"Ascendency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... because the thing is good, or kind, or honest in its own right, is to resign all moral control and captaincy upon yourself, and go post-haste to the devil with the greater number. We smile over the ascendency of priests; but I had rather follow a priest than what they call the leaders of society. No life can better than that of Pepys illustrate the dangers of this respectable theory of living. For what can be more untoward than the occurrence, at a critical ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... mother told me she thought it the result of an early determination to curb the demonstrations of an impetuous temper and passionate feelings. It had become her second nature when I knew her, however, and contributed not a little to the immense ascendency she soon acquired over my vehement and stormy character. She charmed me into absolute submission to her will and wishes, and I all but ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... the "portions" thus enumerated include practically sovereign nation states like Canada, provinces like those of the South African Union, with little more than county council powers, and stray survivals, like the Isle of Man, of an earlier system of government, based on the same principle of ascendency and interference as the government of Ireland under Poynings's Act, it is difficult to know which to admire most, Mr. Redmond's assurance, or his cynical appreciation of the ignorance or capacity for deliberate self-deception of those with whom he has ...
— Against Home Rule (1912) - The Case for the Union • Various
... adventurous schemes for the exploitation of my notorious fiasco. I could not on any account consent to adopt any of these, and was glad to find this really capable man safe under the eagle-wing of Liszt's 'ascendency.' Liszt took him everywhere where there was a possibility of a fortune being found. Whether this helped him into anything or not, I never knew. I only heard that he died a short time afterwards, certainly not from ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... sources of popular strength to him. People were strongly drawn to him. His friends were devoted to him. He had that quality, which we vaguely term magnetic, the quality of attaching others to us, and maintaining over them the ascendency of our ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... was the recognised leader and over whom his ability in the various arts and crafts of the farm, his physical prowess in sports, his gay, cheery manner, and, it must be said, the reputation he bore for a certain fierce brute courage in rough-and-tumble fighting, gave him a sort of ascendency. ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... for making me doubt of the justice of the part I have taken, yet, until I have other lights than one side of the debate has furnished me, I must see things, and feel them too, as I see and feel them. I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendency, as they affect Ireland,—or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia,—or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil. But it readily combines with the others, and flows ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... the summer of the following year had no better result. Pisacane, a son of the Duke Gennaro di San Giovanni of Naples, had fought in the defence of Rome and was a firm adherent of Mazzini, in conjunction with whom he planned his unlucky venture. Pisacane watched the growing ascendency of Piedmont with sorrow; he was one of the few, if not the only one of his party to say that he would as soon have the dominion of Austria as that of the House of Savoy. But if he was an extremist in politics, none the less ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... Shantung, is likely, in the long run, to prove unfortunate, since it will make America less willing to oppose Japan. For reasons which I set forth in Chap. X., unless China becomes strong, either the collapse of Japan or her unquestioned ascendency in the Far East is almost certain to prove disastrous to China; and one or other of these is very likely to come about. All the Great Powers, without exception, have interests which are incompatible, in the long run, with China's welfare and ...
— The Problem of China • Bertrand Russell
... broke into a giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency of a coarse-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him, as—figuratively as well as physically—she posed for Bentley. To the artist ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... a momentous act. So great was the ascendency of the woman over her lover that from the start he became a mere tool in her hands and ruled the empire in accordance with her views. Her first act was one that showed her merciless strength of purpose. Fearing that the warm love of Kaotsong might in time grow cold, and that the deposed ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of America, for the most part peopled by savages, offered little save the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, and these were monopolized jealously by the Spaniards—not a commercial nation—during their long ascendency. Being so very far from England and affording so little material for trade, Pacific America did not draw the enterprise of a country the chief and honorable inducement of whose seamen was the hope of gain, in pursuit of ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... Great Britain. The value of Oregon was not to be measured by the extent of its seacoast nor by the quality of its soil. "The great point at issue between us and Great Britain is for the freedom of the Pacific Ocean, for the trade of China and Japan, of the East Indies, and for the maritime ascendency on all these waters." Oregon held a strategic position on the Pacific, controlling the overland route between the Atlantic and the Orient. If this country were yielded to Great Britain—"this power which holds control over ...
— Stephen A. Douglas - A Study in American Politics • Allen Johnson
... has not shown the world that she may, indeed, do what she pleases among the nations, so long as her pleasure is regulated and supported by her accustomed sagacity and spirit? She has, however, recently had to pass through an awful ordeal, principally occasioned by the brief ascendency of incompetent councils; and while expressing, in terms of transport, our conviction that, "out of this nettle danger, we have plucked the flower safety"—we cannot repress our feelings of indignation against those who precipitated us into that danger, and of gratitude ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... had been gratifying to his raw ambition; but as his self-knowledge defined itself, his understanding of her also increased; and if man is at times indirectly flattered by the moral superiority of woman, her mental ascendency is extenuated by no such oblique tribute to his powers. The attitude of looking up is a strain on the muscles; and it was becoming more and more Glennard's opinion that brains, in a woman, should be merely the obverse of beauty. To beauty Mrs. Aubyn could lay no claim; ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... which only strength of purpose or the most favorable conditions of life could balance and overcome. With the elder Booth, subjected to the varying fortunes and excitements of the early American stage, the evil influence gained sad ascendency, and his finest renditions grew "out of tune and harsh." In depicting the pathetic frenzy of Lear, such actors as he and Kean, when at their best, can surpass all rivals; and the grotesque, darkly-powerful ideals of Richard and Shylock are precisely those in which they will startle us to the last, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... by no means incapable of swaying him. To accomplish his object Ahab must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... that the fundamental expression of photography is in black and white, and as we develop what I would call the definite photographic quality, black and white will maintain its present ascendency." ...
— Pictorial Photography in America 1921 • Pictorial Photographers of America
... a dead silence! Crawley returned to their old relation, and was cowed by the natural ascendency of the greater spirit. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... of the poet, indeed the poetry itself, can be rendered with better results, than by striving to sustain the poetic form. The poem would be regarded as happy and affecting in the thought that is in it, the images in which the ideas gleam, the pathos of resignation, the ascendency of hope, if there were nothing in the attendant circumstances that marked it with the blood of historic tragedy. This poetry that it would have been high treason to own in Manila, for it would not have been safe in any drawer however secret, was treasured by the relatives of the martyr ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... hardly qualified by any superior genius to assume the ascendency in the councils of his own and neighboring nations, which common rumor has for some years attributed to him. He appeared to me, in the short intercourse I had with him, little superior to the common run of continental ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... survive until morning. An hour before day, however, the wounded man revived, in a way that the surgeon distrusted. He knew that no physical change of this sort could well happen that did not arise from the momentary ascendency of mind over matter, as the spirit is on the point of finally abandoning its earthly tenement; a circumstance of no unusual occurrence in patients of strong and active intellectual properties, whose faculties often brighten for an instant, in ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... place in the chevalier's mind. All the poetry disappeared, as a machinist's whistle causes the disappearance of a fairy palace. Everything was seen by a different light. D'Harmental's native aristocracy regained the ascendency. Bathilde was then nothing but the daughter of this man—that is to say, a grisette: her beauty, her grace, her elegance, even her talents, were but an accident—an error of nature—something like a rose flowering on a cabbage-stalk. The chevalier shrugged ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... in the situation which was of greater local importance. The British Prime Minister had perceived that the conclusion of hostilities might soon bring with it the break-up of the political bloc upon which he was depending for his personal ascendency, and that the domestic difficulties which would be attendant on demobilization, the turn-over of industry from war to peace conditions, the financial situation, and the general psychological reactions of men's minds, would provide his enemies with powerful weapons, if he were ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes
... himself as to his chosen director. Here in the monastery, besides the feeling of ascendency over others that such a life gave him, he felt much as he had done in the world: he found satisfaction in attaining the greatest possible perfection outwardly as well as inwardly. As in the regiment ...
— Father Sergius • Leo Tolstoy
... his ascendency, which was too apparent, and had been too often exerted on similar occasions, to leave him in any doubt of its extent, Ishmael coolly continued the discourse, by adverting more ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Missouri Compromise had been repealed, trouble in Kansas had reached its height, the Know Nothing party was at its zenith, the Whigs were demoralized and the Free Soilers were gaining the ascendency. This anti-Nebraska meeting at Saratoga may be said to have witnessed the birth of the Republican party. It possessed an additional interest for Miss Anthony, who attended all its sessions, from the fact that her brother, Daniel ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... unsparing, flattering, cajoling, remorseless Hiram. So she stopped quarrelling, and yielded. Then, how charming was our hero! Amiable, kind, desirous to please, yet despotic to an extent: never yielding the power and ascendency he ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... chill passed over him, as it had done at the Jew's first charge—not doubt; such heresy to his creeds, such shame to his comrade and his corps could not be in him; but a vague dread hushed his impetuous vehemence. The dignity of the old Lyonnesse blood asserted its ascendency. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... 1744, Swift in 1745. During their last years there were signs that the literary modes of the epoch of Queen Anne, which had maintained their ascendency so long, were rapidly losing their hold on the popular mind. A new literary period was about to open wherein new literary ideals and new models would prevail. Satire, in common with literature as a whole, felt the influence of the transitional era. As we have seen, it concerned itself ...
— English Satires • Various
... more than the natural hesitancy which he would at once overcome by force of passion. There was something terrible to him in the disclosure of a quiet force of will equal to his own. Frustration of desire joined with irritated instincts of ascendency to agitate him almost ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... There is a physical courage, brilliant as a shock of armies, which feels the conflict and leaps to it as the storm-waves leap upon the sword edges of the cliffs—a courage which counts no odds. There is another courage, moral rather than physical. Valjean possessed both, with moral courage in ascendency. He has the agility and strength sometimes found in criminals. He is now in the galleys for life. One day, while engaged in furling sail, a sailor has toppled from the yard; but in falling caught a rope, but hangs, ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... fight against his evil star, dissatisfied at the prospect of tilling the soil, with his useless sword by his side. He was endowed with the shrewdness that gives the men of the south of France a certain ascendency when energy goes with it. Almost unaided, he made a position for himself near the fountain of power. The revolution brought a reverse of fortune, but he had managed to marry an heiress of good family, and, in the time of the Empire, appeared to be on the point of restoring ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... 1688, they had dictated the policy of the English government, and through wise leaders had become supreme in authority. They were particularly obnoxious to him because of their republican spirit, and he regarded their ascendency as a constant menace to his kingly power. Fortune seemed to favor him in the dissensions which arose. There grew up two factions in the Whig party. There were old Whigs and new Whigs. George played one against the ...
— Burke's Speech on Conciliation with America • Edmund Burke
... and I assure you she has completely redeemed her fault. The struggle was a very severe one to subdue the depression she had encouraged so long; but she has nobly conquered, and I do not fear such feelings of discontent ever again obtaining too great an ascendency. ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume I. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes. • Grace Aguilar
... regains his self-possession and is able to deliver himself of his customary oaths. He admits with Massena that this little devil of a general has inspired him with awe; he cannot understand the ascendency by which from the very first he has felt ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... been assumed," he said, "that this war will end in the ascendency of the views of one or the other of the extremes in our country. Neither will prevail. This is the significance of the late elections. The determination of the great Central and Western States is to defend the rights of the States, the rights ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... returned to Stephen. That young gentleman had felt his belief in Pembury's authority somewhat shaken by this unusual mode of punishment, but the Fifth Form boy soon reassumed his ascendency. He produced from his pocket a paper, and thus addressed Stephen: "Dr Senior regrets that he should be absent at such an important time in the history of Saint Dominic's as the day of your arrival, Master Greenfield, but ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... heard most frequently in the conversation of the French envoys, viz. sacre, Paris, and l'Empereur. That the Persian Court was thoroughly alive to the jealous and interested struggle of the two Powers, England and France, to acquire political ascendency at Tehran, is sufficiently evident from the history of the period, but is admirably illustrated by the diplomatic argument placed in chapter lxxvi in the mouth of Fath Ali Shah. Finally, can a pupil of Party Government, and much more a member of the House of Commons, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... should be so, and as long as war was waged in the name of religion, as long as the Koran and the sword went hand in hand together, the two professions were not incompatible; but when Islamism had gained undisputed ascendency, there arose an obvious discrepancy between the peaceful adoration of Allah and the settlements of disputes between man and man. Priest and jurist, each had distinct and qualified duties to perform. Before justice can be administered properly the religious and legal professions must be separated; ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... at the present day, with the people in ascendency, what is more probable than the perfect development of the art which most appeals to their tastes? Every day, artists of the highest intelligence find in illustration an opportunity to give the best that is in them, and the chances that illustration will reach the heights of perfection attained ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... have reason to be astonished at the facility with which the human mind can be modified and made to pass from one extreme to another; at the suddenness, in short, with which the ideas and manners of the French were changed; so powerful, on the one hand, is the ascendency of certain imaginations; and, on the other, so great is the weakness of ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... and superstition of the middle age, must be attributed the powerful ascendency which the Gypsies obtained over the minds of men. In addition to the chiromantic deception, practised by the women, they followed also the profession of exorcism; and were greatly in request during the prevalence of ...
— A Historical Survey of the Customs, Habits, & Present State of the Gypsies • John Hoyland
... in the year following the production of 'Julius Caesar,' he finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and reputation. This new exhibition of the force of his genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the adult actors who interpreted his work, and the boys' supremacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 Shakespeare produced 'Hamlet,' 'that piece of his which most kindled English hearts.' The story of the Prince of Denmark had been popular on the stage as early ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... gracefulness whose harmony was a portion of her being. She looked even younger than she really was, and her dress, though simple, was always tasteful and attractive, for her reverence for the beautiful extended even to common trifles, and all about her bespoke the elevating presence of intellectual ascendency. The glance that once dwelt on her returned to her face instinctively—so much of thought and feeling, of womanhood in its faculty to love and hope, of affection in its power to endure and triumph, so much of genius in ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various
... Its population is composed of a great number of tribes, without any common feelings or interest, and often engaged in desperate wars and conflicts with each other. The two leading tribes—the Ghilzais and Duranees—had long struggled for ascendency in the cultivated portion of the country. For a long period the Ghilzais had had the supremacy, but the Duranees were now lords ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... had time since to think the matter over calmly. You acted under the pressure of intense excitement, I concluded, and pride, which was always your besetting sin, mother; and that gained the ascendency over you to the extent that you would rather have seen Jessie in a prison cell, though she was innocent, than see her ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... me again. His manner now was changed. The wildness and despair had left it. He was his old, cool, collected self. He was in the sort of mood when he always had an ascendency over me—the sort of mood when he showed that wonderful business faculty for which I could ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade
... is bringing the Jews to the front in America as well as in Europe," said a traveler to one of that race; "and it has gained for them an ascendency, at least in certain branches of trade, from which nothing will ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... Prince of all Ulster. Now the Hy-Nial family, not only had long given monarchs to all Ireland, but had also the lion's share of their own Province, and King Donald as their head could not permit their ascendency to be disputed. The ancestors of the present pretender, Congal, surnamed "the squint-eyed," had twice received and cherished the licentious Bards when under the ban of Tara, and his popularity with ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... they grew in culture. In some cases we may refer this local character to nationality and geographical position. Thus the name of the Lombards has been given to a style of Romanesque, which prevailed through Northern and Central Italy during the period of Lombard ascendency.[10] The Tuscans never forgot the domes of their remote ancestors; the Romans adhered closely to Latin traditions; the Southerners were affected by Byzantine and Saracenic models. In many instances the geology of the neighbourhood determined the picturesque features of its architecture. ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... Abbot of Lerins, and afterwards as Bishop of Arles, his pupil and kinsman S. Hilary, to whom we owe the admirable biography of his master. Hilary was celebrated for his graceful eloquence, his unwearied zeal, his tender sympathy with all forms of suffering, his ascendency over a crowd, and by the numerous conversions which he worked. But, indeed Lerins was a hive whence swarmed forth the teachers and apostles of Southern Gaul. Hence came the modest Vincent of Lerins, the first controversialist ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... governed seriously at heart. On the whole, setting aside the wholesale cruelty which has unhappily too often distinguished such governmental triumphs on the part of the Chinese, and to which, indeed, the unlucky people seem liable whichever party may happen to gain the ascendency, the preferable conclusion would seem to be that resubmission to native authority is perhaps the mildest fate that can be desired for those subjects of China whose country has unfortunately been the scene of civil war. ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... This singular fabric was partly the result of circumstances, partly the invention of some unknown individual in prehistoric times, whose ideal of education was military discipline, and who, by the ascendency of his genius, made a small tribe into a nation which became famous in the world's history. The other Hellenes wondered at the strength and stability of his work. The rest of Hellas, says Thucydides, undertook the colonisation of Heraclea the more readily, having a feeling of security now that they ...
— Laws • Plato
... once to a show of physical ascendency, murmuring, "It's sure he was seen kissin' of her twice, and mayhap more; and hearty smacks of the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... to some other "adviser," whose interests will be damaged if the advice of Number One goes through. It is a tremendous game, each foreign power striving to cut the ground from under the next foreign power and to gain the ascendency for itself. Diplomatic Peking is a great, silent battle-ground; on the surface Oriental politeness and suave political courtesies but underneath a seething ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... still more calamitous to human liberty, was a wicked confederacy, between the two systems of tyranny above described.—It seems to have been even stipulated between them, that the temporal grandees should contribute every thing in their power to maintain the ascendency of the priesthood; and that the spiritual grandees, in, their turn, should employ that ascendency over the consciences of the people, in impressing on their minds, a blind, ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... superior adaptation to this end, under the blessing of God, for its success and usefulness. If it shall be found on trial to be a superior instrument of piety and virtue, it will doubtless meet with favor and do good. The ascendency of practical religion is not so general or complete, that any additional help for its promotion ...
— The New Testament • Various
... Niger, and on entering the kingdom of Nyffe, beheld proofs of the effects of civil war. Two princes had struggled for the ascendency, one of whom, by obtaining the help of the Fellatahs, had overcome the other. As Clapperton travelled towards the camp of the conqueror, he saw nothing but ruined villages, and plantations overgrown with weeds. "This African ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... once. "What good will all the songs of the world do to a man when he comes to his death-bed? I would rather, this very moment, sit down in a public-house, and drink till I was intoxicated, than screech and howl these worldly airs." Life was not so absurd in the days of the Catholic ascendency. But human nature is slowly asserting itself, and the days of the glum tyrannical zealot ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... the New World; and now that christianity and civilization were beginning to bud with springtime loveliness like the Castilian roses he had planted in some of the mission gardens, while the sun of Spanish glory was still in the ascendency and no threatening omens of the fall of Spanish or Franciscan power, or nightmares of the Acts of Secularization disturbed the cloudless skies, while the Presidio Real of Monterey bore the arms of the Spanish King and ...
— Chimes of Mission Bells • Maria Antonia Field
... an early period of its history, and has been assailed continuously down to the present time, by a power called democracy, and that this power has been constantly acquiring influence and gaining ascendency in the republic during the term of its history."—(A Voice from America to England, by ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... into the background, there has been a time previous when the judgment might have held control. Let every young man and woman be most scrupulously careful how he allows emotional excitement to gain the ascendency. When once reason is stifled, the individual is in a most precarious situation. It is far better and easier to prevent the danger than ...
— Plain Facts for Old and Young • John Harvey Kellogg
... paralyse and defeat all your efforts to get at emancipation, and to prepare for it. It is on this account, that I wish it settled in your minds, as a fixed and immutable principle, that there is and can be no property of man in man. Adopt this principle, and give it that ascendency over your minds to which it is entitled;—and slavery is swept away.—Speech of Rev. Dr ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... himself sobered and made better by the moonlight tranquillity of his friend. It is one mark of a superior mind to understand and be influenced by the superiority of others; and this was the case with James. The ascendency which his new friend acquired over him was unlimited, and did more in a month towards consolidating and developing his character than all the four years' course of a college. Our religious habits are likely always to retain the impression of the first seal which stamped them, and in this case it ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... delight with which poor "Margaret" contemplates the trinkets presented by her lover; the baleful ascendency acquired over her by her female companion; and her rapid descent in the path of evil when, as is ever the case, the commission of one sin entails so many, render this drama a very effective ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... was his character. He possessed a certain combination of mental and personal attractions, which in every age gives to those who exhibit it a mysterious and almost unbounded ascendency over all within their influence. Alexander was characterized by these qualities in a very remarkable degree. He was finely formed in person, and very prepossessing in his manners. He was active, athletic, and full of ardor and enthusiasm in all that he did. At the same time, he was calm, collected, ...
— Alexander the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... athletic recreations of the time, and was especially famous for his skill, and courage, and power as a hunter. He gave every indication, in a word, at this early age, of possessing that uncommon combination of mental and personal qualities which fits those who possess it to secure and maintain a great ascendency among mankind. ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... deobligatus at the same time. But perhaps the most remarkable instance of Mr. Masson's figures of speech is where we are told that the king might have established a bona fide government "by giving public ascendency to the popular or Parliamentary element in his Council, and inducing the old leaven in it either to accept the new policy, or to withdraw and become inactive." There is something consoling in the thought that yeast should be accessible to moral suasion. It is really too bad that bread should ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... was one of the middle-class crowd in his heart, and only rose above it by splendid attainments and extraordinary gifts of expression. He had none of that ambition which inflames some hardy men, to make new beliefs and new passions enter the minds of their neighbours; his ascendency is due to literary pomp, not to fecundity of spirit. No one has ever surpassed him in the art of combining resolute and ostentatious common sense of a slightly coarse sort in choosing his point of view, with so considerable an appearance of dignity and elevation in setting it forth and impressing ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3) - Essay 4: Macaulay • John Morley
... essentially radical and even revolutionary, imbued with a profound faith in abstract principles leading far beyond universal suffrage to, if not across the verge of communism, by the danger which he foresaw to individual liberty and unfettered intellectual freedom from the ascendency of mere numbers. Upon this point he agreed closely with Tocqueville, though upon nearly every other their views were as opposite as their character and experience; and their teaching has been fully confirmed by the ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... sufficiently insisted on, that if in the actual course of that education, of which enlightened obedience to the 'law of virtue,' as Butler expresses it, or, which is the same thing, to the dictates of supreme wisdom and goodness, is the great end, we give an unchecked ascendency to either Reason or Faith, we vitiate the whole process. The chief instrument by which that process is carried on is not Reason alone, or Faith alone, but their well-balanced and reciprocal interaction. It is a system of alternate checks and limitations, in which Reason ...
— Reason and Faith; Their Claims and Conflicts • Henry Rogers
... indulged his disposition to petulance and sarcasm, and thought himself injured if the licentiousness of his raillery, the freedom of his censures, or the petulance of his frolicks was resented or repressed. He predominated over his companions with very high ascendency, and, probably, would bear none over whom he could not predominate. To give him advice was, in the style of his friend Delany, "to venture to speak to him." This customary superiority soon grew too delicate for truth; and Swift, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... the well-known and well-merited compliment, that "it contained the ablest expositions of the true principles of finance ever delivered by an English statesman." Since that memorable defeat, Disraeli has lost no opportunity of attacking the member for Oxford University. To weaken his wonderful ascendency over the House has seemed to be the wish nearest his heart, and the signal failure which has thus far attended all his efforts only gives a keener edge to his sarcasm and increases the bitterness of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... write, my heart is breaking for us both. If I knew how, I would soften what I must say. Storri has gained some fearful ascendency over papa. Never have I seen papa look so gray and worn and old as when he came to me. He tells me that his safety, his life, depend on me. I am not to see you for a while. He says that if we meet it will mean ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... become quite handmaids of superstition, so that they, especially the youngest, were prepared to bow down to anything, and kiss anything, however vile and ugly, provided a priest commanded them; and as for the old governor, what with the influence which his daughters exerted, and what with the ascendency which the red-haired man had obtained over him, he dared not say his purse, far less his soul, was his own. Only think of an Englishman not being master of his own purse! My acquaintance, the lady's maid, assured me that, to her certain knowledge, he had disbursed ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... rage against, and scorn for, any person who by his courage and talents has advanced himself in life, and still remains poor, are indescribable; "he is no better than ourselves," they say, "why should he be above us?"—for they have no conception that anybody has a right to ascendency over themselves except by birth or money. This feeling amongst the vulgar has been, to a certain extent, the bane of two services, naval and military. The writer does not make this assertion rashly; he observed this feeling at work in the army when a child, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... the Puritans Petition of Right Reforms The Parliament Contest between the King and Parliament War and Revolution Characteristics of the Age Rise of Cromwell His military genius Battle of Naseby Of Preston Conquest of Scotland Execution of Charles I. A war measure The Independents gain ascendency Conquest of Ireland Cromwell made Protector of the army Military despotism Motives of Cromwell His great abilities as a ruler His services to England Greatness of England under Cromwell Cromwell contrasted with Louis XIV. ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VIII • John Lord
... all the world. He was happy and wanted everybody else to be happy—it was apparent in himself and in his work. In his dreamy moods his fancy spread a broader, a stronger wing, and soared with new daring to heights unexplored before. When Edgar Goodfellow was in the ascendency he threw himself with unwonted zest into the pleasures that were "like poppies spread" in the way of the successful author and editor—the literary ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... Population. English Fur-Traders. Celoron on the Alleghany. His Reception. His Difficulties. Descent of the Ohio. Covert Hostility. Ascent of the Miami. La Demoiselle. Dark Prospects for France. Christopher Gist. George Croghan. Their Western Mission. Pickawillany. English Ascendency. English Dissension and Rivalry. The ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... narrow belt of calm, broken into momentarily by an eddying puff of wind, now warm, as the trade-wind got slightly the better of the land-breeze, and anon cool, refreshing, and odoriferous with the perfume of a thousand flowers, as the land-breeze regained the ascendency and pushed forward in its turn on the domain of the trade- wind. Mr Reid availed himself of the opportunity afforded by our passage across this narrow belt of calm to rally the rest of the boats round the launch for a moment, in order to explain the object of the expedition, and to give a few brief ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... to remain unsettled whilst they consulted about this unexpected apparition. The senior alderman, a patrician, who was particularly expert in deciphering the meaning of the signs which occasionally appeared in the political horizon, and had thereby obtained a powerful ascendency in the council, pressed his fat chin into furrows, and his narrow brow into wrinkles, and, with reflection in his little eyes, assured his sapient brethren that "This distinguished stranger was nothing else than a secret envoy of his imperial majesty, ...
— Faustus - his Life, Death, and Doom • Friedrich Maximilian von Klinger
... rash young man, to control the affairs of the commonwealth, as he had previously controlled them, with a show of burgherlike equality, but with the reality of princely power. Another of his sons, Giovanni, received the honor of the Cardinalship. The one was destined to compromise the ascendency of his family in Florence for a period of eighteen years, the other was destined to re-establish that ascendency on a new and more despotic basis. Piero had not his father's prudence, and could not maintain himself in the delicate position of a commercial ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... what to make of it. One thing was certain, however, and he could not help admitting it to himself, that, during their short and singular dialogue, she had, he knew not how, obtained and exercised an extraordinary ascendency over him. He looked after her, but she was proceeding calmly along, precisely as ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... that autumn-star. Probably Sirius, the Dog Star, under whose ascendency, according to ancient ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... table-land beyond the Turones and the Dos Casas, with his left at Fort Conception, and his right resting upon Fuentes d'Onoro. His position extended to about five miles; and here, although vastly inferior in numbers, yet relying upon the bravery of the troops, and the moral ascendency acquired by their pursuit of the enemy, he finally resolved upon ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... strange and peculiar personal ascendency she managed to exert with so little effort, an ascendency partly physical, no doubt; and the practice of it had begun in the West End emporium of ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... broke out, in which rencounters on the borders were, as usual, numerous, and with varied success. In some of these, the too famous Bothwell is said to have given proofs of his courage, which was at other times very questionable[19]. About this time the Scottish borderers seem to have acquired some ascendency over their southern neighbours.—Strype, Vol. III. p. 437—In 1559, peace was ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... and mind. He was quite as ardent in his advocacy of prompt State action as Wise. Having recently abandoned the presidency of the Peace Congress at Washington, in despair of obtaining concessions or guarantees of safety from the rampant powers then in the ascendency, he nevertheless believed, as did a majority of the statesmen of the South, that, even then, in the event of the secession of all the Southern States, presenting thus a united front, no war of great magnitude would ensue. I know better, ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... utmost perturbation to the alcalde and his companions, as might easily be seen, for they all at once started to their feet and burst into excited conversation. But, as is usual in such cases, there were two or three—of whom the alcalde was one—who soon obtained an ascendency over the rest, quieting them and themselves carrying on the discussion; and after some ten minutes of earnest debate the rest sat down, leaving the alcalde standing alone to propound ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... when seeking to find a reason for the seizure of Cuba,—even Spain, we say, could not be much moved by the prospect of Austria's reaching to that condition of vast strength which would necessarily follow from her undisputed ascendency in Italy. The lesser German States would probably have seen Austria's increase with pleasure, partly because it would have helped to remove their fears of France and Russia, and partly because it would have been flattering to their pride of race, the House of Austria being Germanic ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... prohibit the meetings, and somewhat tardily issued a Proclamation against that announced for Clontarf on 8th October. O'Connell accordingly disbanded the meeting, but his action did not please his more zealous supporters, and his ascendency came to an end. The agitation collapsed and ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria
... witness, for beyond any other man in Scotland Knox was its guide. And while the guidance of the great theological leaders of that generation tended naturally—and quite apart from their usurped statutory ascendency—to press too heavily upon the recovered freedom of Scotland, that danger was but little felt in those early days of enthusiasm in the High ...
— John Knox • A. Taylor Innes
... "The ascendency of the better man. In a rude State the better man is the stronger; in a corrupt State, perhaps the more roguish; in modern republics the jobbers get the money and the lawyers get the power. In well-ordered States alone aristocracy appears at its genuine worth: ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gone too far to withdraw without discredit. Having openly insulted the absent enemy, and having clearly revealed his intention to cheat him of this prize, to weaken now would be to abandon forever all hope of ascendency. For an instant he regretted what he had done, and cursed himself under his breath. Then, taking a new grip on himself, he ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... every trade was in motion, it did not take long to discover a common direction and a common purpose. This was expressed in city "trades' unions," or federations of all organized trades in a city, and in its ascendency over the individual ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... among the clerks in Madras a leader equal in military skill and energy to Dupleix himself. Robert Clive, who was but twenty-five years old at this time, organized a large force of Sepoys and gained a remarkable ascendency over them by his astonishing bravery. Dupleix paid no attention to the fact that peace had been declared in Europe at Aix-la-Chapelle, but continued to carry on his operations against the English. ...
— An Introduction to the History of Western Europe • James Harvey Robinson
... was her horoscope, cast by fate's oracle for her birthday fell under the sign of the scorpion when in the path of planets Venus contended with the Earth for first place of ascendency to the second ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... was one of those men who are born to exert a certain influence and ascendency wherever they may be thrown; his vast strength, his redundant health, had a power of themselves—a moral as well as physical power. He naturally possessed high animal spirits, beneath the surface of which, ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... them saying not a word except by way of unavoidable reply. Behind, Mrs. Banghurst listened to the admirably suitable and shapely conversation of the Dean with that fluttered attention to the ampler clergy ten years of social ascent and ascendency had not cured in her; and the Lady Mary watched, no doubt with an entire confidence in the world's disillusionment, the drooping shoulders of the sort of man ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... the Carnatic, between the English and French, fighting respectively on behalf of their puppets, Muhammud Ali and Chunda Sahib. This stage of the struggle was not a final one; but both by its circumstances, and by the prestige which we acquired in the eyes of the natives, it gave us a moral ascendency which, even when our fortunes were afterwards at their ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... uncle, Pepehi, an elderly chief, who had read omens in the entrails of sacrifice warning him to be discreet and guarded in his life or it would be taken from him by one related to him, and of greater power. He could not brook the thought of Kamehameha's ascendency, for he was a man used to deference, a man of weight and dignity, while this new-found prince was a boor. He therefore made himself unpleasant by criticisms and carpings, by false interpretations of signs, by implications ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... have placed at the head of this chapter, I intend to discuss the methods by which the teacher is to secure a moral ascendency over his pupils, so that he may lead them to do what is right, and bring them back to duty, when they do what is wrong. I shall use, in what I have to say, a very plain and familiar style; and as very much depends, not only on the general ...
— The Teacher - Or, Moral Influences Employed in the Instruction and - Government of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... expedition, Mr. Astor had been obliged to have recourse to British subjects experienced in the Canadian fur trade; henceforth it was his intention, as much as possible, to select Americans, so as to secure an ascendency of American influence in the management of the company, and ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving |
