance, I am sure that you will apply to my kind and excellent father, who ...
— Clara Maynard - The True and the False - A Tale of the Times • W.H.G. Kingston
... upon Caneri for help, and I find that the power which was intrusted to him for our mutual defence is basely employed, not against the common enemy, but a feeble defenceless female! Shame, Moor! shame! But that I reverence the public voice that named thee chief, and that I desire not to arrogate to myself a retributive justice, I myself would wrench from thee that command which thou shamest, and entrust it to the hands of men ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... a party, already formed, took possession of the tribune, and was about to arrogate to itself the dominion of the assembly. Brissot was its conspirator, Condorcet its philosopher, Vergniaud its orator. Vergniaud mounted the tribune, with all the prestige of his marvellous eloquence. The eager looks of the Assembly, the silence ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... Secularist himself,—that there may be a God,—that there may be evidence of His existence,—that it may yet be discovered in the progress of natural reason,—and that to deny any one of these possibilities would be to assume "infallibility," or to arrogate "infinite knowledge as the ground of disproof." Now, we humbly conceive that there is enough in these admissions, if not to disarm the Secular polemic, yet to shut up every seriously reflecting man, not, perhaps, to the instant recognition of a Divine Being, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... man's brow drew dark; tumultuous thoughts filled his brain; Caillette's words, Brusquet's rhymes, confirming his own conviction, rankled in his mind. This king dared arrogate a law absolute unto himself; its statutes, his own caprices; its canons, his own pretensions? The duke remembered the young girl's outburst against the monarch and a feeling of hatred arose ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... extraordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the land; exclude the great mass of their fellow- citizens from the protection of the Constitution; declare themselves emancipated from the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to be supreme over them and over their laws; arrogate to themselves all the prerogatives of independent power; rescind the acts of cession of the public property; occupy the public offices; seize the fortresses of the United States confided to the faith of the people among whom they were placed; embezzle the public ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... Trinity in Cambridge. Thus, to speak in the Language of my late Friend Sir ANDREW FREEPORT, I have Ballanced my Accounts with all my Creditors for Wit and Learning. But as these excellent Performances would not have seen the Light without the means of this Paper, I may still arrogate to my self the Merit of their ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... that of which there is no explanation—the perpetual miracle, the miracle of the nature of things, of existence itself. The man of science bows his head in the presence of this all-pervading mystery. He is called arrogant by those who arrogate to themselves the right to "explain" things and to deal in vital spirits and metaphysical nostrums for that purpose. From time to time they fill with their proclamations the great silence which he has learnt to accept with ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... to trick and cozen mankind, and to persuade them out of their lawful property, become the most dangerous possessions, and are as mischievous as plagues, pestilence, and famine. How can you dare to arrogate to yourself that part of philosophy which teaches you to look upon the luxuries of life with indifference, while your heart must tell you that you have not the least claim to it, and that you sacrifice your character and reputation to obtain luxurious ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... Hence Amon, lord of the capital and patron of the dynasty, having more partisans, enjoyed more respect, and, in a word, felt himself possessed of more claims to be the sole god of Egypt than his brethren, who could not claim so many worshippers. He did not at the outset arrogate to himself the same empire over the dead as he exercised over the living; he had delegated his functions in this respect to a goddess, Maritsakro, for whom the poorer inhabitants of the left bank entertained a persistent devotion. ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 6 (of 12) • G. Maspero |
