"Frederick the Great" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that, not so many years after the Thirty Years' War, Frederick the Great, who combined supreme military gifts with freedom from scruple in policy, and was at the same time a great representative German, declared that the ordinary citizen ought never to be aware that his country is at war.[2] ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... much of that which is good. Bad poetry is not poetry at all except to the man who makes it. For its creator, even the feeblest verse speaks something of inspiration and of aspiration. It is said that Frederick the Great went into battle with a vial of poison in one pocket and a quire of bad verse in the other. Whatever we think of the one, we feel more kindly toward him ...
— Life's Enthusiasms • David Starr Jordan
... is my wife's father's farm. 3. France's and England's interest differs widely. 4. Frederick the Great was the son of the daughter of George I. of England. 5. My brother's wife's sister's drawings have been much admired. 6. The drawings of the sister of the wife of my brother have ...
— Higher Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... dissensions. At present the greatest confidence is felt in ultimate success. The Parisians cannot realise to themselves the possibility of their city being taken; they are still, in their own estimation, the representative men of "la grande nation," and they still cite the saying of Frederick the Great that, were he King of France, not a sword should be drawn without his permission, as though this were a dictum that a sage had uttered yesterday. They feed every day on the vaunts and falsehoods which their newspapers offer them, and they digest them without a qualm. While ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... be a bitter year for the boys if Mr. Henty were to fail them with a fresh assortment of his enthralling tales of adventure, for, as the London Academy has said, in this kind of story telling, "he stands in the very first rank." "With Frederick the Great" is a tale of the Seven Years' War, and has twelve full-page illustrations by Wal. Paget; "A March on London" details some stirring scenes of the times when Wat Tyler's motley crew took possession of that city, and the illustrations are drawn by W. A. Margetson, while Wal. ...
— Children's Books and Their Illustrators • Gleeson White
... The Carlsruhe and Mannheim orchestras acknowledged that they now first fully realized that they were artists. A negotiation for permanent settlement at the grand-ducal court failed, owing to the opposition of the courtiers. Wagner had demanded a court-carriage! Frederick the Great has said, it is true, that geniuses rank with sovereigns; but then this was too much, too much! Then too, he had, O horror! spent the beautiful ducats which the grand-duke had presented him, in entertaining of an evening the musicians who had executed the work. Where would ...
— Life of Wagner - Biographies of Musicians • Louis Nohl
... it seemed mere madness for the least and latest of the great empires to challenge all the rest, just as it had once seemed madness for Frederick the Great, with his little state, to stand up against all but one of the great European powers. But Germany had calculated her chances, and knew that there were many things in her favour. She knew that in the last resort the strength of the world-states rested upon their European foundations, ...
— The Expansion of Europe - The Culmination of Modern History • Ramsay Muir
... feet (say five feet ten inches)—full-bearded, brawny-limbed, and of stalwart build, suggesting a homeric capacity for aggression and resistance. They present a standard of sturdy and active manhood, which would have delighted the critical eye of Frederick the Great for the formation of his very best regiments. What is really singular is the infinitesimally small proportion of ineffective and sickly men found left behind when all the commandoes are called out, and also the considerable number ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... the question. The possibility of such a peace has never recurred. It was therefore necessary for the German policy to strive for a peace by understanding on the basis of the status quo. Just as Frederick the Great defended Prussia's newly won position as a great Power against overwhelming odds, so we were fighting under similar conditions for the maintenance of Germany's position ...
— My Three Years in America • Johann Heinrich Andreas Hermann Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff
... bound as he was to the soil, lived in the little world of direct and personal relations, under what we may call a domestic regime. It was military necessity that first turned the attention of statesmen like Frederick the Great of Prussia to the welfare of the peasant. It was the overthrow of Prussia by Napoleon in 1807 that brought about his final emancipation in that country. In recent years it has been the international struggle for economic efficiency which has contributed ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... know," Boswell murmured, reflectively. "If Charles the First and Louis Fourteenth don't kick about being crowded in with all the rest, I can stand anything that Frederick the Great or Nero might say; but those two fellows are great sticklers for the ...
— The Enchanted Typewriter • John Kendrick Bangs
... aim of Frederick the Great to shake down the old political order in Europe, which had been Catholic and unenlightened. To that end he exalted Prussia, which was a Protestant and progressive State, and fought against Austria, an empire clinging to obsolete ideas of feudal military government. He brought upon himself ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... theirs to be the true gentleman's profession, he had preferred any kind of mechanical toy to arranging the most gayly painted tin soldiers in formation on the nursery floor; and he would rather read about the wonders of natural history and electricity than the campaigns of Napoleon and Frederick the Great and my lord Nelson. Left to his own choice, he would miss the parade of the garrison for inspection by an excellency in order to ask questions of a man wiping the oil off his hands with cotton-waste, who was far more entertaining to him than the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... Zinzendorfs had been among the earliest converts to Lutheranism, and became a voluntary exile for the faith. The count's father was one of the Pietists, a sect protected by the first king of Prussia, the father of Frederick the Great. The founder of the Pietists laid special stress on the doctrine of conversion by a sudden transformation of the heart and will. It was a young Moravian missionary to Georgia who first induced Wesley to embrace the vital doctrine of justification by faith. For a long time ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... this matter of faithfulness to duty has always been deemed of the first importance. Previous to the battle of Lutzen, in which eighty thousand Austrians were defeated by an army of thirty-six thousand Prussians, commanded by Frederick the Great, this monarch ordered all his officers to attend him, and thus addressed them: "To-morrow I intend giving the enemy battle; and, as it will decide who are to be the future masters of Silesia, I expect every one of you, in the strictest manner, to do his duty. If any one of you is ...
— The True Citizen, How To Become One • W. F. Markwick, D. D. and W. A. Smith, A. B.
... lose"), doing a match against time in killing rats, is a fine subject for a weird classical picture yet to be painted. What R.A. could grapple with so tremendous a composition? On returning to "carp the upper air," must mention the subject to Sir FREDERICK the Great. Cerberus would be a nasty one for rats to tackle. My ideas of anything alive underground are generally associated with suchlike warmint. At last—out of the tunnel! and now, I presume, in the caves. Here someone, gradually assuming a palpable form, emerges from somewhere ...
— Punch, Volume 101, September 19, 1891 • Francis Burnand
... Frederick the Great said that all culture comes through the stomach. This saying emphasizes pithily the dependence of psychology upon physiology. The stomach with the intestines is certainly the source from which every portion of the body receives its nourishment and most of ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... true that he cites Frederick the Great as an exemplary master of war and of Weltpolitik. But his chief praise in this department is reserved for England. It is from our foreign policy, he says, that he has learnt what our journalists denounce ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... He had at one time thought of leaving the manuscripts to the University of Oxford, and, having already promised them to Smith, offered him a legacy of L3,000 if he would resign all claim to them. Smith refused, and also refused an offer of L2,000 made for them, after Handel's death, by Frederick the Great. He kept them until 1772, when he presented them to George III in return for a pension of L200 a year. But he did not hand over the whole of the manuscripts to the King, and a large collection of rough sketches and fragments was acquired ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent
... four corners of the earth were shaken by the most terrible conflict of the century. England's alliance with Prussia drew Austria and Russia into the war on the other side; and notwithstanding the smallness of his kingdom, the military genius of Frederick the Great was able to hold the three proudest powers of Europe at bay, while Clive and Wolfe smote off the heads of the triple alliance in India and North America. The history of Quebec is concerned with only the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Frederick the Great, contempt of, for the German mercenaries, ii. 10; his opinion of Washington's achievements in the Jerseys (note), ii. 394; his appreciation of Washington ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... the Trenck who here tells a story of himself that abounds in lively illustration of the days of Frederick the Great. He professes that Frederick the King owed him a grudge, because Frederick the Trenck had, when eighteen years old, fascinated the Princess Amalie at a ball. But as Frederick the Greater was in correspondence with his cousin Franz at the time when ...
— The Life and Adventures of Baron Trenck - Vol. 1 (of 2) • Baron Trenck
... suggested to him that not only Plato and Julius Caesar but also Winckelmann and Platen(?) belonged to the Society; and he had found it flourishing in Palermo, the Louvre, the Scottish Highlands and St. Petersburg to name only a few places. Frederick the Great is said to have addressed these words to his nephew, "Je puis vous assurer, par mon experience personelle, que ce plaisir est peu agreable a cultiver." This suggests the popular anecdote of Voltaire and the Englishman who agreed upon an "experience" and found it far from satisfactory. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... room, so that you may always know where the Emperor is by seeing the young officer's towering helmet above the crowd. The other is General Scholl, a dear, kind old gentleman, who is dressed in the costume of Frederick the Great's time, with a white wig, the pigtail of which is tied with black ribbon, a huge jabot of lace with a diamond pin on ...
— The Sunny Side of Diplomatic Life, 1875-1912 • Lillie DeHegermann-Lindencrone
... Kottbus, became a reality to me here; and what a powerful influence a visit to the ancient cloister exerted on our young souls! The nearest relatives of mighty sovereigns had dwelt as abbesses within its walls. But two generations ago Anna Amalie, the hapless sister of Frederick the Great, died while holding ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... by which England won her Asiatic dominions, a new war had broken out. In the fifth year, 1756, of the New Style[2] of reckoning time, the aggressive designs of Frederick the Great of Prussia caused such alarm that a grand alliance was formed by France, Russia, Austria, and Poland to check his further advance. Great Britain, however, gave her support to Frederick, in hope of humbling her old enemy France, who, in addition ...
— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery
... the Body Guard. He was in particular to attach the latter to him, for they were the very flower of the army. Karr left that night. His chief tactics in campaigning consisted in speediness, but it seems that he studied this point badly, for his great predecessors, Alexander the Great, Frederick the Great, Hannibal, etc., also travelled quickly, but in company with an army, whilst Karr thought it quite sufficient if he went alone. He judged it impossible to travel faster than he did, sleighing merrily ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... art: the perusal of the Greek tragedians had given rise to some late translations;[29] the perusal of Homer seems now to have suggested the idea of an epic poem. The hero whom he first contemplated was Gustavus Adolphus; he afterwards changed to Frederick the Great ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... inquire no farther, the court of the Medici alone would afford them everything they wanted. But Germany never had any character, and never produced nor had been the resort of illustrious men and interesting persons. What was to be done? The age of Frederick the Great was the only thing; and then that was so recent, and would offend the Austrians: it could not ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... days when Christianity was young among the Slavs and still found ready martyrs in its cause even among princes, and an enceinte of brick fortifications, stone-faced and in Vauban's best style, battered by Frederick the Great's guns, are all that Vy[vs]ehrad has to show by way of relics of ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... Switzerland, Belgium, Russia, Poland, Spain, Holland, Turkey; he met Voltaire at Ferney, Rousseau at Montmorency, Fontenelle, d'Alembert and Crebillon at Paris, George III. in London, Louis XV. at Fontainebleau, Catherine the Great at St. Petersburg, Benedict XII. at Rome, Joseph II. at Vienna, Frederick the Great at Sans-Souci. Imprisoned by the Inquisitors of State in the Piombi at Venice, he made, in 1755, the most famous escape in history. His Memoirs, as we have them, break off abruptly at the moment when he is expecting ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... find avarice and jealousy and sensuality and fraud having full swing in some families. The violent temper of Frederick William is the inheritance of Frederick the Great. It is not a theory to be set forth by worldly philosophy only, but by divine authority. Do you not remember how the Bible speaks of "a chosen generation," of "the generation of the righteous," ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... years! How little the youthful, fiery king of that day resembled the weak old man of to-day; how little in common the young King Frederick had with "Alten Fritz." And now in this feeble body dwelt the same courageous spirit. In the course of these years King Frederick II had become Frederick the Great! And great he was to-day, this little old man—great in his intentions and achievements, never heeding his own debility and need of repose. All his thoughts and endeavors concentrated on the welfare of his people and his country—on ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... may have been due to the same thought occurring to different minds, and this may be the case even where there is more point; thus, "an ass laden with gold will get into the strongest fortress," has been attributed to Frederick the Great and to Napoleon, and may have been due to both. The saying "Treat a friend as though he would one day become an enemy," has been attributed to Lord Chesterfield, to Publius Syrus, and even to Bias, one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece. Many may exclaim, "Perish ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... European nations had seemed ready to enter into commercial arrangements with the United States, but all save Holland speedily lost interest in the subject. John Adams had succeeded in making a treaty with Holland in 1782. Frederick the Great treated us more civilly than other sovereigns. One of the last acts of his life was to conclude a treaty for ten years with the United States; asserting the principle that free ships make free goods, taking arms and military stores out ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... was not the kind of man to admit easily that he had guessed wrong. His version of Cromwell's filthy cruelties in Ireland, or his impatient slurring over of the most sinister riddle in the morality of Frederick the Great—these passages are, one must frankly say, disingenuous. But it is, so to speak, a generous disingenuousness; the heat and momentum of sincere admirations, not the shuffling fear and flattery of the constitutional or patriotic historian. It bears most resemblance to the ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... to another no less difficult test with L'Etoile du Nord. When Meyerbeer was the conductor at the Berlin Opera, he wrote on command Le Camp de Silesie with Frederick the Great as the hero and Jenny Lind as the musical star. As we know, Frederick was a musician, for he both composed music and played the flute, while Jenny Lind, the Swedish nightingale, was a great singer. A contest between the nightingale and the flute was sure to follow or theatrical ...
— Musical Memories • Camille Saint-Saens
... characters) All hail the king!—Long live the king! Our hope in peace and war! With his renown let Prussia ring— Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah! He is the pillar of the state! Our sword and buckler he! Heaven give to Frederick the Great Eternal victory! ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... When Frederick the Great of Prussia reviewed his army of sixty thousand men in Pomerania, previous to his invasion of Silesia, he asked the Prince d'Anhalt, who accompanied him, what he most admired in the scene ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... Americans owed more perhaps to Baron von Steuben than to any other foreigner. Von Steuben was a German, and had fought under Frederick the Great. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... the divided portieres of an adjoining chamber! There sat the man whose nod shook the earth!... Behind a heavy, old-fashioned desk, in a dim light, apparently absorbed in writing, sat a deeply tanned, lean-faced, blue-gray-eyed counterpart of Frederick the Great,—the very embodiment of Majesty!... Eyes that blazed in their defiant depths with a steady and consuming fire—the kind of eyes that seem to defy the world.... I stood there fully five minutes before I heard the sharp, high-pitched ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... resisted it during a great part of my life. I am not unaware that the relations of England to Europe have undergone a vast change during the century that has just elapsed. The relations of England to Europe are not the same as they were in the days of Lord Chatham or Frederick the Great. The Queen of England has become the sovereign of the most powerful of Oriental States. On the other side of the globe there are now establishments belonging to her, teeming with wealth and population, which ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... Frederick the Great looked up at the sky, whose stars were twinkling with that clear and living light which presages heavy frost, and he exclaimed, "This weather will result in a ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part II. • Honore de Balzac
... heads of Barbe-Marbois, Boissy d'Anglas, Morellet, Helvetius, or Frederick the Great, you will see the exact image of Doctor Minoret, whose green old age resembled that of those celebrated personages. Their heads coined in the same mint (for each had the characteristics of a medal) showed a stern and quasi-puritan profile, cold tones, a mathematical brain, ...
— Ursula • Honore de Balzac
... cultivate your studies and your friendships in quiet. But this is of no consequence: bring all your friends with you, and I promise you that both you and they shall have every accommodation in my power." With equal firmness the illustrious mathematician resisted the manifold attractions with which Frederick the Great sought to induce him, to take up his residence at Berlin. In reading of these invitations we cannot but be struck at the extraordinary respect which was then paid to scientific distinction. It must be remembered that the discoveries of such a man as D'Alembert were ...
— Great Astronomers • R. S. Ball
... eminent as a physician, went from Hanover to attend Frederick the Great in his last illness. One day the king said to him, "You have, I presume, sir, helped many a man into another world?" This was rather a bitter pill for the doctor; but the dose he gave the king in return was a judicious mixture of truth ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... sorts of interesting pictures and engravings scattered about the house in the numberless corridors and anterooms. One most interesting and very rare print represents a review at Potsdam held by Frederick the Great. Two conspicuous figures are the young Marquis de Lafayette in powdered wig and black silk ribbon, and the English General Lord Cornwallis, destined to meet as adversaries many years later during the American Revolution. There ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... only one who in any way approaches him. Then, as to his magnanimity, he proved it to M. Jules Simon, by offering him the musical works of the said Frederick the Great, with a letter which, according to Mr. Bigelow, should have made France give up her foolish ideas about Alsace-Lorraine, were it not for the fact that "from the drawing-rooms of the Faubourg Saint Germain to the garrets of Montmartre, all Frenchmen suffer ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... shouting mass there of his people who were, and indeed showed themselves almost to be, ready to die for him. Yes, we saw him. Fate cannot deprive us of THAT. Others have seen Napoleon. Some few still exist who have beheld Frederick the Great, Doctor Johnson, Marie Antoinette, &c.—be it our reasonable boast to our children, that we saw George the Good, the ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... impartial justice executed upon a man of high rank. BOSWELL. The 'stronger abilities' that Chesterfield encountered were Johnson's. Boswell thought wrongly that it was of Johnson that his Lordship complained in his letters to his son. Ante, i. 267, note 2. 'A certain King' was Frederick the Great. Ante, i. 434. The fencing-master was murdered in his own house in London, five years after Sanquhar (or Sanquire) had lost his eye. Bacon, who was Solicitor-General, said:—'Certainly the circumstance of time is heavy unto you; it is now five years since ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... which, years after, Cornwallis, a generous foe, told Washington was one of the most surprising and brilliant in the history of war. There was another "old fox" in Europe, Frederick the Great, of Prussia, who knew war if ever man knew it, and he, too, from this movement ranked Washington among the great generals. The maneuver was simple enough. Instead of taking the obvious course of again retreating across the Delaware Washington ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... success, he exclaimed with a grin, "This is about as useful to us as a battle gained on the banks of the Scamander." His selfish absorption in his personal and direct interests obscured the judgment of Frederick the Great. He, however, did justice to Marshal Saxe: "There was a discussion the other day as to what battle had reflected most honor on the general commanding," he wrote, a long while after the battle of Fontenoy; "some suggested that of Almanza, others that of Turin; but ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... generally of his own selection, he at the same time endeavoured to strengthen her impression of how important it was to her schemes to insure the daughter's co-operation. Conscious of the eagerness of Maria Theresa for the recovery of the rich province which Frederick the Great of Prussia had wrested from her ancient dominions, he pressed upon her credulity the assurance that the influence of which the Dauphine was capable over Louis XV., by the youthful beauty's charms acting upon the dotard's admiration, would readily ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... that Frederick the Great of Prussia was very fond of a small Italian greyhound, and used to carry it about with him under his cloak. During the seven years' war, he was pursued by a party of Austrian dragoons, and compelled to take shelter, with his favourite, under the dry arch of a bridge. Had the little ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... in our childhood's days to look up to as shining examples of all that a great man should be. Because crimes are played on a great stage instead of a small, that is no reason why our moral judgment should be suspended or silenced. Class Machiavelli and Frederick the Great as a couple of rascals fit to rank with Jonathan Wild, and we are getting nearer a perception of what constitutes the real criminal. "If," said Frederick the Great to his minister, Radziwill, "there is ...
— A Book of Remarkable Criminals • H. B. Irving
... women their war-cries not less than those of the composers. The public bowed and cringed before these idols of the stage. Gaetan Vestris, the first of the family, known as the "Dieu de la Danse," and who held that there were only three great men in Europe, Frederick the Great of Prussia, Voltaire, and himself, dared to dictate even to Gluck. "Write me the music of a chaconne, Monsieur Gluek," said the god ...
— Great Italian and French Composers • George T. Ferris
... in his "History of Frederick the Great," book ii. chap. vii. that this saying of Alphonso about Ptolemy's astronomy, "that it seemed a crank machine; that it was pity the Creator had not taken advice," is still remembered by mankind,—this and no other ...
— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett
... 1740 happened two events which led to a general European war breaking in upon that in which Spain and England were already engaged. In May of that year Frederick the Great became king of Prussia, and in October the emperor Charles VI., formerly the Austrian claimant of the Spanish throne, died. He had no son, and left by will the sovereignty of his estates to his ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... me of how he struggled toward the Schloss, but in the jam of humanity got only as far as the monument of Frederick the Great. There a youth threw his hat in the air and cried: "Hock der Krieg, Hock der Krieg!" (Hurrah for ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Professor W.H. Munro's Tales of an Old Sea Port (Princeton, 1917), pp. 48-93, in which Potter's life is also told. The admiralty case arose from questions respecting disposal of the booty. Prince Charles of Lorraine was brother-in-law of Maria Theresa, and commanded her army against Frederick the Great. According to Father Fauque, the privateer so named carried 10 cannon, 12 swivel-guns and 61 men. Lettres ...
— Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period - Illustrative Documents • Various
... of the French, during the revolution, were gained at a time when her regular revenues were inconsiderable, and when she was in a state of absolute bankruptcy. This is considered by some as a proof that force is independent of revenue, and that Frederick the Great was mistaken in saying, that money was the sinews of war; but this case has been ...
— An Inquiry into the Permanent Causes of the Decline and Fall of Powerful and Wealthy Nations. • William Playfair
... attack of strong positions have diminished enormously. The assailant, therefore, no longer able to succeed by frontal attack, is compelled to endeavour to work round the enemy's flanks, and thus exercise pressure upon his communications. His endeavour must be, as Frederick the Great would have said, 'to compel his opponent to fight outside of ...
— Cavalry in Future Wars • Frederick von Bernhardi
... it was naturally the flute that retained its antique form; the only difference between the modern instrument and the ancient one being that the former is blown crosswise, instead of perpendicularly. Quantz, the celebrated court flute player to Frederick the Great of Prussia, was the first to publish, in 1750, a so-called "method" of playing the traversal ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... William IV. at Berlin celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Prussian monarchy on January 18. A colossal statue of Frederick the Great was made for this occasion by the sculptor Christian Rauch. At the same time a further humiliation upon Prussia was inflicted by the military occupation of Schleswig-Holstein by Austria. The Austrian troops, who came to put a definite stop to hostilities in those provinces, marched ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... these gigantic figures readily found places upon altars in the churches of Europe. All might have gone well with this great porcelain plant had not the Seven Years' War arisen just at this time, lasting from 1756 to 1763. During this period Frederick the Great, the grandfather of the present Emperor of Germany, went into Saxony, stopped the royal factories at Meissen, and took the workmen as captives ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... discovers no victories. She is an unusual and pliant State to survive so many defeats. One finds her the easy prey of Frederick the Great, the pet victim of Louis XIV., the foe against whom Napoleon made his first youthful efforts and the vanquished of his prime, the defeated foe of Napoleon III., the vanquished tyrant of Italy united, the loser in Prussia's Thirty Days' War of 1867, and now the gradual ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... Lady Blessington, in the palmy days of her life, when she attracted around her all noble and beautiful persons, who were distinguished by their attainments in literature, science, or art; but he rarely leaves his home now for such a purpose. He is at present engaged in his "Life of Frederick the Great," whom he will hardly make a hero of, and with whom, we learn, he is already very heartily disgusted. The first volume will ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... and cross on a bridge of boats. Next morning my first search was for the picture gallery. We set off at random, and after passing the Church of Our Lady, with its lofty dome of solid stone, which withstood the heaviest bombs during the war with Frederick the Great, came to an open square, one side of which was occupied by an old, brown, red-roofed building, which I at once recognized, from pictures, as the object of ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... or four hours for the train to Berlin, we walked about the town, viewed a very remarkable statue of Frederick the Great, and also entered an old church containing a very ancient organ and pulpit ...
— A Journey in Russia in 1858 • Robert Heywood
... in frieze, architrave, or tympanum—that its glorious beauty lay, but in the simple strength and the harmonious symmetry of the whole, in the general plan. Webster planned his orations, Newman planned his essays, Carlyle planned his Frederick the Great. Their works are not a momentary inspiration; they are the result of forethought, long and painstaking. The absolute essential in the structure of an essay, that without which it will fail to arrive anywhere, that compared to which all ornament, all fine writing, is but ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... works.' When I was at Ferney, I repeated this to Voltaire, in order to reconcile him somewhat to Johnson, whom he, in affecting the English mode of expression, had previously characterised as 'a superstitious dog;' but after hearing such a criticism on Frederick the Great, with whom he was then on bad terms, he exclaimed, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... in which the Regent slept when in Ireland, and a room which was tenanted by Lord Normanby, when Lord Lieutenant. There is, moreover, a satin counterpane, which was made by the lord's aunt, and a snuff-box which was given to the lord's grandfather by Frederick the Great. These are the lions of the place, and the gratification experienced by those who see them is, no doubt, great; but I doubt if it equals the annoyance and misery to which they are subjected in being obliged to pass one unopened door—that of the private ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... Prince William". William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, 1721-65. The 'lamp-black face' would seem to imply that the portrait was a silhouette. In the letter quoted on p. 200 it is 'Prussia's monarch' (i.e. Frederick the Great). ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... leading instrument from 1700 to 1800. A harpsichord was nothing but a very large and powerful spinet. Some of them had two strings for each note; some had three; some had three kinds of strings,—catgut, brass, and steel; and some were painted and decorated in the most gorgeous style. Frederick the Great had one made for him in London, with silver hinges, silver pedals, inlaid case, and tortoise-shell front, at a cost of two hundred guineas. Every part of the construction of the spinet was improved, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... these statements contain a grain of truth, but neither of them contains enough truth to be true. One might describe them as sweetmeats of history of small nutritious value. One might say the same of his comment on the alliance between Chatham and Frederick the Great:— ...
— Old and New Masters • Robert Lynd
... the language which would gain it entrance to the society of European literature. No man of genius had made it a necessity of polite culture. It was still as rudely provincial as the Scotch of Allan Ramsay. Frederick the Great was to be forgiven if, with his practical turn, he gave himself wholly to French, which had replaced Latin as a cosmopolitan tongue. It had lightness, ease, fluency, elegance,—in short, all the good ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... presume, sir, to 'denounce' a man whom Buckle ranks above all other living writers and statesmen, but, in anticipating the inevitable result of the adoption of some of Mill's proposed social reforms, I could not avoid recalling that wise dictum of Frederick the Great concerning philosophers—a saying which Buckle quotes so triumphantly against Plato, Aristotle, Descartes—even Bacon, Newton, and a long list of names illustrious in the annals of English literature. Frederick declared: 'If I wanted to ruin one of my provinces I would make over its government ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... acquainted with most of the leading men in the great events of the early part of this century. Niebuhr, in the passage which I allude to, [Roman History, vol. v. p. 17.] after referring to the military "blunders" of Mithridates, Frederick the Great, Napoleon, Pyrrhus, and Hannibal, uses these remarkable words, "The Duke of Wellington is, I believe, the only general in whose conduct of war we cannot discover any important mistake." Not that it is to be supposed that ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... bourgeois and nobles (on the menu peuple they had no influence, and did not care to have any), but of every continental sovereign who felt in himself higher aspirations than those of a mere selfish tyrant—Frederick the Great, Christina of Sweden, Joseph of Austria, and even that fallen Juno, Catharine of Russia, with all her sins. To take the most extreme instance—Voltaire. We may question his being a philosopher at all. We may deny that he had ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... Milton, Addison, Goldsmith, Byron, Dryden, Leigh Hunt, Bunyan, Bacon, and Johnson. Among the best known of the historical essays are those on Lord Clive, Chatham, Warren Hastings, Hallam's Constitutional History, Von Ranke's History of the Papacy, Frederick the Great, Horace Walpole, William Pitt, Sir William Temple, Machiavelli, and Mirabeau. Most of these were produced in the vigor of young manhood, between 1825 and 1845, while the writer was busy with practical affairs of state. They are often one-sided and ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... Sybel's "History"; for up to the reverses of France, and the substitution of German for French predominance, we are still—in all connected with Germany,—in presence of the Prussia of the past, of the Prussia whose social conditions were fixed by Frederick the Great. Men are simply pawns upon the board; their fate has no influence on others—the fate of kings, queens, and high chivalric orders, is alone of any import to the constituted realm. Nations obey and question not. They are represented by mouldy, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... a business manager whose stiffness would serve as "a good example to a poker?" He acts toward his employees as the father of Frederick the Great did toward his subjects, caning them on the streets, and shouting, "I wish to be loved and not feared." "Growl, Spitfire and Brothers," says Talmage, "wonder why they fail, while ...
— Cheerfulness as a Life Power • Orison Swett Marden
... wherever he turned. George, tenth Earl Marischal, and brother of Frederick the Great's general, Marshal Keith, had joined the Earl of Mar in the rising of 1715, and had made an ineffectual descent in 1719 on Glenshiel with the Spaniards. But in the '45 he had taken no part, and he revealed to the British Government the existence of the Bourbon Family Compact. In return, ...
— James Boswell - Famous Scots Series • William Keith Leask
... contemplate the landscape or the prints in the inn parlour; for he fears to come to an end of his entertainment, and be left companionless on the last stages of his journey. A young fellow recently finished the works of Thomas Carlyle, winding up, if we remember aright, with the ten note-books upon Frederick the Great. "What!" cried the young fellow, in consternation, "is there no more Carlyle? Am I left to the daily papers?" A more celebrated instance is that of Alexander, who wept bitterly because he had no more worlds to subdue. ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of such views and aspirations, we seem entirely to have forgotten the teaching which once the old German Empire received with "astonishment and indignation" from Frederick the Great, that "the rights of States can only be asserted by the living power"; that what was won in war can only be kept by war; and that we Germans, cramped as we are by political and geographical conditions, require the greatest efforts to hold ...
— Germany and the Next War • Friedrich von Bernhardi
... before. They were taught the same system of navigation which had served the mariners of the fifteenth century. In their cabins hung the same charts and signal flags which had done service in the days of Louis XIV and Frederick the Great. In short, they were (through no fault of ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... an Italian transplanted to Paris, as a member of the Academy of Sciences, after he had shown his powers in his native country. His great contemporary, Euler, was a Swiss, transplanted first to St. Petersburg, then invited by Frederick the Great to become a member of the Berlin Academy, then again attracted to St. Petersburg. Huyghens was transplanted from his native country to Paris. Agassiz was an exotic, brought among us from Switzerland, whose activity ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb
... surely one of the most touching of human compositions,—a song of Luther's. The great Reformer's music resounds to this day in our churches; and one of the rude hymns he wrote has such a step of thunder in it that the father of Frederick the Great, Mr. Carlyle tells us, used to call it "God Almighty's Grenadier March." This one I speak of is of another mood, and is soft as tears. To appreciate it thoroughly, one must think of the burly, resolute, ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... Frederick the Great, in a letter to Voltaire, says, "I look on men as a herd of deer in a great man's park, whose only business is to people the enclosures."—This is one of the great men ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various
... Away from a library he could have written a quite tolerable essay on any century of the Christian era. Historical characters in whom he was specially interested were Julius Caesar, Octavius, Charlemagne, the Emperor Charles V, Queen Elizabeth, Cromwell, Louis XIV, the elder Pitt, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon; and among the non-political Roger Bacon, Erasmus, Luther, Sir Thomas More, Isaac Newton, Faraday, and Darwin. The Elizabethan age had for him a magnetic attraction, because of the Queen with her enigmatical personality, ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... fully engaged in that famous war with France which was to end in driving her hereditary rival from the eastern and western hemispheres, and in the establishment of the German Empire by the military genius of Frederick the Great. For a while, however, the conflict in America was chiefly remarkable for the incapacity of English commanders on land and sea. Earl Loudoun, the sluggish commander-in-chief, of whom it was said, ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... less archaic. He repeats Oliver Cromwell, but with less simplicity, while his artistic aspiration complicates the Puritan with the Cavalier. "From childhood," he is quoted as saying, "I have been under the influence of five men—Alexander, Julius Caesar, Theodoric II, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon." No great man moulds himself thus like others. It is but a theatrical greatness. But anyhow none of these names are Jewish, and not thus were "the Kings of Jerusalem" even "six thousand ...
— Chosen Peoples • Israel Zangwill
... eighteenth centuries, armies were often commanded by men born to princely rank. That this did not necessarily mean that they were ill commanded may be shown by the names of Turenne and Conde, Maurice de Saxe and Eugene of Savoy, Prince Henry of Prussia I and Frederick the Great. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... I prevent all these arts of royal policy, and all these displays of royal magnificence? How can I prevent the successor of Frederick the Great from aspiring to a new, and, in this age, unexampled kind of glory? Is it in my power to say that he shall not make his confessions in the style of St. Austin or of Rousseau? that he shall not assume the character of the penitent and flagellant, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. V. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Mirabeau went to Berlin. It is a singular fact that in his various journeys some accident always befel him. On the way to Berlin an attempt was made to assassinate him by some unknown enemies, but he safely reached the German capital. King Frederick the Great, now very aged, no longer received foreigners, yet he replied to a letter from Mirabeau and fixed a day for seeing him ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... self-possession of the philosopher who said: "If evil be said of thee, and it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it." It would have been well for those who indulged in this style of writing, if all the victims of their pens had been of the same mind as Frederick the Great, who said that time and experience had taught him to be a good post-horse, going through his appointed daily stage, and caring nothing for the curs that barked ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... with spite—"an artificial structure which cannot endure heavy storms, which has intruded without justification among the powers of Europe." How did it come about that impartial judges finally, soon after the death of Frederick the Great, declared that it was time to cease prophesying the destruction of this widely hated power? For after every defeat, they said, it had risen more vigorously, and had repaired all the damages and losses of war more quickly than was possible elsewhere; its prosperity ...
— The German Classics Of The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Volume 12 • Various
... The Daily Mail, "that the Kaiser's speeches no longer include references to God, only Frederick the Great." This confirms ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 11, 1914 • Various
... ago there was a king of Prussia, whose name was Frederick; and because he was very wise and very brave, people called him Frederick the Great. Like other kings, he lived in a beautiful palace and had many officers and servants to wait ...
— Fifty Famous People • James Baldwin
... the accession of Frederick the Great, 1134-1740, by Herbert Tuttle. Published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, I vol. The author, who is Professor of History in Cornell University, "spent several years in Berlin, studying with the greatest care the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume I. No. VI. June, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... sips his gruel with avidity and thanks Heaven if nobody beats him. And so we have left off beating the eighteenth century. It was not so, however, in our lusty prime. Carlyle, historian though he was of Frederick the Great and the French Revolution, revenged himself for the trouble it gave him by loading it with all vile epithets. If it had been a cock or a cook he could not have called it harder names. It was century spendthrift, fraudulent, bankrupt, a swindler century, which did ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... the celebrated palace of Sans Souci and found the room of Frederick the Great as it had been in his lifetime, and guarded by one of his old servants. He then went to the Protestant church which contained the hero's tomb. "The door of the monument was open," says General de ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... an original drama in which you are playing a star role. It's as old as the brute beneath the skin of your big hairy hand. Alexander could conquer the world, but he died in drunken revelry with a worthless woman. Caesar and Mark Antony forgot the Roman Empire for the smile of Cleopatra. Frederick the Great became a puppet in the hands of a ballet dancer. She spoke and he obeyed. Conde, in the meridian of his splendid manhood, the pride and glory of France, sacrificed his family, his fortune and his friends for an adventuress, who ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... he was not in a playing mood, he was often asked to give some of his wonderful mimetic imitations. On such occasions Chopin retired to one of the side-rooms, and when he returned he was irrecognisable. Professor Chodzko remembers seeing him as Frederick the Great. ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the fourth Henri of France. This, too, thrust forward the great Conde to offer to France the first fruits of his heroism, when victor at Rocroi, at twenty-two. So, too, with Gustavus Adolphus, Turenne, Eugene of Savoy, and Frederick the Great. Family interest, not of the most creditable kind, turned the courtier Churchill into the conquering Marlborough; and his nephew, the gallant young Berwick, found that being, somewhat irregularly, the son of an English king, ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... of Hobson Brothers ever knew, better than her father and uncle, better than her husband Sir T. Newcome, better than her sons and successors above mentioned, was the famous Sophia Alethea Hobson, afterwards Newcome—of whom might be said what Frederick the Great said of his sister, that she was sexu foemina, vir ingenio—in sex a woman, and in mind a man. Nor was she, my informant told me, without even manly personal characteristics: she had a very deep and gruff voice, and in her old age a beard ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... could come to agreements which would bind down nations and rule political movements. The first real upheaving of any genuine force, national or personal, in European life tore through all their meshes in a moment. Frederick the Great, soon after, is to compel Europe to reconstruct her scheme of political arrangements; later yet, the French Revolution is to clear the ground more thoroughly and violently still. The triple alliance, concocted by the Regent and Stanhope and Dubois, ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... But what if he had? There have been and are heroes who begun With something not much better, or as bad: Frederick the Great from Molwitz[423] deigned to run, For the first and last time; for, like a pad, Or hawk, or bride, most mortals after one Warm bout are broken in to their new tricks, And fight like fiends ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... we had a longish drive, through different parks and villages, and finally arrived at Sans Souci, where we dined. After dinner we strolled through the rooms and were shown the different souvenirs of Frederick the Great, and got home at ten-thirty." W. saw a good deal of his cousin, George de Bunsen, a charming man, very cultivated and cosmopolitan. He had a pretty house in the new quarter of Berlin, and was most hospitable. He had an interesting dinner there with some of the literary ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... place. It is impossible not to wish that Howe had shown more moderation. He had, of course, precedent on his side. Nothing which he wrote was so bad as the language of Queen Elizabeth to her councillors, or of Frederick the Great to Voltaire. He was neither more savage than Junius, nor more indecent than Sir Charles Hanbury Williams in his attacks on King George II. But times had changed. Mouths and manners had grown cleaner, and much of Howe's banter ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... marionette-shows of the past. It was a sentimental delight to reconstruct the world of Goethe at Weimar, or of Schiller and poverty and faithful love, or to see again Jean Jacques in his quakings, or Voltaire at Ferney, or Frederick the Great reading his own poetry. ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... produced by other nations, and to accommodate itself to foreign peculiarities. This, with the great flexibility of our language, makes German translations thoroughly faithful and complete. And it is not to be denied that, in general, you get on very far with a good translation. Frederick the Great did not know Latin, but he read Cicero in the French translation with as much profit as we who read him ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... of the Inquisition at Lisbon, had come to fight in the Vende, where he was noticed for his courage and his quality of leadership. He was an excellent tactician, a skill which he had learned in Prussia, where he had served for a considerable time in the Foot-guards of Frederick the Great; hence his nick-name of "The Big Prussian." He had an irreproachable military turn-out, spick and span, curled and powdered, with a long pig-tail, big, highly polished riding boots and withal, a very martial bearing. This smart appearance was the more remarkable ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... which was rebuilt for the purpose, the museum of fine arts, the exchange, the Stadt and Lobe theatres, the post office and central railway station. There are also numerous hospitals and schools. Breslau is exceedingly rich in fine monuments; the most noteworthy being the equestrian statues of Frederick the Great and Frederick William III., both by Kiss; the statue of Bluecher by Rauch; a marble statue of General Tauentzien by Langhans and Schadow; a bronze statue of Karl Gottlieb Svarez (1746-1798), the Prussian jurist, a monument to Schleiermacher, born here in 1768, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... that," retorted Doctor Johnson, with a smile, "I've heard of you; you are the man who wrote the life of Frederick the Great in nine hundred and ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... hear for certain that Pitherby is to get a title of some sort, in recognition of his literary labours. He has written a short history of the House of Hohenzollern, for use in schools you know, and he's bringing out a popular Life of Frederick the Great—at least he ...
— When William Came • Saki
... a very biting nature by Voltaire, directed against pretentious pedants of science in the person of Maupertuis, the President of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Berlin, which so excited the anger of Frederick the Great, the patron of the Academy, that he ordered it to be burnt by the common hangman, after 30,000 copies of it ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... organised and placed in the field a splendid army, and it was fondly expected that a few months with such troops as his would end the war. But M'Clellan, though a brave soldier and an able man, was a disappointment. Like the father of Frederick the Great, he was an ideal drill-master, but an indifferent general. He was afraid to risk his magnificent army, and while he dallied his ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... distinguishing mark in nearly all the wars in which the American people have taken part, and with a few notable exceptions has been the rule in the leading military struggles of the world. Alexander the Great died in his thirty-second year. Caesar entered upon the conquest of Gaul at forty. Frederick the Great was the leading commander of Europe at thirty-three. Napoleon and Wellington, born in the same year, fought their last battle at forty-six years of age. On the exceptional side Marlborough's greatest victories were won when he was nearly sixty (though he had been brilliantly distinguished ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... cavaliere servente; the Princess Altieri led in by Cardinal Giovan Francesco Albani, the very gallant and art-loving nephew of Winckelmann's Cardinal Alessandro; the Princess Santacroce escorted by the French Ambassador Cardinal de Bernis, the amiable society rhymester of Mme. de Pompadour, whom Frederick the Great had surnamed Babet la bouquetiere. In the front row sat the wife of the Senator Rezzonico, who, in virtue of being the niece of the late Pope Clement XIII., affected an almost royal pomp, and by her side sat the wittiest and most literary of the Sacred College, the still very flirtatious ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... escapes the law for the reason which would have made a Jacques Collin of Frederick the Great, if, instead of dealing with provinces by means of battles, he had dealt in smuggled goods or transferable securities. The high politics of money-making consist in forcing the States of Europe to issue loans at twenty or at ten per cent, ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... or "intelligent self-interest" appears in a milder form in Maupertuis (Works, 1752), and Frederick the Great,[1] to the latter of whom D'Alembert objected by letter that interest could never generate the sense of duty ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg
... France and Great Britain was declared in May, 1756. In Europe it was known as the Seven Years' War; in America as the French and Indian. On the side of France were Russia and Austria. On the side of Great Britain was Frederick the Great of Prussia. The fighting went on not only in America, but in the West Indies, on the European Continent, in the ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... is no monopoly of mine I can prove by remarking that many an American collector with whom I have talked was unaware that the library of Harvard University is the possessor of all the works of reference—mostly annotated—which were used by Thomas Carlyle in writing his "Cromwell" and his "Frederick the Great," and they were bequeathed by him in his will to Harvard University because of his esteem and regard for the American people, "particularly the more silent part ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... Potsdam we were shown the very rooms in which Frederick the Great lived and moved and had his being, plotted and planned to conquer his neighbors. In the little church are myriads of tattered flags, taken in their many wars, and two great stone caskets in which repose the bodies of Frederick the Great and his father, ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... particular hero is here alluded to. The exploits of Bayard, Nemours, Edward the Black Prince, and, in more modern times, the fame of Marlborough, Frederick the Great, Count Saxe, Charles of Sweden, etc., are familiar to every historical reader, but the exact places of their birth are known to a very small ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... history that very few of the genuinely first-rate men of the race have been, wholly civilized, in the sense that the term is employed in newspapers and in the pulpit. Think of Caesar, Bonaparte, Luther, Frederick the Great, Cromwell, Barbarossa, Innocent III, Bolivar, Hannibal, Alexander, and to come down to our own time, Grant, Stonewall Jackson, Bismarck, Wagner, ...
— In Defense of Women • H. L. Mencken
... wonder at the tone in which those who contradict M. Taine, and especially Prince Napoleon himself, condescend to tell him that he lacks that which would be needed in order to speak of Napoleon or the Revolution. But who is it, then, that has what is needed in order to judge Napoleon? Frederick the Great, or Catherine II., perhaps,—as Napoleon himself desired, "his peers"; or in other words, those who, born as he was for war and government, can only admire, justify, and glorify themselves in him. And who ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... is told of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, that, as he was seated one day in his private room, a written petition was brought to him with the request that it should be immediately read. The King had just returned from hunting, and the glare of the sun, or some other cause, had so dazzled his eyes ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... conversation turned on his West Point studies. The little work of Jomini's mentioned above being casually referred to as having been in his course, I asked him if he had continued his reading into the History of the Seven Years' War of Frederick the Great, to which it was the introduction. He said no, and added frankly that he had not read even the Introduction in the French, which he had found unpleasantly hard reading, but in the English translation published under the title of the ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... "law" by some of his successors are ingenious. They amount to this: As Rome grew in power and culture, so Brandenburg, since the days of the Great Elector, has been expanding in spirit and in territory. That illustrious prince began by absorbing Prussia. Frederick the Great added Silesia and a slice of Poland. Wilhelm I obtained Schleswig, Holstein, Alsace, and Lorraine by war, and Saxony and Bavaria by benevolent assimilation. The present Kaiser has already acquired Belgium by the former and ...
— Practical English Composition: Book II. - For the Second Year of the High School • Edwin L. Miller
... as sacred relics; and in the Salon are to be seen the portraits of several public characters, his contemporaries, and which were constantly appended there in his life time. Among these portraits I distinguished those of Frederick the Great of Prussia, Catherine II of Russia, Lekain, Diderot, Alembert, Franklin, Helvetius, Marmontel and Washington, besides many others. There is nothing remarkable either in the Chateau, or in the gardens appertaining to it; but as it stands on an elevation, it commands a fine view, which is so ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... this invitation he was made an associate of the Academy of Sciences. A little later he was made professor of physics, and in 1733 professor of mathematics. In 1735 he solved a problem in three days which some of the eminent mathematicians would not undertake under several months. In 1741 Frederick the Great invited him to Berlin, where he soon became a member of the Academy of Sciences and professor of mathematics; but in 1766 he returned to St. Petersburg. Towards the close of his life he became virtually blind, being obliged to dictate his ...
— A History of Science, Volume 3(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... is a strange reality: If you look at the general outlines of the German map in 1815, you will see that the frontiers trace in a startling way the scowling outlines of Frederick the Great, "Old Fritz," who first dreamed ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... her children would have in their veins the proudest blood in Europe. Such a prophecy might well have been laughed to scorn, for little Wilhelmine had as obscure a cradle as almost any infant in all Prussia. Her father was an army bugler, who wore private's uniform in Frederick the Great's army; and her early years were to be spent playing with other soldiers' children in the sordid environment of ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... thought of offering his secret to Frederick the Great; but he did not do so, however, and his telegraph remained in the state of a curious cabinet experiment. He had, nevertheless, opened the way, and, dating from that epoch, we meet with a certain number of attempts at electrostatic ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 384, May 12, 1883 • Various
... independent possession by Frederick William. Not king of Prussia, but in Prussia, because not all the territory to which that name belonged was included in the afore-mentioned duchy. The rest was not annexed till 1772, so that Frederick the Great was the first king of Prussia. And not till 1815 was the name Prussia strictly a designation of the whole land now ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bear fruit after their kind. In the place of friendliness on the part of the English,—a friendliness uninterrupted by war, and based on the blood of their royal family and the comradeship in arms against France in the days of Louis XIV, Frederick the Great, and Napoleon—there developed a growing hostility. In vain missions were sent by the British Government to promote a better understanding, for the Germans declined to accept either a "naval holiday" or a position of perpetual ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... chief director of the political conscience of His Prussian Majesty, as his Minister of the Foreign Department, was born in Silesia, and is the son of a nobleman who was a General in the Austrian service when Frederick the Great made the conquest of that country. At the death of this King in 1786, Count von Haugwitz occupied an inferior place in the foreign office, where Count von Herzburg observed his zeal and assiduity, and recommended him to the notice of the late ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... the Middle Age. Church and Faith were compelled to disappear in the same proportion; and so in the eighteenth century English and French philosophers were able to take up an attitude of direct hostility; until, finally, under Frederick the Great, Kant appeared, and took away from religious belief the support it had previously enjoyed from philosophy: he emancipated the handmaid of theology, and in attacking the question with German thoroughness and patience, gave it an ...
— The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer; Religion, A Dialogue, Etc. • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the Transactions of the Society, but is thus stated by M. Thiebault in his "Recollections of Frederick the Great and the Court of Berlin." It is necessary to premise that M. Gleditsch, to whom the circumstance happened, was a botanist of eminence, holding the professorship of natural philosophy at Berlin, ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... [In Frederick the Great's INSTRUCTIONS TO HIS GENERALS we read: "A defensive war is apt to betray us into too frequent detachment. Those generals who have had but little experience attempt to protect every point, while those who are better acquainted with their ...
