"Oppressor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... with a poor man, and withal I deem that thou mayest help me to some gain and good, that I will tell thee a true tale: and first that the Burg is a good town under a good lord, who is no tyrant nor oppressor of peaceful men; and that thou mayest dwell there in peace as to the folk thereof, who be good folk, albeit they be no dastards to let themselves be cowed by murder-carles. And next I will tell thee that the folk of the town of Hampton be verily as ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... had been goaded into treason by a long course of persecution. Judge Thorpe had been driven from the country quite as effectually as Mr. Gourlay, for no other reason than that he had persisted in holding up official corruption to the public gaze. But none of these manifestations of "the oppressor's wrath, the proud man's contumely," had taken so deep a hold upon the public mind as did the case of Mr. Gourlay. The injuries inflicted upon him had been so cruel, the perversion of justice so vile, that the public conscience received a shock from ...
— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent
... the Prince of Orange had, doubtless, an influence on the deliberations of the States-General; but it did not make them commit injustice: for when a people, from good reasons, take up arms against an oppressor, justice and generosity require that brave men should be assisted in the defence of their liberties. Whenever, therefore, a civil war is kindled in a state, foreign powers may assist that party which appears to them to have justice on their side. He who assists an odious ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... and daring spirit throwing off the robes of humiliation, and teaching Israel to strike for freedom by some gallant example—a new Moses smiting the Egyptian, and marching from the house of bondage, the fallen host of the oppressor left weltering in the surge of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... flame; Whose overruling mastership, Defied slow Reason's dull control! And felt for one of that vile race, To whom my tribe had given place; Was nursed in silence and in shame! Shame, for the weakness of a heart, Yet bleeding from th' oppressor's blow, Which could bestow its better part Upon the offspring of a foe! They, the mean delvers of the soil, The wielders of the felling axe,— Because we will not stoop to toil, Nor to its burdens bond our backs; Because we scorn Seduction's ...
— Mazelli, and Other Poems • George W. Sands
... ale, and wine, the toll of a mill. It anticipates our pure-food laws and punishes butchers for selling unwholesome flesh or adulterating oatmeal, and says "that no Forestaller be suffered to dwell in any Town, which is an open Oppressor of Poor People ... which for Greediness of his private Gain doth prevent others in buying Grain, Fish, Herring, or any other Thing to be sold coming by land or Water, oppressing the Poor, and deceiving ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... of patriotism in the United States, and it is a virtue which may be found among the people, but never among the leaders of the people. This may be explained by analogy; despotism debases the oppressed much more than the oppressor: in absolute monarchies the king has often great virtues, but the courtiers are invariably servile. It is true that the American courtiers do not say "Sire," or "Your Majesty"—a distinction without a difference. They are forever talking of the natural intelligence ...
— Democracy In America, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alexis de Tocqueville
... the door wide, and entered boldly. She had heard her grandfather's voice raised, though its hoarse tones did not allow her to distinguish his words. She was alarmed for him. She came in, his guardian fairy, to protect him from the oppressor of six feet high. Rugge's arm was raised, not indeed to strike, but rather to declaim. Sophy slid between him and her grandfather, and, clinging round the latter, flung out her own arm, the forefinger raised menacingly towards the Remorseless Baron. How you would ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... both means generally unjust and oppressive, and consequently rather sources of shame and humiliation. For as the Chinese philosopher well observes, 'there is scarcely one rich man out of an hundred, who was not himself an oppressor, or the son ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... surrounding, powerful, and monarchical states; and to the inappreciable blessings of the Christian faith, and even of the Romish superstition, before the period when these infamous cruelties began, when their warfare was only with the oppressor, their struggles with the destroyers ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... last softly, bowing his bristling head to where he could look Judson Eells in the eye, and the oppressor of the poor took counsel. Undoubtedly he would get certain results, some of which were very unpleasant to contemplate, but behind it all he felt something yet to come, some counter-proposal involving peace. For no man starts out by laying his cards on the ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... fraud, contempt, boasting, oppression, dissimulation, lust, gluttony, malice, fornication, adultery, ignorance, impiety?" A nobleman therefore in some likelihood, as he concludes, is an "atheist, an oppressor, an epicure, a [3646]gull, a dizzard, an illiterate idiot, an outside, a glowworm, a proud fool, an arrant ass," Ventris et inguinis mancipium, a slave to his lust and belly, solaque libidine fortis. And as Salvianus observed of his countrymen the Aquitanes in ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... and happy, but I may safely say that no poor man paused beside his gate to hurl a curse at the oppressor of the unfortunate. He still had enemies—his determined and combative nature made that unavoidable—but his enemies were of those who had been prevented from exploiting the poor by his agency. These termed him an enemy to progress, their notions of progress ...
— Grey Town - An Australian Story • Gerald Baldwin
... for persecution, that seems inherent in the nature of the Puritan. By the hour I have listened to the abuse of him, from the mouths of men whose lives had been spent in his praise and support, simply because he had interposed his talents and influence to arrest the oppressor's hand. They said he had deserted his party, that he would live to share the fate of Burr, and that he was as great ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and the sight was grand in the lit-up grounds. There was feasting and speech-making and thanks given to the brave men who had saved the country from the oppressor, and the ...
— Our Soldier Boy • George Manville Fenn
... centuries the condition of affairs in Ireland has not been altogether happy, owing largely to the revolutionary schemes which have from time to time been hatched by so-called "patriots" to "free Ireland from the yoke of the oppressor," as they termed it in their appeals to the people to incite rebellion, but more properly speaking to bring about a repeal of the union between Great Britain and Ireland and establish an Irish nation on Irish soil. Many ...
— Troublous Times in Canada - A History of the Fenian Raids of 1866 and 1870 • John A. Macdonald
... door; he was thwarted, in that quarter, of a set purpose, and that purpose could only originate in the one subject that is resolving his existence into itself; besides, it is a justification to him in his own eyes to have an embodied antagonist and oppressor. ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... Scottish marc-hman, eyeing in the captive the ravisher of his wife, approached him ere the French officer could guess his intention, and, at one blow, carried his head four paces from the trunk. Above a hundred Scots rushed to wash their hands in the blood of their oppressor, bandied about the severed head, and expressed their joy in such shouts, as if they had stormed the city of London. The prisoners, who fell into their merciless hands, were put to death, after their eyes had been torn out; the victors contending who should display the greatest ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... flag. It is impossible that this country should ever abandon the gallant tars who have won for us such splendid trophies. Let me suppose that the genius of Columbia should visit one of them in his oppressor's prison, and attempt to reconcile him to his forlorn and wretched condition. She would say to him, in the language of gentlemen on the other side: "Great Britain intends you no harm; she did not mean to impress you, but one of her own subjects; having taken you by mistake, I will remonstrate, ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... thy poor with judgment. The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills by righteousness. He shall judge the poor of the people, he shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall fear thee as long as the sun and moon endure throughout all generations. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass: as showers that water the earth, [compare 2. Sam. ch. xxi. [fn112] 3. 4.] In his days shall the righteous flourish; and abundance of ...
— Five Pebbles from the Brook • George Bethune English
... have been talking to Perry or Susan," I said. "They seem to be convinced that I am an oppressor of the poor. ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... arbiters of controversies—who are to adjudicate on the lives of their fellow citizens, and to whom is committed the dearest and highest interests of society, should be men of virtue—of wisdom and of unsullied reputation? Can a Court be a shield against the proud oppressor when a daring leader can crush them with his nod? Be not deceived my fellow citizens—no nation hath yet made such an experiment without feeling its bitter and dreadful effects. See the revolutionary tribunals of France—See in them a melancholy picture of corrupt courts and ...
— Count The Cost • Jonathan Steadfast
... ask leave to toil; no longer is he at war with poverty, for death has made it a drawn battle. He 'rests from his labors' where the rich and the poor meet together, and he hears no more the voice of the oppressor. . . . PERHAPS our readers will have observed that the Sketches of East Florida are from no common pen. The description which has been given by the writer, of the delicious climate in that sunny region, may to many ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... contribute to the increase of his stock, his shop is crowded with customers, and the sale of his paper rises in proportion to the scandal it contains. All this time the prosecutor is inveighed against as a tyrant and oppressor, for having chosen to proceed by the way of information, which is deemed a grievance; but if he lays an action for damages, he must prove the damage, and I leave you to judge, whether a gentleman's character may not be brought into contempt, and all his views in life blasted by calumny, without ...
— The Expedition of Humphry Clinker • Tobias Smollett
... owned the sovereign sway Of Rome imperial, and in forced submission Had bowed the neck to the oppressor's yoke. The corn of Syria, her fruits and wares, The pearls of India, Araby's perfumes, The golden treasures of the mountains, all Profusely poured in her luxurious lap, Crowned to the full her proud magnificence. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... their wills, are ready to destroy us; but they are in the hand of God, in whose hand is also our times (Psa 31:15). Wherefore, though by the will of our enemies, we are always delivered to death, yet 'behold we live' (2 Cor 6:9). Therefore in this sense it may be said, 'Where is the fury of the oppressor?' It is not in his power to dispose of, therefore here it may be said again, he is not 'ready to destroy' (Isa 51:13). The cup that God's people in all ages have drank of, even the cup of affliction and persecution, it is not ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... justice bind Oppressor with oppressed; And close as sin and suffering joined We march ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... had an adventure not unlike that which befell me at Vienna. The whole of Europe, remember, was in a state of political ferment. Poland was at least as ready to rise against its oppressor then as now; and the police was proportionately strict and arbitrary. An army corps was encamped on the right bank of the Vistula, ready for expected emergencies. Under these circumstances, passports, as may be supposed, were carefully inspected; except in ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... moral power of this solitary work lies in the fact that it is a series of terrific and fascinating tableaux, embodying the idea of inflexible poetic justice impartially administered upon king and varlet, pope and beggar, oppressor and victim, projected amidst the unalterable necessities of eternity, and moving athwart the lurid abyss and the azure cope with an intense distinctness that sears the gazer's eyeballs. The Divina Commedia, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... body becomes unhealthy; and soon the mind. This is nature's law. She will never see her children wronged. If the mind, which rules the body, ever forgets itself so far as to trample upon its slave, the slave is never generousenough to forgive the injury; but will rise and smite its oppressor. Thus has many a ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... our ancestors drove howling and naked across the Danube, in undisturbed apathy gloat over our dearest treasures. Our people are ground into the dust; our women, stripped in the market-place, shriek under the pitiless lash of the oppressor. One man, sworn to protect Italy with his life, can save her, and ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... husband, will ever interfere with your happiness by thrusting ourselves upon you, or endanger your social position by proclaiming our relationship. Our paths lie so widely apart that they need never cross. You walk on the side of the oppressor—I, thank ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... of injustice aroused my sternest feelings of resistance. I had adopted the law as a profession with something of a patriotic feeling. I felt that I could make it an instrument for putting down the oppressor, the wrong-doer—for asserting right, and maintaining innocence! I had my admiration, too, at that period, of that logical astuteness, that wonderful tenacity of hold and pursuit, and discrimination of attribute and subject, which distinguish ...
— Confession • W. Gilmore Simms
... I was alone and friendless in the house of the oppressor. Did I follow the suggestions of my own heart, I should either destroy myself, or quit the protection of ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... fountain of all sin; and the author of all good the dispenser of all evil. It gives to the Supreme Being a malevolence that is not to be found in the character of the most malevolent of his creatures. It makes him more cruel than the most cruel oppressor ever recorded of the human race. It makes him to have deliberately made millions of men, for no other purpose than to stand by and delight in their misery and destruction. But is it possible, the Quakers say, for this to be true of him, who is thus described ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume II (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson
... of my countrymen. The proclamation of the provisional government speaks for our views; no inference can be tortured from it to countenance barbarily or debasement at home, or subjection, humiliation, or treachery from abroad. I would not have submitted to a foreign oppressor for the same reason that I would resist the foreign and domestic oppressor; in the dignity of freedom I would have fought upon the threshold of my country, and its enemy should enter only by passing over my lifeless corpse. Am I, who ...
— Phrases for Public Speakers and Paragraphs for Study • Compiled by Grenville Kleiser
... his neighbors wondered that he visited a certain poor, struggling widow, and gave her the house her husband once owned; and in the months that have since passed, many a poor family has wondered what has turned their former oppressor into such a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... who sees the poor opprest, And hears th' oppressor's haughty strain, Will rise to give his children rest, Nor shall they trust his word ...
— The Psalms of David - Imitated in the Language of The New Testament - And Applied to The Christian State and Worship • Isaac Watts
... drove the vessel against the rock. Our words should be carefully chosen. Death separates the dearest friends. His vices have weakened his mind and destroyed his health. True valor protects the feeble and humbles the oppressor. The Duke of Wellington, who commanded the English armies in the Peninsula, never lost a battle. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. Dr. Livingstone explored a large part of Africa. The English were conquered ...
— Graded Lessons in English • Alonzo Reed and Brainerd Kellogg
... flat-roofed villages, whence the women snatched up their children and fled at the sight of us. They believed us to be lords from the court who came to work them some harm in person or in property, and their terror told us how the country smarted beneath the rod of the oppressor. By mid-day, although the peak seemed to be but little nearer, the character of the land had changed. Now it sloped gently upwards, and therefore could not ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... Tag-rag on the stairs, whom he would have been delighted to pitch down head-foremost. If he had done so, none of his fellow-slaves below, in spite of their present sycophancy towards Tag-rag, would have shown any particular alacrity in picking up their common oppressor. Poor Tittlebat resumed his old situation behind the counter; but how different his present, from his former air and manner! With his pen occasionally peeping pertly out of his bushy hair over his right ear, and his yard-measure in his hand, no one, till the previous Monday ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of Jesus Christ over men is to be revealed on that day, it is clear that all men, without exception, must be judged. So linked, indeed, is the history of each man with that of others,—as, for instance, the tempter with the tempted, the oppressed with the oppressor, the teacher with the taught, the child with the parent;—so necessarily is each man's condition and character affected by that of all who have gone before him, up to his first parents;—so truly do all human beings make up one race, one family, from the ...
— Parish Papers • Norman Macleod
... Amenti give judgment against thee, and Set and Sekhet torment thee, till such time as thy sin is purged, and the Gods of Egypt, called by strange names, are once more worshipped in the Temples of Egypt, and the staff of the Oppressor is broken, and the footsteps of the Foreigner are swept clean, and the thing is accomplished as thou in thy weakness shalt ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... deep joy, the unspoken fervor, the sacred fury of the fight. Yours is the power to redress wrong, to defend the weak, to succor the needy, to relieve the suffering, to confound the oppressor. While vigor leaps in great tidal pulses along your veins, you stand in the thickest of the fray, and broadsword and battle-axe come crashing down through helmet and visor. When force has spent itself; you withdraw from the field, your weapons pass ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... Marion," said he; "remember that Wallace lives but in thee. Revive, be happy for my sake; and God, who putteth down the oppressor, will restore me to thine arms." She spoke not, but rising from his breast, clasped her hands together, and looked up with an expression of fervent prayer; then smiling through a shower of tears, she waved her hand to him to depart, ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... verse 81st to the 85th, that the "blest decree" is like the beams of morning ushering in the glorious day of liberty, ought not to pass unnoticed or unapplauded. From verse 85th to verse 108th, is an animated contrast between the unfeeling selfishness of the oppressor on the one hand, and the misery of the captive on the other. Verse 88th might perhaps be amended thus: "Nor ever quit her narrow maze." We are said to pass a bound, but we quit, a maze. ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... fierce hatred. Had his strength been equal to the attempt, he would have flung himself upon the padrone. As it was, he looked at his comrades, half wishing that they would combine with him against their joint oppressor. But there was no hope of that. Some congratulated themselves that they were not in Giacomo's place; others looked upon his punishment as a matter of course. There was no dream of interference, save in ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... those combinations which are formed in the playhouse as acts of fraud or cruelty. He that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public. He that hisses in malice or in sport is an oppressor and ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... society of the Prince de Ligne, of the Princess Lubomirski, &c. &c. that urbanity of manners and ease of conversation, which had such charms in her eyes. The Austrian government, exhausted by the war, had not then the strength to be an oppressor on its own account, and notwithstanding preserved towards France, an attitude which was not without dignity and independence. The objects of Napoleon's hatred might still find an asylum at Vienna; the year she passed in that city, was therefore, the most tranquil one she had enjoyed since ...
— Ten Years' Exile • Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Baronne (Baroness) de Stael-Holstein
... seemed to be made of sunshine, and amid all those stately palaces, he described to them the little earth which they had left behind—the skies that were covered with clouds, and the ways that were so rough and stony, and the cruelty of the oppressor, and the cries of those that were oppressed. And he showed the sickness and the troubles, and the sorrow and danger; and how Death stalked about, and tore heart from heart; and how sometimes the strongest would fail, and the truest fall ...
— A Little Pilgrim - Stories of the Seen and the Unseen • Margaret O. (Wilson) Oliphant
... but dangerous appeal to the generous sympathies of freemen. Enjoying, as we do, the blessings of a free Government, there is no man who has an American heart that would not rejoice to see these blessings extended to all other nations. We can not witness the struggle between the oppressed and his oppressor anywhere without the deepest sympathy for the former and the most anxious desire for his triumph. Nevertheless, is it prudent or is it wise to involve ourselves in these foreign wars? Is it indeed true that we have heretofore refrained from doing so merely from ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore
... he looked at her over the rim of the cup with quizzical blue eyes. "But I find three factions here instead of two, and my people have been too long under the oppressor for me not to appreciate what freedom would mean to these serfs in the South, and how wildly they long for it. No; I like the Southerners better than the Northerners, because I know them better; but in the matter of sympathy, ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... after him. Wait a bit." In fact, the eagle was already in pursuit, and the hawk, as he always does, had begun struggling upward with all his might. That is the fish-hawk's way of appealing to Heaven against his oppressor. He was safe for that time. Three negroes, shad-fishers, were just beyond us (we had seen them there in the morning, wading about the river setting their nets), and at the sight of them and of us, ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... of the Freshwater Canal and not near the Mediterranean and Lake Serbonis. The first definite geographical fact in connection with the sojourn in the Land of Egypt has been established by the excavations at Pithom. The historical identification of Rameses II. with Pharaoh the oppressor also results from the monumental evidence. One short exploration has upset a hundred theories and furnished a wonderful illustration of the historical character of the Book of Exodus. The finding of Pithom (Succoth) is, however, only the beginning, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... noble stoics of Belgium, of France, of Serbia, of Roumania, of Poland and all other peoples who have felt the mailed fist of the ruthless oppressor; who have looked upon their devastated fields, their dismantled cathedrals, their violated hearth-stones and the desecrated graves of their kindred, and that peace, tranquillity, contentment and prosperity may again be restored to them ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... teach him to admire. A mercantile community guided by Political Economy from the ledger to the banquet presided over by its Dagon Capital, finds that difficult. However, there 's the secret of him; that I respect in him. His admiration of an enemy or oppressor doing great deeds, wins him entirely. He is an active spirit, not your negative passive letter-of-Scripture Insensible. And his faults, short ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... flee! shake off the vile restraint Of ages! but, like Ballymena's saint, The oppressor spare, Heap only on his head the coals ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... same track, to glean whatever the Persian had spared. The Jauts established themselves on the Jumna. The Seiks devastated Lahore. Every part of India, from Tanjore to the Himalayas, was laid under contribution by the Mahrattas. The people were ground down to the dust by the oppressor without and the oppressor within, by the robber from whom the Nabob was unable to protect them, by the Nabob who took whatever the robber had left to them. All the evils of despotism, and all the evils of anarchy, pressed at ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... unspoken opposition between masters and men. Since that year we have been split into opposite camps. Whatever I might privately feel, I was one of the owners, one of the masters, and therefore in the opposite camp. To my men I was an oppressor, a representative of injustice and greed. Privately, I like to think that even to this day they bear me no malice, that they have some lingering regard for me. But the master stands before the human being, and the condition of war overrides individuals—they hate the master, even whilst, ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... greatest wonders of literature, not only because of their sublime greatness, but also because of their essential difference. Aeschylus, it is well known, had written a sequel to his "Prometheus Bound", in which he showed the final reconciliation between Zeus, the oppressor, and Prometheus, the champion, of humanity. What that reconciliation was, we do not know, because the play is lost, and the fragments are too brief for supporting any probable hypothesis. But Shelley repudiated the notion of compromise. He could not conceive of the Titan ...
— Percy Bysshe Shelley • John Addington Symonds
... as a spy; and this is done by the representative of a government which had promised assistance and protection, and moreover owed him a return for the kind treatment recently experienced by Frenchmen in the port from whence he came. Let him suppose himself writing to his oppressor with these various recollections crowding on his imagination; and the allowances he would then desire for himself, I request of him ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... their happiness. This young gentleman took a violent dislike to Samuel from the very first meal the latter served him. They finally clashed and Samuel had to run away. His master, however, sent his would-be-oppressor with the rest of the family to the country and ordered Samuel to return home. This he did and immediately entered ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Vol. I. Jan. 1916 • Various
... husband's lifeless corpse.[39] They buried of him all that earth could bury; but his undaunted spirit remained still among his people, cheering them in their misfortunes, and ever calling upon them to resist the hand of the oppressor. Sten Sture's character is one which draws forth a warmth of sentiment such as can be felt for no other character of his time. Living in an age when hypocrisy was looked upon with honor, and when falsehood was deemed a vice only when unsuccessful, he showed in all his dealings, whether with friends ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... but at the beginning of April intelligence was received there of the extraordinary events which had delivered Europe from her oppressor. Davoust refused to believe this news, which at once annihilated all his hopes of power and greatness. This blindness was persisted in for some time at Hamburg. Several hawkers, who were marked out by the police as having been the circulators of Paris news, were shot. An agent of the Government ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... which you vaunt, was it not destroyed by your own emperors? When they had made Roman citizens of Gauls and Egyptians, Africans and Huns, Spaniards and Syrians, how could they expect that such a motley crew would remain true to the interests of an Italian town, and that town their hated oppressor. Patriotism depends on concentration; it cannot bear diffusion. Something more than such a worldly tie was wanted to bind the diverse nations together; they have found it in Christianity. A common language imparts community ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... them, or take a prejudice against Horace. Yet on the other side I would not be like some of our judges, who would give the cause for a poor man right or wrong; for though that be an error on the better hand, yet it is still a partiality, and a rich man unheard cannot be concluded an oppressor. I remember a saying of King Charles II. on Sir Matthew Hale (who was doubtless an uncorrupt and upright man), that his servants were sure to be cast on any trial which was heard before him; not that he thought the judge was possibly to be bribed, but that his integrity might be too ...
— Discourses on Satire and Epic Poetry • John Dryden
... barbaric night, of slavery, of misery, these beings cut in ebony begin to robe themselves as men; on the battle field they have at last put on the virile toga dyed in blood, not now drawn by the lash from the back of the wretched chattel, but from the heart of the man face to face with his oppressor on the field of righteous battle. Rude and uncultured, they hold up to you hands hard with labor, still bleeding from the scarcely fallen manacles, and implore aid and manly mercy. Let it be granted without stint, and let not the freedom God has given, become a curse to them! You cannot roll back ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... humanity? His malice would seem discernible against the Boer nation, the people who continued in the simple faith which had been kept by their ancestors despite the persecutions heaped upon them in France and by the oppressor of Holland; he must have viewed with growing rage the designs of a gracious Providence surrounding that very people with the blessings of security and peace and accumulations of unparalleled riches, all construable as in ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... kindle a Hellenic national war against Rome. But the general in such a crusade could only be Philip of Macedonia; and he lacked the enthusiasm and the faith in the nation, without which such a war could not be waged. He knew not how to solve the arduous problem of transforming himself from the oppressor into the champion of Greece. His very delay in the conclusion of the alliance with Hannibal damped the first and best zeal of the Greek patriots; and when he did enter into the conflict with Rome, his mode of conducting war was ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... gush, Comes music of such sweet and innocent strength, As might force tears from the black murderer's eyes, And make the sighing captive, while he weeps His own hard wrongs, lift his chained hands, and pray For his oppressor more than ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... of the Puritans' by heart, and made their children read Calamy's account of the 2,000 ejected ministers along with the stories of Daniel in the Lion's Den and Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego. Sympathy for the persecuted, unbending resistance to the oppressor, was the creed which had passed into their blood. 'This covenant they kept as the stars keep their courses; this principle they stuck by, for want of knowing better, as it sticks by them to the last. It grew with their growth, it does not wither ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... The arch spirits of mischief are more secret, and of late years they have learned much. They are no longer so much inclined to Socialism, Pere Cabet and 'national ateliers,' still less to guillotines and noyades. But they are firm as ever, as jealous of despotism as ever, and, for an oppressor, as powerful as ever. And we believe that this class of men are firmly attached to the great cause of progressive freedom as represented by the Federal States and by the present Administration. Every day sees the truth spreading in France, and with its extension goes a deeply ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The insolence of office and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes When he himself might his quietus make With a bare bodkin? Nymph in thy orisons Be all my ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Volume II • Ivan Turgenev
... do right, as far as his education and prejudices will permit. It is sad to reflect that this very prince, who really wishes to do good, and to conduce to the comfort of his people, should, from want of energy, have been so fearful an oppressor, through the agency of others; and it is not here alone that vile agents for ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... his thanks, and they rode through the drift and up the Nek. It was, as the Kafir had predicted, a hot day. One of those days which come in the throng of the summer, when the sun is an oppressor, ruthless and joying in pain, when the earth is dead with heat and dryness and the very air forbears to take a freedom I When they came down the slopes beyond the crest, the flanks and rumps of ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... to be friendly to the cause of liberty, who had suffered by the hands, or were pursued by the suspicions of Zamano, and who, it was naturally supposed, would be eagerly alive to every opportunity of shaking off the rule of the oppressor. But patriotism, as a philosophic sentiment, to be indulged after a good dinner, and discussed phlegmatically, if not classically, over sherry and cigars, is a very different sort of thing from patriotism as a principle of action, to be prosecuted as a duty, at every peril, instantly ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... linger, unhappy, Pining, and haunting the grave of their by-gone hope and endeavor? All declamation, alas! though I talk, I care not for Rome, nor Italy; feebly and faintly, and but with the lips, can lament the Wreck of the Lombard youth and the victory of the oppressor. Whither depart the brave?—God knows; I ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... great Lordships, taking a resolution the most favourable upon the said request, have discovered thereby, that they would not abandon the footsteps of their ancestors, who found, in the united sentiments of magistrates and citizens, the resources necessary to resist a powerful oppressor, who even would not have undertaken that difficult, but glorious task, if they had not been supported by the voice of the most respectable part ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... thrilling clamour of soul-stirring melody, at once short and sharp and long-drawn, at once soft as a mother's lullaby and savage as a hungry tiger's roar. It was the song of the world, the Marseillaise, the song that rises in every land when the oppressed rise against the oppressor, the song that breathes of wrongs to be revenged and of liberty to be won, of flying foes in front and a free people marching, and of blood shed like water for the idea that makes all nations kin. The hand of a master struck the keys and brought the ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... that Balloon is an oppressor of the poor. Give me the pearl, and this knife shall go with the camel, also this piece of blue carpet—a noble offer, my brother; where will you find ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... none daring to lend assistance to the unfortunate; not considering, that property should ever be under the protection of law; and, what was Edward's case to-day, might be that of any other man to-morrow. But the oppressor kept fair with the crown, and the crown held a rod of iron over the people.—Suffer me to tell the mournful tale from Dugdale's Antiquities ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton
... case of Naples. After quoting with approval the view taken by Vattel of the lawfulness of the assistance given by the United Provinces to the Prince of Orange, and his conclusion that it is justifiable to assist patriots revolting against an oppressor for "good reasons," he stated that the question was whether the people of Naples and of the Roman States took up arms against their Government for good reasons; and of this matter, he added, the people ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria
... of being accused of lacking patriotism, because I have undertaken to write the life of a woman who is not a German, who was the wife of Germany's greatest enemy and oppressor. It is, indeed, a portion of the universal drama which is unfolded in the life of this woman, and amid so much blood, so much dishonor, so many tears, so much humiliation, so much pride, arrogance, and treachery, of this ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... whether exercised by God or man—whether the oppressor be that murderous, stupid, treacherous, tyrannical bully in the Old Testament, miscalled God, or whether the oppressor be the proletariat which screamed for the blood of ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... Mr. Harcourt did not at the same time tell the House of an authentic case where an aggrieved party ever sued for redress with the consent and advice of his oppressor. In this connexion, the scope of our reading being limited, our ignorance is possibly abysmal; but it must be confessed that we have never heard of such an interesting appellant and we are inclined to believe that there ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... "oppression driveth a wise man mad." The feeling a man has that he has been wickedly, cruelly treated, excites his mind so painfully and violently, that it is impossible for him to think well of the character or views of his oppressor, or of any party, institution, or system with which he ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the lives of millions who have fallen by the sword, 'They perished for my glory'? That day will come on, and one like it is immediately approaching: injured nations advance towards thy habitation: vengeance has begun its march, which is to be diverted only by the penitence of the oppressor. Awake, O monarch, from thy lethargy! Disdain the abuses thou hast received: pull down the statue which calls thee immortal: be truly great: tear thy purple, ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... eternal. Its fight is chiefly against the inner, not the outer foe—against sin and wrong-doing, impatience, strife, anger, clamor, meanness, evil-speaking, wrath. It is the foe of tyranny and its heel is upon the head of the oppressor and the avenger. Its banner flies over every country and has been carried through tribulation, through sorrow, through danger, and through death to the remotest parts of the yet-known world. Its troops are legion, marching from the far distances of the past, ...
— The Warriors • Lindsay, Anna Robertson Brown
... said, had organizations extending from Canada to Louisiana, by means of which information could be communicated throughout the South, when the blow for freedom was to be struck. Philanthropic white men were expected to take sides against the oppressor, while those occupying neutral ground would offer no resistance to the passage of forces from Canada and Ohio to Virginia and Kentucky. Once upon slave territory, they imagined the work of emancipation ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... be: this day, this hour, Annihilates the oppressor's power All Switzerland is in the field, She will not fly, she can not yield; Few were the numbers she could boast, But every freeman was a host, And felt as though himself were he On whose sole arm ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... Under anarchy progress was at an end. The individual must give up something of his rights to the state and the community. He gave up a certain amount of liberty, but received therefor an equivalent in protection. The law was, therefore, no oppressor, no monster, no usurer, no austere being, reaping where it had not sown. The law was nothing to be dreaded, nothing to be feared; and, upon the other hand, it was ...
— Heart's Desire • Emerson Hough
... children of the chosen race Shall carry and bring them to their place: In the land of the Lord shall lead the same, Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame, When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o'er The oppressor triumph for evermore! ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... flavor auditor juror favor tumor editor vigor actor author conductor savior visitor elevator parlor ancestor captor creditor victor error proprietor arbor chancellor debtor doctor instructor successor rigor senator suitor traitor donor inventor odor conqueror senior tenor tremor bachelor junior oppressor possessor liquor surveyor vapor governor languor professor spectator competitor candor harbor meteor orator rumor splendor elector executor factor generator impostor innovator investor legislator narrator navigator numerator operator originator perpetrator personator ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... any land the oppressor doth alight, There's nothing left for those, that dwell therein, ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume III • Anonymous
... suddenly found these latter on an equal footing with him, and he felt that this did not compensate the lifting from his shoulders of the Turkish burden. Then, too, when a race has been long oppressed and downtrodden, and suddenly finds itself on an equality with its oppressor, it is apt to become arrogant and overbearing. This is exactly what happened, and there was bad feeling on all sides in consequence. However, real fundamental justice is appreciated the world over, once the native has been educated ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... out at a window and cried through the lattice, Why is his chariot so long in coming? Why tarry the wheels of his chariots? [O day of triumph! Methinks the mother of Sisera, anticipating the fruits of victory, and the final subjection of all Israel to their oppressor's yoke, stood at her window, chiding the tardy moments, and impatiently exclaiming from behind the lattice-work, Why is the chariot of our victorious general so long in returning? Whence this painful delay? Hasten, ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. I • Francis Augustus Cox
... flag of freedom, to bless the patriot's sword. Be it for the defence, or be it for the assertion of a nation's liberty, I look upon the sword as a sacred weapon. And if it has sometimes reddened the shroud of the oppressor; like the anointed rod of the High Priest it has, at other times, blossomed into flowers to deck the freeman's brow. Abhor the sword and stigmatize the sword? No; for in the cragged passes of the Tyrol it cut in pieces the banner of the Bavarian, and won an immortality for the peasant of Innspruck. ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke
... only a tool in the hands of my persecutor, I know, from your own confession, and I understand your motive better in the last few moments than I did before (inadequate as it seems to my sense of justice), for aiding this oppressor. You have been very kind to me in some respects; an inferior person could have tortured in a thousand ways, where you have shown yourself considerate, delicate even, and for all this I thank you more than I can express. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... judgments seen by an eye of faith as set forth in this "Warning," soon fell with crushing weight upon the oppressor, and Slavery died. But the old blind father of Jackson, Isaac and Edmondson, still lives and may be seen daily on the streets of Philadelphia; and though "halt, and lame, and blind, and poor," doubtless resulting from his early oppression, he can thank God and ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... could no more have changed them than he could have changed the color of his eyes or the shape of his nose; and the difference between a common lawyer and a "lord," in his eyes, would only have been the difference between a little oppressor ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... that lemon, our African brother, juicy as he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the "damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed Be Canaan." I howled feelingly on the subject while it was a living issue, for I felt all that I said and ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... this new turn of events of a more general and more profound character than the personal woes of Flemish princes. James de Chiltillon, the governor assigned by Philip the Handsome to Flanders, was a greedy oppressor of it; the municipal authorities whom the victories or the gold of Philip had demoralized became the objects of popular hatred; and there was an outburst of violent sedition. A simple weaver, obscure, poor, undersized, and one-eyed, but valiant, and eloquent in ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... could find nothing but disgust with both: for he did not hold that the baseness of the oppressed was any excuse for that of the oppressor. Only too frequently had he met at the Stevens' types of the rich dull ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... all the ties of human brotherhood; when uniformity of faith was to be purchased by the sacrifice of any rights, even those of intellectual freedom; when, in fine, the Christian and the Mussulman, the oppressor and the oppressed, were to be alike bowed down under the strong arm of ecclesiastical tyranny. The means by which a revolution so disastrous to Spain was effected, as well as the incipient stages of its progress, are topics that fall within the ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... that fine spirit of his which had ever prompted him to defend the weak against the oppressor, stirred him now, and stirred him to such purpose that, in the end, from taking up the burden of his task reluctantly, he came to bear it zestfully and almost gladly. He was rejoiced to discover himself equipped with histrionic gifts of which he had had no suspicion hitherto, ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... good, O'Brien, very good! Well, I shall certainly inquire into this case, and if I find that Yellow Ham has been playing the oppressor, out he goes. I am now able to manage him, which I could not readily do before, for, by the by, he ...
— The Poor Scholar - Traits And Stories Of The Irish Peasantry, The Works of - William Carleton, Volume Three • William Carleton
... works, especially historical novels. And most people of modern, or rather of very recent times got all their notions of history from dipping into historical novels. In those romances the Jew is always the oppressed where in reality he was often the oppressor. In those romances the Arab is always credited with oriental dignity and courtesy and never with oriental crookedness and cruelty. The same injustice is introduced into history, which by means of selection and omission can be made as fictitious as any fiction. Twenty historians mention the ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton
... was no gladness in it-no happiness. And there was the captive, the victim of foul slavery-so foul that hell yearns for its abettors-whose deliverance she prayed for with her earnest soul. She knew the oppressor's grasp-she had, with womanly pride, come forward to relieve the wronged, and she had become sensible of the ties binding her to Clotilda. Unlike too many of her sex, she did not suppress her natural affections; she could not see only the slave in a disowned sister; she acknowledged ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... house." "If your ancestors and your ancient house be all that you can bring in your defence, you may go the same road as he," said one of the devils, "because we can scarcely remember one ancient house, of which some oppressor, murderer, or strong thief did not lay the foundation, and which he did not transmit to people as froward as himself, or to lazy drones, or drunken swine, to maintain whose extravagant magnificence, the vassals and the tenantry must be squeezed to death, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... 'onour to-night to introduce to you one whose name is, as the saying goes, a nouse'old word. It is thanks to 'im, to this 'ero whom I 'ave the 'onour to introduce to you to-night, that our beloved England no longer writhes beneath the ruthless 'eel of the alien oppressor. It was this 'ero's genius—and, I may say—er—I may say genius—that, unaided, 'it upon the only way for removing the cruel conqueror from our beloved 'earths and 'omes. It was this 'ero who, 'aving first allowed the invaders to claw each other to 'ash (if ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse |
