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Democratic   Listen
adjective
Democratic  adj.  
1.
Pertaining to democracy; favoring democracy, or constructed upon the principle of government by the people.
2.
Belonging to or relating to the Democratic party, the political party so called.
3.
Befitting the common people; opposed to aristocratic.
The Democratic party, the name of one of the chief political parties in the United States. Note: Presidents of the United States who belonged to the Democratic party in the twentieth century were Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Democratic" Quotes from Famous Books



... to explain the situation to them. The result of this mission was that two delegates were chosen from each body in the field, who assembled at Vereeniging upon May 15th for the purpose of settling the question by vote. Never was a high matter of state decided in so democratic a fashion. ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to a one hundred percent American mammoth was inspired by "The Ultra-Democratic, Anti-Federalist Cheese of Cheshire." This was in the summer of 1801 when the patriotic people of Cheshire, Massachusetts, turned out en masse to concoct a mammoth cheese on the village green for presentation to their beloved President Jefferson. The unique demonstration occurred spontaneously ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown

... interfere with its internal government, and his supremacy is in no other respects useful to him than in giving him a slight revenue. French is the language spoken in the canton. There is a marked distinction of rank all over Switzerland, except in Geneva, Vaud and the small democratic cantons such as Zug and Schwytz, where it is merely nominal. In short, tranquillity is the order of the day. Each rank respects the privileges of the other and the peasant, however rich, is not at all disposed to vary from his usual mode of life or to ape the noble; and ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye

... of the thirty-second Congress assembled in Washington on the 1st of December. In both houses there is a strong majority for the Democratic party. Of the Senators, twenty-four are Whigs, two (Hale and Sumner) distinctive Free Soilers, thirty-four Democrats including Mr. Chase of Ohio, an avowed Abolitionist, and Messrs. Rhett and Butler of South Carolina, Secessionists. There are now three vacancies in the Senate, the last occasioned ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various

... chopping up the old king for Medea's pot. Morris had told us to have nothing to do with the parliamentary socialists, represented for men in general by the Fabian Society and Hyndman's Socialist Democratic Federation and for us in particular by D... During the period of transition mistakes must be made, and the discredit of these mistakes must be left to 'the bourgeoisie;' and besides, when you begin to talk of this measure or that other you lose sight of the goal and see, to reverse Swinburne's description ...
— Four Years • William Butler Yeats

... cover a slight gasp. She had heard remarkable things of the democratic customs of America. It was painful not to be able to ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... about that war, and I never want to see that history repeated. But, my fellow Americans, it certainly can be repeated if the peace-loving democratic nations again fearfully practice a policy of standing idly by while big aggressors use armed force to conquer ...
— The Communist Threat in the Taiwan Area • John Foster Dulles and Dwight D. Eisenhower

... manners indicated that, as yet, he hardly spoke the same language as his more fortunate classmates who had been privately prepared for their higher education. He had heard something, of course, as everyone has, of the celebrated democratic tendency that obtains at Woodbridge. It was disconcerting, therefore, to be eyed by these young men as though he were a too strange bird who had somehow wandered into the zoo proper instead of staying, ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis

... appear in society simply as "Mr. John Brown," to take his chances in the social world strictly on his own merits; assured that if he has any merit, other people will discover it without an ostentatious reminder of it in the shape of a pompous visiting-card. Of course this suggestion of democratic simplicity refers to the engraving of one's own card; other people address the man properly by his official or honorary title, with all due respect for the worth which the world recognizes—even though the wearer of ...
— Etiquette • Agnes H. Morton

... acquired without a tutor, as his energetic, self-reliant nature rendered him incapable of ever seeing insurmountable difficulties before him. By this means he became what the students of Oxford rarely are, both learned and liberal. As he mingled freely with the people, during his youth, a democratic sympathy entwined itself with his education, and is manifested in every ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Now the democratic sentiment in this country is bred in the bone, and few of its denizens have so diluted it with Christian grace as to willingly acknowledge a superior. In such a coterie as this "eating humble-pie" is done only at the ...
— The Moonshiners At Hoho-Hebee Falls - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)

... time in investigating their find, and soon after crossed the canyon and climbed into this prehistoric city. They named it Cliff Palace, most inappropriately, by the way, for it was in fact that most democratic of structures, a community dwelling. Pushing their explorations farther, presently they discovered also a smaller ruin, which they named Spruce Tree House, because a prominent spruce grew in front of it. These are the largest two cliff-dwellings ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... already grievous harm; it is this which has tended to depopulate country districts, to make people averse to discharging all honest subordinate tasks, to make men and women overvalue excitement and amusement. The result of it is the lowest kind of democratic sentiment, which says, "Every one is as good as every one else, and I am a little better," and the jealous spirit, which says, "If I cannot be prominent, I will do my best that no one else shall be." Out ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson

... greatest number. But with these broad admissions, if we would compare the sovereignty acknowledged to exist in the mass of our people with the power claimed by other sovereignties, even by those which have been considered most purely democratic, we shall find a most essential difference. All others lay claim to power limited only by their own will. The majority of our citizens, on the contrary, possess a sovereignty with an amount of power precisely equal to that which has been granted to them by the ...
— Messages and Papers of the Presidents: Harrison • James D. Richardson

... agreed to prohibit the erection of wooden buildings in that city. The philadelphians had before come to this prudent resolution, within certain limits, I was present when this matter was agitated. It was violently opposed by the democratic party; who insisted, that in a free country, a man has a right to build his house of what materials he pleases. "True," said I, "of stone-brimstone —use gun-powder for lime, and mix it with ...
— Travels in the United States of America • William Priest

... the company of old Mrs. Crabbe, who had brought her knitting over, for society's sake. Mrs. Ploughman received him with quiet dignity, due to a sense of the wrong she had suffered, for which she blamed Mrs. Wicket, and the Democratic Party. Mr. Ploughman, she often said, had been a good Republican all his life. Unfortunately, he was dead; otherwise, things would ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan

... then to be instituted. Should they be strongly aristocratic and conservative, with a possible place left for the monarchical feature; or should the popular elements in each colony be more largely recognized, and a decidedly democratic character given to these new constitutions? On this question, two strong parties existed in Virginia. In the first place, there were the old aristocratic families, and those who sympathized with them. These people, numerous, rich, cultivated, ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler

... way, I believe they do. Harvard is more given to cliques. You know it has been called the rich man's college. Yale is more democratic. I have a brother not far from your age who is fitting ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish

... to every government which does not hold its authority from the people. However our present conflict may seem at first sight to do violence, in certain respects, to the principles of self-government, everybody knows that it is a strife of democratic against oligarchic institutions, of a progressive against a stationary civilization, of the rights of manhood against the claims of a class, of a national order representing the will of a people against a conspiracy organized by ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 78, April, 1864 • Various

... Nevada, Minnesota, and Oregon. Weaver carried all these States save the two last named. In Louisiana and Alabama Republicans fused with Populists. The Tillman movement in South Carolina, nominally Democratic, was akin to Populism, but was complicated with the color question, and later with novel liquor legislation. It was a revolt of the ordinary whites from the traditional dominance of the aristocracy. In Alabama a ...
— Official Views Of The World's Columbian Exposition • C. D. Arnold

... who enters suddenly into a period of social change— especially change from a feudal past to a democratic present—is likely to regret the decay of things beautiful and the ugliness of things new. What of both I may yet discover in Japan I know not; but to-day, in these exotic streets, the old and the new mingle so well that one seems to set off the other. The line of tiny white ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn

... are of more surpassing interest than the dramatic political changes,—the downfall of the Whig party, the swift rise and the equally swift submergence of the Know-Nothing party, the birth of the Republican party, the disruption and overthrow of the long-dominant Democratic party,—through which the country came at last to see that only the sword could make an end of the long controversy between ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... plays, and operas, and devoted to open-air exercise. Another important trait in her character must be noted. She had strong monarchical views and dynastic sympathies, but she had no aristocratic preferences; at the same time she had no democratic principles, but believed firmly in the due subordination of classes. The result of the parliamentary and municipal reforms of William IV.'s reign had been to give the middle classes a share in the government ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume 1 (of 3), 1837-1843) • Queen Victoria

... Petersburg Embassy, and discerning the nature of Morier's character, had declared that it was desirable to remove such an influence from the path of his party, who were determined to bring Liberal Germany under the yoke of a Prussia which had no sympathy for democratic ideals. ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... earl (the Earl of Winchelsea) who has spoken on this side of the House, has made an observation to your Lordships, which well deserves your attention. The noble earl has told you, that if you increase but a little the democratic power in the state, the step can never be withdrawn. Your Lordships must continue in the same course till you have passed through the miseries of a revolution, and thence to a military despotism, and the evils which attend that system ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

... British Indian Ocean Territory British Virgin Islands Brunei Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burma Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Clipperton Island Cocos (Keeling) Islands Colombia Comoros Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Cook Islands Coral Sea Islands Costa Rica Cote d'Ivoire Croatia Cuba Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... one side of the "Plaza." On this festival day there was no exclusiveness. In the frontier towns of Mexico not much at any time, for, notwithstanding the distinctions of class, and the domineering tyranny of the government authorities, in matters of mere amusement there is a sort of democratic equality, a mingling of high and low, that in other countries is rare. English, and even American travellers, have observed ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid

... and Princess, at their own request, were introduced to all the leading members of the company, including many of the Indians. When the cowgirls of the show were presented to the Princess they stepped forward and offered their hands, which were taken and well shaken in true democratic fashion. ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)

... of the Third Ward chose him as their candidate for member of the City Council, of which he was afterwards chosen president. He not only polled the full vote of the party, but drew a large number of Democratic votes, and was elected by a good majority, although the ward has generally been considered Democratic, and has retained his seat to the present time, his personal popularity among all classes, combined with the unexceptionable record ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin

... independent of all save God, supreme in its authority over all matters ecclesiastical and spiritual. The constitution of such a church, where each member as a Christian was equal before God, necessarily took a democratic form. In Calvin's theory of Church government it is the Church which itself elects its lay elders and lay deacons for purposes of administration; it is with the approval and consent of the Church that elders and deacons with the existing ...
— History of the English People - Volume 4 (of 8) • John Richard Green

... spoke of it as dinner and was openly sneered at by eleven gentlemen who had never called it anything but supper. The little clockmaker, having been overruled by the judge, was in a nasty temper. He accused the foreman of being a republican. He said no democrat ever called it dinner. It wasn't democratic. ...
— Yollop • George Barr McCutcheon

... bed, suddenly, or perhaps after a long illness—this would weary me, as a lingering illness is repugnant to me—and you will read in one or two journals a short paragraph announcing that the obsequies of Monsieur Denis Ramel, one-time editor of a host of democratic newspapers, a celebrated man in his day, but little known recently, will take place on such a day at such an hour. Few will attend, but I ask you to be present—that is, if there is no important sitting at ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie

... were not allowed to pass, he would throw every obstacle in the way of English measures being carried. The tempest of rage that assailed him in the "House" only added to his popularity outside. Not only was he an immense favourite amongst Irishmen, but with democratic Englishmen also; and at great mass meetings of English miners and agricultural labourers he could always get resolutions carried by the honest, hard-handed sons of toil in favour of the restoration ...
— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir

... of the so-called American democratic Government. It was held legitimate and necessary that capital should be encouraged, but illegitimate to look out for the interests of the non-propertied. The capitalists were very few; the non-propertied, holding nominally the overwhelming voting power, ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers

... of that wing of the Democratic party which opposed the war, and his age already exempted him ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett

... churchman, Rev. John Williams, and of Chancellor James M. Woolworth, a noble representative of the laity of the Church. Well may this place be called the "Gate City" of the Antelope State. Towards evening we reached Lincoln, the home of William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1896, and also four years later. The house where he lives was pointed out to us. It is a modest structure on the outskirts of the city, comporting with the simplicity of the man himself. In the morning we found ...
— By the Golden Gate • Joseph Carey

... therefore, a clear field for a party having fully defined views to express on a topic of commanding interest. The cleavage in the Democratic party already begun by the debate over the Wilmot Proviso was farther promoted by a factional division of New York Democrats. Martin Van Buren became the leader of the liberal faction, the "Barnburners," who nominated him for President ...
— The Anti-Slavery Crusade - Volume 28 In The Chronicles Of America Series • Jesse Macy

... I shall return again to the relations of pragmatism with religion. But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly as those ...
— Pragmatism - A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking • William James

... the same as that to which the people were already accustomed. The average man was conscious of no difference at all in the working of the Government under the new order. In fact, in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the most democratic of all the colonies, where the people had been privileged to elect their own governors, as well as legislatures, no change whatever was necessary and the old charters were continued as State Constitutions down to 1818 ...
— The Fathers of the Constitution - Volume 13 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Max Farrand

... think him in good spirits in what he said of himself. I will tell him what you have the goodness to say, and something, too, on my own part. He has had a hard time of it with his 'Spirit of the Age;' the attacks on the book here being bitter in the extreme. Your 'Democratic' does not comfort him for the rest, by the way, and, indeed, he is almost past comfort on the subject. I had a letter the other day from Dr. Shelton Mackenzie, whom I do not know personally, but who is about to publish a 'Living ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon

... rules, regulations, and laws which might be enacted by the majority. Then they elected a governor, each man having a voice in the election. It was what might be called the first town-meeting in America. Thus democratic liberty and Christian worship, independent of forms established by kings and bishops, had a beginning ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin

... may the plant of wisdom be sown, and presently flower and bear fruit for the feeding of the nations. So that there is time enough, and no need for impatience, when we see the blunders of our various democratic governments. But there is much need that thoughtful people should take care so to see the signs of the time, and so to understand the forces at work, that the same blunder be not made in the days of the present as was made at the close of the eighteenth century in France; for ...
— London Lectures of 1907 • Annie Besant

... manner of Balzac, and partly with the imaginative fantastic horror of Poe and Hoffmann, we have the two sides of Gogol's nature clearly reflected. Into this strange story he has also indicated two of the great guiding principles of his life: his intense democratic sympathies, and his devotion to the highest ideals in Art. When the young painter forsakes poverty and sincerity for wealth and popularity, he steadily degenerates as an artist and eventually loses his soul. The ending of the story, with the disappearance of the portrait, is remarkably ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps

... contingencies; so many of the data, whether for hope or fear, were, from their novelty, incapable of arrangement under any of the categories of historical precedent, that there were moments of crisis when the firmest believer in the strength and sufficiency of the democratic theory of government might well hold his breath in vague apprehension of disaster. Our teachers of political philosophy, solemnly arguing from the precedent of some petty Grecian, Italian, or Flemish city, whose long periods of aristocracy were ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... look upon the common people as a rabble, and to sympathize only with the aristocracy. Cassius M. Clay at St. Petersburg learned to sympathize with the Russians, but he returned with no impairment of his democratic principles. ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, June 1887 - Volume 1, Number 5 • Various

... whom Joseph had endeavored to bestow many large democratic privileges, rose against him. He died Feb. 20, 1790, "a century too early," says Jellenz, and as Remer adds, "misunderstood by a people unworthy ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel

... my stuff all goes out—my real stuff; my fool failures stay by me—this thing, for instance." He indicated the big clump of nude forms. "I had an 'idea' when I started, but it was too ambitious and too literary. Moreover, it isn't democratic. It don't gibe with the present. I'd be a wild-animal sculptor if I knew enough ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland

... truth, and, as Mr. Paul Warburg said to the American Association (New Orleans, Nov. 21, 1911), "Wall Street, like many an absolute ruler in recent years, finds it more conducive to safety and contentment to forego some of its prerogatives ... and to turn an oligarchy into a constitutional democratic federation [i.e. ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling

... pleasanter it would have been! Then, too, the men all insisted on calling him sir, which embarrassed him and made him feel very young and foolish. He had never desired to be a person of privilege for in spite of his sonorous name, Christopher was very democratic. ...
— Christopher and the Clockmakers • Sara Ware Bassett

... the poets that pity is akin to love, was much the foolish fashion of the day. Men of the highest rank, and doubtless of the haughtiest arrogance, were called Tom, and Dick, and Harry; and this silliness was the language of high life, until the French Revolution and the democratic war at home taught them, that if they adopted the phraseology of their own footmen, their footmen would probably take possession of their title-deeds. The hollowness of public life is as soon discovered as the haughtiness ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various

... that of universal education or the vote by ballot. The Republican party, in its annual conventions, during all these years, has affirmed, unanimously, its "adhesion to prohibition and the vigorous enforcement of laws to that end;" and the Democratic party, in its annual convention of this year, rejected, by an immense majority, and with enthusiastic cheers, a resolution, proposed from the floor, ...
— Grappling with the Monster • T. S. Arthur

... the weary days go by, while they waited for Pete and covered his name with reproaches because of his calamitous procrastinations. Meantime, Sally Sellers, who was as practical and democratic as the Lady Gwendolen Sellers was romantic and aristocratic, was leading a life of intense interest and activity and getting the most she could out of her double personality. All day long in the privacy of her work-room, Sally Sellers earned bread ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... of them, and yet be fit for councils and courts. Then let them change places. Our social arrangement has this great beauty, that its strata shift up and down as they change specific gravity, without being clogged by layers of prescription. But I still insist on my democratic liberty of choice, and I go for the man with the gallery of family portraits against the one with the twenty-five-cent daguerreotype, unless I find out that the last is the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes

... Republic was ever a democracy, as we understand the term, or as it was understood in Athens. Power was always in the hands of senators, nobles, and rich men, as it still is in England, and was in Venice. Popular liberty was a name, and democratic institutions were feeble and shackled. The citizen-noble was free, not the proletarian. The latter had the redress of laws, but only such as the former gave. How exclusive must have been an aristocracy when the Claudian family boasted that, for five ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord

... air, except for the evidences of her trade, with which her deck is piled. Her hull is of the cutter model, sharp and deep, affording ample storage room. She has a cabin aft, and a roomy forecastle, though such are the democratic conditions of the fishing trade that part of the crew bunks aft with the skipper. The galley, a little box of a place, is directly abaft the foremast, and back of it to the cabin, are the fishbins for storing fish, after ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... and with criticism of people, with the ghosts of a dead society. She had, in two hemispheres, seen every one and known every one, had assisted at the social comedy of her age. Her own habits and traditions were in themselves a survival of an era less democratic and more mannered. I have no room for enumerations, which, moreover, would be invidious; but the old London of her talk—the direction I liked is best to take—was, in particular, a gallery of portraits. She made Count d'Orsay familiar, she made Charles Greville present; I thought ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... seats—and imagined that covered everything, with perhaps even a rake-off for somebody! They would grumble, wondering why the Socialists persisted in charging admission for their meetings—why they could not let people in free as the Democrats and Republicans did. They would go to Democratic and Republican meetings, and enjoy the brass band and the fireworks, pyrotechnical and oratorical—never dreaming it was all a snare paid for by ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair

... Victor Hugo will go down to posterity honoured and applauded because of his love for the human race. I suspect those critics who hold him up as a grand example of democratic principles and libertarian ideals of not being great lovers of his stories. He is a name for them to conjure ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... The People's Theatre. New York: Holt. 1918. (Giving the principles which are spreading and forming a democratic conception of ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: - Introduction and Bibliography • Montrose J. Moses

... colleague of Brutus, although he had proved himself the most democratic of men came near being murdered in short order by the multitude: they suspected him, in fact, of being eager to become sole sovereign. They would have slain him, indeed, had he not quickly anticipated their action by courting their favor. He entered the assembly and bent the rods which he had formerly ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol VI. • Cassius Dio

... come back—and we will all take her back, be glad to have her back," he said. "She has the grip of a lever which can lift the eternal hills with the right pressure. Leave her alone—leave her alone. This is a democratic country, and she'll prove democracy a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... or night he could call up a vision of their gleaming brightness. Then his father sent him to Canada to watch the establishment of the Dominion, and when he came back he brought a Canadian canoe and an American yacht, and certain democratic opinions. ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... clothing the figure as it were with an imperial robe of light. It is the most majestic representation of the kingly character that ever the world has seen. A sight of the old heathen emperor is enough to create an evanescent sentiment of loyalty even in a democratic bosom, so august does he look, so fit to rule, so worthy of man's profoundest homage and obedience, so inevitably attractive of his love. He stretches forth his hand with an air of grand beneficence and unlimited authority, as if uttering a decree ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... secures him against an unreasoning dread of social changes; it rectifies his notion of progress. All these acquisitions render the pupil fitter for public life; history thus appears as an indispensable branch of instruction in a democratic society. ...
— Introduction to the Study of History • Charles V. Langlois

... pretended that at first she took young Bines for what we all took him, an employee of the mine. You can almost catch them winking at each other, when she tells it, and dear mamma with such beautiful resignation, says, "My Avice is so impulsively democratic." Dear Avice, you know, is really quite as impulsive as the steel bridge our train has ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... Gazette" reported it. Within a few minutes of opening her door, she was in trim for a hard evening's work. She unlocked a drawer and took out a manuscript, which consisted of a very few pages, entitled, in a forcible hand, "Some Aspects of the Democratic State." The aspects dwindled out in a cries-cross of blotted lines in the very middle of a sentence, and suggested that the author had been interrupted, or convinced of the futility of proceeding, with her pen in the air.... Oh, yes, Ralph had ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... faubourg now paraded in this new democratic livery. Even some of them, who were in the actual service of the Court, made no scruple of decorating themselves thus, in the very face of their Sovereign. The King complained, but the answer made to him ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... a flat top desk of wine-red mahogany, a bookcase, and a few chairs. A door to the left led to the office of the private secretary; the one to the right to a short and narrow corridor across which was the door of the Council Chamber—a room occupied by that last link between democratic and aristocratic government. It must not be inferred that the members of the Council are aristocrats—far from it, but with the lieutenant-governor they form a "house of lords" which may or may not agree with the policies of the ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin

... Editorial prophets of the Continental-Democratic Movement, have in their leading-articles shown themselves disposed to vilipend the late Manchester Insurrection, as evincing in the rioters an extreme backwardness to battle; nay as betokening, in the English People itself, perhaps a want of the proper animal courage indispensable in these ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle

... fellows rose and bade me welcome to France. The simple fact that I was a republican from America aroused the enthusiasm of all. I found, afterward, that the regiment to which these officers belonged was suspected by the president of being democratic ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett

... forms of government occupies a large space in the writings of the Greek philosophers,—a fact which is to be explained by the existence among the Greeks of many independent political communities, variously organized, and more or less democratic in character. Between the political problems of the smaller societies and those of the great European nations there is no useful parallel to be drawn, although the predominance of classical learning made it the fashion for ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various

... announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the forks that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... so far, at least, that they have no wish to change them, no idea that any great social or political reforms could improve our condition. Our lesson in Communism has rendered all agitation on such matters, all tendency to democratic institutions, all appeals to popular passions, utterly odious and alarming to us. But that we are happy I will venture neither to affirm nor to deny. Physically, no doubt, we have great advantages over you, if I rightly understand your description of life on Earth. We have ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... The Southern or Democratic party of the United States had, as all men know, been in power for many years. Either Southern Presidents had been elected, or Northern Presidents with Southern politics. The South for many years had had the disposition of military matters, and the power of distributing military ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... in the loyal States is manifestly weakened by the Proclamation. Their dream is of wearing out the Unionists by disappointments and delays, restoring a Democratic ascendency in the government, and then buying back the rebels to an outward loyalty by new concessions and guaranties to slavery. Hence torpid campaigns, languid strategy, advances without purpose, and surrenders without necessity. But the policy of emancipation brings the quarrel to a speedy decision. ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... folk, she now appreciated them more keenly than ever. In Ukiah she formed nothing more than superficial acquaintances. Here people were more like those of the working class she had known in Oakland, or else they were merely wealthy and herded together in automobiles. There was no democratic artist-colony that pursued fellowship disregardful of ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London

... statesmen, and having no father or brother or husband to uphold the family traditions of Democracy, she upholds them herself. She is intensely interested just now in the party nominations. A split among the Republicans gives her hope of the election of the Democratic candidate. She's such a feminine little creature with her soft voice and appealing manner, with her big white aprons covering her up, and curling wisps of black hair falling over her little ears, that the contrasts ...
— Contrary Mary • Temple Bailey

... is just this: that the process should take place as a deliberate act of will, in democratic freedom, without pressure and compulsion of authority, in the consciousness of its necessity, on our own responsibility. Germany is not at present growing leaders and prophets, we are not in a formative stage, all authority has been scattered ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... history of that nation, and of human nature. The traces of the terrible revolutions which in that century, and at the close of the preceding one, shook France again and again to her centre, and the outlines of which still live in authentic history, all show the extent to which infidelity and democratic violence prevailed in France; nay, we know that during the dominion of the Emperor Napoleon, if we are to regard his history as literally true, and not a collection of fables and legends,* as some even of that age maintained, that great conqueror arrested ...
— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

... yet another claim of the Bible to the respect and the attention of a democratic age. Throughout the history of the western world, the Scriptures, Jewish and Christian, have been the great instigators of revolt against the worst forms of clerical and political despotism. The Bible has been the Magna ...
— Collected Essays, Volume V - Science and Christian Tradition: Essays • T. H. Huxley

... But this august dignity I treat of, is not the dignity of kings and robes, but that abounding dignity which has no robed investiture. Thou shalt see it shining in the arm that wields a pick or drives a spike; that democratic dignity which, on all hands, radiates without end from God; Himself! The great God absolute! The centre and circumference of all democracy! His omnipresence, our ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... republicanism—which was crowding the prisons, and causing blood to gush in an incessant flow—wished to reinstate the monarchy, and to place the Duke of Orleans upon the throne. The Duchess of Orleans, the child of one of the highest nobles, was not in sympathy with her husband in his democratic views. His boundless profligacy had also alienated her affections, so that there was no domestic happiness to be found in the gorgeous saloons of ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott

... Constitution which would be submitted to them," so that there might be "a fair expression of the popular will." Nothing, in short, could have been clearer, more direct, more frequently repeated, than the asseverations of the "Democratic Party," made through its official representatives, its newspapers, and its orators,—to the effect, that its only object, in its Kansas policy, was to secure "the great principle of Popular Sovereignty." On the strength of these ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... felt that he had got to do something to comfort her. That was his job in life. He was desperately unhappy himself and it seemed to him the most natural thing in the world that they should pool their sorrows. He was quite democratic; the idea of the difference in their station never seems to have occurred to him. He began to talk to her. He discovered that her young man had been seen walking out with Annie of Number 54. He moved over to her side of the carriage. He told ...
— The Good Soldier • Ford Madox Ford

... deservedly ridiculed. I mean lady, It is true I might cite the example of the Italian donna[30] (domina), which has been treated in the same way by a whole nation, and not, as lady among us, by the uncultivated only. It perhaps grew into use in the half-democratic republics of Italy in the same way and for the same reasons as with us. But I admit that our abuse of the word is villainous. I know of an orator who once said in a public meeting where bonnets preponderated, that 'the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell

... Cleopatra, "that Hades is being spoiled by the introduction of American ideas—it is getting by far too democratic for my tastes; and if it isn't stopped, it's my belief that the best people will stop coming here. Take Madame Recamier's salon as it is now and compare it with what it used to be! In the early days, after her arrival here, everybody went because it was the swell thing, and you'd ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs

... to note how democratic the people are in Finland. Each peasant is a gentleman at heart, brave, hasty, independent, and he expects every one to treat him ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... freedom from the trammels of etiquette was very complete. In theory—and he abounded in theory—his manners were purely democratic. It was by sheer habit and inadvertency that he permitted Firmin, who had discovered a rucksack in a small shop in the town below, to carry both bottles of beer. The king had never, as a matter of fact, carried anything ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... picturesqueness of the scene. Unfortunately, the committee of arrangements had not been able to procure a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Its place was supplied by an apologetic speech from a Mr. J., who will, without doubt, be the Democratic candidate for state representative at the coming election. This gentleman finished his performance by introducing Mr. B., the orator of the day, who is the Whig nominee for the above-mentioned office. Before pronouncing his address, Mr. B. read some verses which he said had been ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe

... novelty, as we thought it, of his vague democratic opinions, he exhibited what to me was at least equally novel—namely, a liberalism before unknown to me with regard to theological doctrine. He never obtruded this on us in any systematic way; but on not infrequent occasions he solemnly gave us ...
— Memoirs of Life and Literature • W. H. Mallock

... religions. It will lend a little interest to even their dull social functions. It will keep alive .degrading social evils in all their great towns. Through these latter evils, too, their politics will be corrupted; especially their best and most democratic attempts at self-government. Self-government works best among those who have ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.

... continuation of authority in one individual has frequently been the undoing of democratic governments. Repeated elections are essential in popular systems, because nothing is so dangerous as to permit a citizen to remain long in power. The people get used to obeying and he gets used to commanding it, from which spring usurpation and tyranny." ... "We have been subjected ...
— Simon Bolivar, the Liberator • Guillermo A. Sherwell

... knowledge and acquire an ever-increasing mastery over the forces of nature. Here the national domain is offered and held in millions of separate freeholds, so that our fellow-citizens, beyond the occupants of any other part of the earth, constitute in reality a people. Here exists the democratic form of government; and that form of government, by the confession of European statesmen, "gives a power of which no other form is capable, because it incorporates every man with the state and arouses everything ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... Lords, Tories saying it ought to be preserved because it was clever, and Radicals saying it ought to be destroyed because it was stupid, and all the time no one saw that it was right because it was stupid, because that chance mob of ordinary men thrown there by accident of blood, were a great democratic protest against the Lower House, against the eternal insolence of the aristocracy of talents. We have established now in England, the thing towards which all systems have dimly groped, the dull popular despotism without illusions. ...
— The Napoleon of Notting Hill • Gilbert K. Chesterton

... concessas'). The Proctors' walk is the most curious feature of the degree ceremony; it always excites surprise and sometimes laughter. It should, however, be maintained with the utmost respect; for it is the clear and visible assertion of the democratic character of the University; it implies that every qualified M.A. has a right to be consulted as to the admission of others to the position which ...
— The Oxford Degree Ceremony • Joseph Wells

... allusion to a celebrated case in which a great house had prevailed on the courts to annul the marriage of an elder son with a young actress, though her character was excellent, and though she had befriended him when he was abandoned by everybody else.[67] This was one of the countless democratic thrusts in the book. In the case of its heroine, however, the author associated the sanctity of marriage not only with equality but with religion. We may imagine the spleen with which the philosophers, with both their hatred of the faith, and their light esteem of marriage bonds, read Julie's ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... gullibility. His Excellency had the social revolution on the brain. He imagined himself to be a diplomatist set apart by a special dispensation to watch the end of diplomacy, and pretty nearly the end of the world, in a horrid democratic upheaval. His prophetic and doleful despatches had been for years the joke of Foreign Offices. He was said to have exclaimed on his deathbed (visited by his Imperial friend and master): "Unhappy Europe! Thou shalt perish by the moral insanity of thy children!" ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad

... America, to study a still vaster field of human achievement, mere differences of nationality had ceased to interest him: they were blurred out of visibility in his growing perception of Occidental civilization as one amazing whole, everywhere displaying—whether through imperial, monarchical, or democratic forms—the working of the like merciless necessities with the like astounding results, and everywhere based on ideas totally the reverse of Far-Eastern ideas. Such civilization he could estimate only as one having ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... few years these new societies and others to be created will have dominated their districts, and political power will follow, and we will have new political ideals based on a democratic control of agriculture and industry, and states and people will move harmoniously to a ...
— What's the Matter with Ireland? • Ruth Russell

... decapitation and confiscation. But this system, which was all very well for a prince of the fifteenth century, exhausted the patience of the new generation, many of whom were bred at the Austrian universities. Without seeking for democratic institutions, for which Servia is totally unfit, they loudly demanded written laws, which should remove life and property from the domain of individual caprice, and which, without affecting the suzerainty ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton

... grant purchased of Baron Bastrop, but that in case of a war between the United States and Spain, which might at any time occur, as the Mexicans were very weary of the Spanish yoke, Congress would send an army to protect the settlers and help Mexico, so that a new empire would be founded of a democratic type, and the settlers finding all on an equality, would be enabled to enrich themselves beyond all ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop

... Wars, both on the Royalist and the Parliamentary sides. It was to grow into that high type of cultivated English nature, in the present and the last century, common both to its monarchical and its democratic embodiments, than which, with all its faults and defects, our western civilization has ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church

... article upon English country-house life in which he had described a visit paid for a week-end to Sir Henry Trustall's. There was only a single critical passage in it, and it was one which he had written with a sense both of journalistic and of democratic satisfaction. In it he had sketched off the lofty obsequiousness of the flunkey who had ministered to his needs. "He seemed to take a smug satisfaction in his own degradation," said he. "Surely the last spark of manhood must have gone from the man who ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a mutual antagonism and suspicion. Mrs. Peyton, coldly polite to Clarence's former COMPANION, but condescendingly gracious to his present TENANT and retainer, did not notice it, preoccupied with the annoyance and pain of Susy's frequent references to the old days of their democratic equality. ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... therefore, and have long been, much distressed by the political solidity of the states of Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania; and we wish that it were broken—not for the sake of the Democratic party nor for the sake of the Republican party (for the breach would benefit each alike) but for the sake of greater freedom of political action by our unfortunate fellow citizens who dwell there. Where one party has too long and secure power it becomes intolerant and the other party falls ...
— The South and the National Government • William Howard Taft

... it required more than ordinary courage to address a king in this fashion; but Santob was old and poor, and having nothing to lose, could risk losing everything. A democratic strain runs through his verses; he delights in aiming his satires at the rich, the high-born, and the powerful, and takes pride in his poverty and his ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles

... Mademoiselle, and it was about this time that she wrote a characteristic letter to Mme. de Motteville, picturing an Arcadia in some beautiful forest, where people are free to do as they like. The most ardent apostle of socialism could hardly dream of an existence more democratic or more Utopian. These favored men and women lead a simple, pastoral life. They take care of the house and the garden, milk the cows, make cheese and cakes, and tend sheep on pleasant days. But this rustic community must have its civilized ...
— The Women of the French Salons • Amelia Gere Mason

... tell the people that I remain, recommending to them at the same time union and tranquillity, when I began to take measures to put ourselves in a state to meet the attacks of our enemies, then concealed, since unmasked; one part among ourselves, the rest in the Portuguese democratic Cortes; providing for all the departments, especially those of the treasury and foreign affairs, by such means as prudence dictated, and which I shall not mention here, because they will be laid before you in proper time by ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham



Words linked to "Democratic" :   Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, common, classless, Popular Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, elective, Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, democracy, Democratic-Republican Party, egalitarian, popular, representative, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Democratic Party, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Democratic and Popular Republic of Algeria, parliamentary, States' Rights Democratic Party, Social Democratic Party, German Democratic Republic



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