— The Art of War • Sun Tzu
... Frederick the Great, during the Seven Years' War, was never strong enough to overthrow the Austrian monarchy; and if he had tried to do so after the fashion of Charles the Twelfth, he would inevitably have had to succumb himself. But after his skilful application ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... annihilating a prejudice by presenting a vivid vision of its theoretical consequences. Carlyle has an eccentric hatred of the eighteenth century, its manners, morals, politics, religion, and men. He has expressed this in various ways for thirty years; but in his last work, the "Life of Frederick the Great," his prejudice reached its logical climax in the assertion, that the only sensible thing the eighteenth century ever did was blowing out its own brains in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... is romance, at least that is the only way I can understand romance. When you reduce life to a logical sequence you destroy all poetry, and, I think, all reality. We do things constantly, and no one can say why we do them. Frederick the Great coming in, after reviewing his troops, to play the flute, that to me is intensely romantic. A lady, whom you probably treated exceedingly badly, leaving you her property, that too ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... was very welcome news to energetic Massachusetts. In 1744, when Frederick the Great had begun the War of the Austrian Succession and France had taken arms against Great Britain, du Quesnel, the governor of Louisbourg, who had received the intelligence of these events some weeks before the alert Bostonians, at once decided to win credit by striking the first blow. He was ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... it. It was owned by a miller. He offered the miller three times the value of the property. The miller would not take it, because it was the old homestead, and he felt about as Naboth felt about his vineyard when Ahab wanted it. Frederick the Great was a rough and terrible man, and he ordered the miller into his presence; and the king, with a stick, in his hand—a stick with which he sometimes struck his officers of state—said to this miller: "Now, I have offered ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... praised Borrowing, which uses up the resources of the future Death is only asleep without dreams Excessive desire to oblige Fear of being suspected of cowardice was beneath them For a retreating enemy it is necessary to make a bridge of gold Frederick the Great: "No man is a hero to his valet" Hair, arranged with charming negligence His Majesty did not converse: he spoke. Like all great amateurs was hard to please Little gifts preserve friendship Living ever in the future Make a bridge of gold, or oppose a wall of ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... which has to do with the feeding or clothing of a human body is, at the last analysis, a moral question. The great generals of history have understood that the moral force of their armies depended largely upon the provision wagon. Frederick the Great once wrote: "Where one desires a solid basis for the good organization of an army, it is necessary to have regard to the stomach." Napoleon once said: "The soldier has his heart in his abdomen;" and Von ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... far from me to uphold despotism of any sort; but it is a mistake to identify feudalism with it. When Frederick the Great wrote that "Kings are the first servants of the State," jurists thought rightly that a new era was reached in the development of freedom. Strangely coinciding in time, in the backwoods of North-western ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe
... Genlis first made known the astonishing powers of a poor German soldier on the Jew's harp. This musician was in the service of Frederick the Great, and finding himself one night on duty under the windows of the King, playing the Jew's harp with so much skill, that Frederick, who was a great amateur of music, thought he heard a distinct orchestra. Surprised on learning that such an effect could be produced by a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 269, August 18, 1827 • Various
... and I will write: only a little about S. B. however, only that: the Volume I had with me was vol. III. of my Edition (I don't know if yours is the same), and I thought you [would] like all of three Causeries in it: Rousseau, Frederick the Great, and Daguesseau: the rest you might not so much ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald in Two Volumes - Vol. II • Edward FitzGerald
... instinct as absolute rulers was revolted by a spectacle of unbridled faction and raging anarchy; their envy was soothed by the growing weakness of a power which Chatham had so short a time before left at the highest point of grandeur and strength. Frederick the Great spoke with contempt of the insolence of Opposition and the virulence of parties; and vowed that, petty German prince as he was, he would not change places with the King of England. The Emperor Joseph pronounced positively ...
— Burke • John Morley
... twenty years on his "Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews;" Gibbon on his "Decline and Fall," twenty years; and Adam Clark, on his "Commentary," twenty-six years. Carlyle spent fifteen years on his "Frederick the Great." ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... and affectionately, she "lacked altogether the sentimental equilibrium." Especially pathetic was her love for two men—the Count de Mora, a Spanish nobleman, and a Colonel Guibert, who was celebrated for his relations with Frederick the Great; although this wore terribly on her, consuming her physical force, she always received her friends with the same good grace, but often, after their departure, she would fall into a frightful nervous fit from which she could find relief only by ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme
... Jordan, "that Frederick the Great is the only man whose mind is so liberal and so unprejudiced. Believe me, my king, there is no living sovereign in Europe who dares guarantee to his subjects free thought and ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... moved if the son of Philip of Macedon had been an incompetent? The aggressive action of Prussia which astonished Europe in 1740 determined the subsequent history of Germany; but that action was anything but inevitable; it depended entirely on the personality of Frederick the Great. ...
— Darwin and Modern Science • A.C. Seward and Others
... Frederick the Great of Prussia issues his celebrated coffee and beer manifesto, recommending the use of the latter in place of the former ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... improved one of our pleasant days by a trip to Potsdam, where is the summer palace of the kings of Prussia. Here are the rooms of Frederick the Great, just as he arranged them. His library is chiefly of French books, and fills the shelves, which are everywhere, from floor to ceiling—upon the doors, even, so that, when they are shut, one ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... exclamation of astonishment, that the blue colour of the vase came off in one spot, where he had been rubbing it. I looked, and saw that part of the inscription at the bottom of the vase had been covered over with blue paint. At first sight, I read the words, 'On the character of Frederick the Great;' the blue paint had concealed the next word, which is now, madam, sufficiently legible." The word to which the king pointed was—tyrant. "Those flattering lines, madam, you comprehend, were written—'On the character ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... needed, and where by their vivacity they would be obstacles to the rapid appreciation of his thought. The value of concrete illustration artfully used may be seen illustrated in a passage from Macaulay's invective against Frederick the Great: "On his head is all the blood which was shod in a war which raged during many years and in every quarter of the globe, the blood of the column at Fentonoy, the blood of the mountaineers who were slaughtered at Culloden. The evils ...
— The Principles of Success in Literature • George Henry Lewes
... century was promoted by the influence of fashion. The new ideas of philosophers, rationalists, and men of science had interested the nobles and higher classes of society for two generations, and were a common subject of discussion in the most distinguished salons. Voltaire's intimacy with Frederick the Great, the relations of d'Alembert and Diderot with the Empress Catherine, conferred on these men of letters, and on the ideas for which they stood, a prestige which carried great weight with the bourgeoisie. Humbler people, too, were as amenable as the great ...
— The Idea of Progress - An Inquiry Into Its Origin And Growth • J. B. Bury
... as it is logically to all war-lords. It was by no accident that similar indifference toward the creed of their soldiers, or civil servants, was shown by William the Silent, Wallenstein, Cromwell, William III, and Frederick the Great. ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... in his turn, loses much of the moral superiority due to successful offensive operations. There are numerous instances of this kind of war, "the defensive-offensive," as it is sometimes called, to be found in history. The last four campaigns of Frederick the Great of Prussia, are examples which may serve as models. Wellington played a similar part in the ...
— Elements of Military Art and Science • Henry Wager Halleck
... vigorous, but equally common-sense statement of the facts by Carlyle: "It was flatly inconceivable to him (Frederick the Great) that moral emotion could have been put into him by an entity which had none of its own". And finally, we propose to speak of theism, thus defined, in its relations to ethics or moral science, the discipline which treats ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... observed Isabel bitingly. "You're worse than Dean. I saw you kick Frederick the Great all across the veranda yesterday, then lead him around the kitchen and ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram |
