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Servile   /sˈərvəl/   Listen
Servile

adjective
1.
Submissive or fawning in attitude or behavior.  "The incurably servile housekeeper" , "Servile tasks such as floor scrubbing and barn work"
2.
Relating to or involving slaves or appropriate for slaves or servants.  "The servile wars of Sicily" , "Servile work"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Servile" Quotes from Famous Books



... in his hand, and with that air of servile civility which marked him, old Gill addressed her. 'If it's not displazin' to ye, miss, we want to ax you ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... first be informed, that Emperors do not always trouble themselves with the Affairs of State; for they sometimes pass their whole Lives in a continued Round of indolent Pleasures, while their Favourites govern all. I don't doubt but you have already made your Observation upon the servile Crowd who attend my Motions, who wait upon my Commands, with an Obsequiousness that perhaps is not practised in your Parts of the World, betwixt Creatures of the same Species, yet many of them hate me, as I do them,—perhaps you'll think this strange; but when the secret ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt

... deceased sister; and as all the world was sensible, that Henry's divorce from Anne Boleyn was merely the effect of his usual violence and caprice, she scorned to found her title on any act of an assembly which had too much prostituted its authority by its former variable, servile, and iniquitous decisions. Satisfied, therefore, in the general opinion entertained with regard to this fact, which appeared the more undoubted, the less anxiety she discovered in fortifying it by votes and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part D. - From Elizabeth to James I. • David Hume

... to the ground of the benefactor, even of the servile sort, was not entirely placating, as Ivory Buck's corrugated brow still hinted, but the constant iteration of admiration for his marvelous shrewdness and good fortune was having its effect. The old grudge and sorrow that had gnawed ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various

... the constituency under his charge, he has every inducement to strive towards the ideal of a clean bill of health. He has a safe, dignified, responsible, independent position based wholly on the public health; whereas the private practitioner has a precarious, shabby-genteel, irresponsible, servile position, based wholly ...
— The Doctor's Dilemma: Preface on Doctors • George Bernard Shaw

... colour or shadow of something upon Mr. Gent, he says he forgives him all he owed him, which Mr. Gent protests is never a penny. I must intreat you to pardon me if I seem somewhat impatient on his [i.e., Gent's] behalf, who hath been so servile to him, and indeed such a perpetual servant, that he deserved a better reward. Neither can I deny that I have a little indignation for myself that having been acquainted with him for almost forty years, and observed and respected him so much, I should ...
— In the Name of the Bodleian and Other Essays • Augustine Birrell

... with the confident manner of one well acquainted with the house, Frere entered, and made his way along a narrow passage to a glass door at the further end. A tap upon this door brought a white-faced, pock-pitted Irish girl, who curtsied with servile recognition of the visitor, and ushered him upstairs. The room into which he was shown was a large one. It had three windows looking into the street, and was handsomely furnished. The carpet was soft, the candles were bright, and the supper tray gleamed invitingly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... correctness may please, and does highly please, the lettered critic; but to that awful character T have not the most distant pretensions. I do not know whether I do not hazard my pretensions to be a critic of any kind, when I say that I think Virgil, in many instances, a servile copier of Homer. If I had the Odyssey by me, I could parallel many passages where Virgil has evidently copied, but by no means improved, Homer. Nor can I think there is anything of this owing to the translators; for, from everything I have seen of Dryden, I think him, in genius and fluency ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... England, France, and Germany, and, spreading thence into every country in Christendom, has been, in secret and in public, with slow, sure steps, irresistibly advancing ever since. In the history of scholasticism there were three distinct epochs. The first period was characterized by the servile submission and conformity of philosophy to the theology dictated by the Church. The second period was marked by the formal alliance and attempted reconciliation of philosophy and theology. The third period saw an ever increasing jealousy and separation ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... captives at Babylon, who were there providentially led and prepared for the most signal services of their lives, seem like historic parallels flashing from inspired Bible story, their comforting and prophetic light on the servile and dark experiences of the ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger

... for death; either death or life 5 Shall thereby be the sweeter. Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing That none but fools would keep: a breath thou art, Servile to all the skyey influences. That dost this habitation, where thou keep'st, 10 Hourly afflict: merely, thou art death's fool; For him thou labour'st by thy flight to shun, And yet runn'st toward him still. Thou art not noble; For all the accommodations that thou bear'st ...
— Measure for Measure - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare

... a contest arise, there will be wide spread sympathy in the North, which might convert a servile or social war into a sectional ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell

... on the Georgia bill,[51] Senator Revels spoke out fearlessly in the defense of his race. He defended the Negroes against charges of antagonism and servile strife, lauded the conduct of Negro soldiers in the Civil War and the part they played in saving the Union. He called attention to the loyalty of the Negroes in protecting the white women and their homes, with ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... twofold. One is servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit; and this kind of subjection began after sin. There is another kind of subjection which is called economic or civil, whereby the superior makes use of his subjects for their own benefit and good; and ...
— Summa Theologica, Part I (Prima Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... dear General, look to the flattering addresses presented by the servile of all countries to the most base in power. Think not that it is to the person of San Martin that the public are attached. Believe not, that without a straight and dignified course you can obtain the admiration or love ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 1 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald

... beginning the new state of things arose. As Sir Osborne Morgan puts it, "Every student of English history knows that, if a very bad king had not fallen in love with a very pretty woman, and desired to get divorced from his plain and elderly wife, and if he had not compelled a servile Parliament to carry out his wishes, there would, in all human probability, never have been an Established Church ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan

... gentle as George was, he could not force himself to feel any affection for Ralph Wilson. He treated him with respect for his father's sake, more than from any personal regard, though the old man was servile in his protestations of love and devotion. Some minds are surrounded by a moral and intellectual atmosphere, into which other minds cannot enter without feeling a certain degree of repulsion. Such an insensible but powerfully acknowledged ...
— George Leatrim • Susanna Moodie

... materially differ from those which he professes to have abandoned. The pressure of the whole system of Western education—not to speak of Western civilisation—will be too strong for him. The flat copy, with its demand for mechanical work and servile obedience, fits into that system. Drawing from the object, with its demand for initiative and self-reliance, does not. Hence the attractive force of the former,—a secret attractive force which will neutralise the efforts that the teacher consciously makes ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... which could only grow stronger under the influence of his more mature observations and experiences. Even in his eighteenth year, in a poem "An die Demut,"[41] he gives expression in strong terms to his patriotic feelings, in which his disgust with his faint-hearted, servile compatriots and his defiance of "Fuerstenlaune" and "Despotenblut" are plainly evident. ...
— Types of Weltschmerz in German Poetry • Wilhelm Alfred Braun

... call upon the prisoners at another time. This is a case of far larger proportions than the guilt or innocence of the two prisoners at the bar. I take shame to myself that the appalling extent of kidnaping, buying and selling slaves for what I may call ordinary servile purposes, and the buying and selling young females for worse than ordinary slavery, has not presented itself before to me in the light it ought. It seems to me that it has been recognized and accepted as an ordinary out-turn of ...
— Heathen Slaves and Christian Rulers • Elizabeth Wheeler Andrew and Katharine Caroline Bushnell

... was crossed ever so lightly, a spirit of antagonism and obstinacy was instantly aroused, which it sometimes took days to overcome, and was often made worse by servile coaxing and bribing on the part of those who had the care of her, this being considered the easiest way to get along ...
— His Heart's Queen • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... importance politically and socially than his employer. Employment is an essential in making a living, but it is an instrument that cuts two ways—it establishes an aristocracy of wealth and privilege for the employer and a servile class of employees who often are little better than peasants of the belt ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe

... house you see schemes of colour that you would never have thought of, furniture and pictures that are not of your taste at all, so Sally saw for one brief moment the glimpse of a mind that could casually make a jest of death and holy-written things. A great deal of that servile obedience to the religion in which she had been brought up had been driven out of her by hard work. You might not get the priesthood to admit it, but religion is a luxury which few of the hard-workers in this world can afford. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... not contain the idea of kinship, at any rate as its leading connotation; it is inseparable from the idea of land-settlement,[139] and is therefore essentially das Hauswesen, the house itself, with the persons living in it, free or servile, and with their land and other property, all governed and administered by the paterfamilias, the master of the household, who is always the oldest living male ancestor. The familia is thus an economic unit, developed out of the gens, ...
— The Religious Experience of the Roman People - From the Earliest Times to the Age of Augustus • W. Warde Fowler

... they incited to move against the Liang. This produced great native unrest, especially in the provinces by the upper Yangtze. The natives, who were steadily pushed back by the Chinese peasants, were reduced to migrating into the mountain country or to working for the Chinese in semi-servile conditions; and they were ready for revolt and very glad to work with the Toba. The result of this unrest was not decisive, but it greatly reduced the strength of the regions along the upper Yangtze. Thus the main strength of the southern state ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... cities, too proud to labour, fed on government bounty, and amused by government spectacles. With them, arts and science had died likewise. Such things were left to slaves, and became therefore, literally, servile imitations of the past. What, indeed, was not left to slaves? Drawn without respect of rank, as well as of sex and age, from every nation under heaven by an organized slave-trade, to which our late African one was but a tiny streamlet compared ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley

... which may all be in the One Church, and of the succession of one phase of doctrine to another, while it is ever one and the same. Thus I was brought on to the subject of Antiquity, which was the basis of the doctrine of the Via Media, and by which was not implied a servile imitation of the past, but such a reproduction of it as is really young, while it is old. "We have good hope," I say, "that a system will be rising up, superior to the age, yet harmonising with, and carrying out its higher points, which will attract to ...
— Apologia pro Vita Sua • John Henry Newman

... succeeding Peace." Since he afterward suppressed this second ode, we must suppose that it was rather worse than the first. Next came his two "Epistles to Pope, concerning the Authors of the Age," remarkable for nothing but the audacity of affectation with which the most servile of poets professes to ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot

... procured relay horses. In some villages they refused to hire horses to me; I then threatened them with my whip, which at once inspired respect and obedience; my money accomplished the same end; it inspired a servile obedience—not willingness—to ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch

... to find me in the traitor's ranks? Now, as I live, I'd rather give my hand To Gessler's self, all despot though he be, Than to the Switzer who forgets his birth, And stoops to be a tyrant's servile tool. ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

... those of mankind; and their interests are—above all and imperiously—let nothing change! It is those people who keep their eternal subjects in eternal order, who deceive and dazzle them, who take their brains away as they take their bodies, who flatter their servile instincts, who make shallow, resplendent creeds for them, and explain huge happenings away with all the pretexts they like. It is because of them that the law of things does not rest on justice and the ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... getting more and more opposed to the great bulk of the most vigorous elements of the society. The stage is ceasing to be a truly national organ, and begins to suit itself to the tastes of the unprincipled and servile courtiers, who, if they are not more immoral than their predecessors, are without the old heroic touch which ennobled even the audacious and unscrupulous adventurers of the Armada period. That is ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen

... of their wives and children, and the common fellowship of their neighbors, with ample supply for their needs and comfort from the surplus product of their labor and apart from the eye of their masters. Still the Helot had in him the common sentiments of our nature. His state was servile and mean. It was not to be expected he would always remain content in his subjection to his superiors in social and civil life. More and more his discontent would menace the stability of the community. Especially when ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 3 of 8 • Various

... But remember, my lord, you will, from your situation, be inevitably surrounded with flatterers. You are naturally fond of commendation. Do not let this generous instinct be the means of disgracing you. You will have many servile parasites, who will endeavour, by inuring you to scenes of luxury and dissipation, to divert your charity from its noblest and its truest ends, into the means of supporting them in their fawning dependence. Naples is not destitute of a set of young noblemen, the disgrace ...
— Italian Letters, Vols. I and II • William Godwin

... safety. It would have required a man, not merely of greater goodness than James, but of greater insight into the realities of life as well, to perceive the worth and superiority of the girl who waited upon him with a devotion far more angelic than servile; for whatever might have seemed to savour of the latter, had love, hopeless of personal advantage, at the root ...
— Salted With Fire • George MacDonald

... Many of the women are very handy in canoes and will manage them with great dexterity and skill, which they become accustomed to in this watery country. They are ready to help their husbands in any servile work, as planting, when the season of the weather requires expedition; pride seldom banishing good housewifery. The girls are not bred up to the wheel and sewing only, but the dairy and the affairs of the house they are very well acquainted withal; so that you shall see them, ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly

... "liberal education," as the especial characteristic or property of a University and of a gentleman; what is really meant by the word? Now, first, in its grammatical sense it is opposed to servile; and by "servile work" is understood, as our catechisms inform us, bodily labour, mechanical employment, and the like, in which the mind has little or no part. Parallel to such servile works are those arts, if they deserve the name, of which the poet speaks,(15) which ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... not even 'pottering'! They have not begun at all!" I said grimly, as I ran my eye down the letter just received from the "man in charge". It was the ordinary, ultra-polite, ultra-servile production of the tradesman who has not kept ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... careless of his doings along a route that he probably does not intend to visit again. He knows perfectly well that women and children are afraid of him, and as a rule is very willing to work upon that fear—though the sight of a man, or of a dog with character, is sufficient to make him the most servile of his race. But where he meets a lonely woman he is a ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce

... such things as he please himself? Now, when we shall be carried away by a Turk and be fain to be occupied about such things as he please to set us, we shall lament the loss of our liberty and think we bear a heavy burden of our servile condition. And we shall have, I grant well, many times great occasion to do so. But yet we should, I suppose, set somewhat the less by it, if we would remember well what liberty that was that we lost, and take it for no larger than it was indeed. For we reckon as ...
— Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation - With Modifications To Obsolete Language By Monica Stevens • Thomas More

... she had allowed herself to be too easily misled by the title of "companion," which, apparently more cordial than that of 'demoiselle de compagnie', means in reality the same thing—a sort of half-servile position. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... Mrs. Corey would easily excuse her absence. She did not find it so simple a matter to accept the invitation. Mrs. Corey had said "Dear Mrs. Lapham," but Mrs. Lapham had her doubts whether it would not be a servile imitation to say "Dear Mrs. Corey" in return; and she was tormented as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise temperature which she should impart to her politeness. She wrote an unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, the same in which she used ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... hearts shall never quail Below the servile yoke, Long as our seamen trim the sail, And wake the battle smoke— Long as they stem the stormy gale, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... inspector, an underpaid teacher. I am bored. Oh God! how I am bored! I am bored by our laws and customs. I am bored by our rotten empire and its empty monarchy. I am bored by its parades and its flags and its sham enthusiasms. I am bored by London and its life, by its smart life and by its servile life alike. I am bored by theatres and by books and by every sort of thing that people call pleasure. I am bored by the brag of people and the claims of people and the feelings of people. Damn people! ...
— The Secret Places of the Heart • H. G. Wells

... spoke of tears before joy, a cross before a crown; that it laid the foundation of heroism in penance; that it made the soul tremble with the news of Purgatory and Hell; that it insisted on views and a worship of the Deity, which to their minds was nothing else than mean, servile, and cowardly. The notion of an All-perfect, Ever-present God, in whose sight we are less than atoms, and who, while He deigns to visit us, can punish as well as bless, was abhorrent to them; they made their own minds their sanctuary, ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman

... the charge of the Bastile in Paris. The prisoner, ever masked, was taken with him, and was treated on the journey with the highest respect. A well-furnished chamber was provided for him in that immense chateau. The governor himself brought him his food, and stood respectfully like a servile attendant while he ate. The captive was extremely fond of fine linen and lace, and was very attentive to his personal appearance. Upon his death the walls of his chamber were rubbed down and whitewashed. Even the tiles ...
— Louis XIV., Makers of History Series • John S. C. Abbott

... the Cloister. Instead of universal benevolence, He adopted a selfish partiality for his own particular establishment: He was taught to consider compassion for the errors of Others as a crime of the blackest dye: The noble frankness of his temper was exchanged for servile humility; and in order to break his natural spirit, the Monks terrified his young mind by placing before him all the horrors with which Superstition could furnish them: They painted to him the torments of the Damned in colours the most dark, terrible, and fantastic, and threatened him at the ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis

... By oppressions, woes, and pains, By our sons in servile chains, We will drain our dearest veins, But they shall be free! Lay the proud usurper low Tyrants fall in every foe— Liberty at every blow; Let ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot

... a very likable man, and there is little about his primitiveness that is repulsive. He is of a kindly disposition, is not servile, and is generally trustworthy. He has a strong sense of humor. He is decidedly friendly to the American, whose superiority he recognizes and whose methods he desires to learn. The boys in school are quick and bright, and their teacher pronounces them superior to Indian and Mexican children ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks

... As the servile murmur answered, Randalin's brow darkened. Cloth of gold and pearls,—when a wolf was tearing at her heart! She spoke desperately, "I wish that the way to the fabrics might lie past the ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz

... 20, 13, 'Statius servile nomen fuit ... Caecilius quoque ille comoediarum poeta inclutus servus fuit; et propterea nomen habuit "Statius." Sed postea versum est quasi in cognomentum: appellatusque ...
— The Student's Companion to Latin Authors • George Middleton

... received—almost with the air of a domestic, four-fifty per week from a lordly foreman in a shoe factory—a man who, in distributing the envelopes, had the manner of a prince doling out favours to a servile group of petitioners. She knew that out in Chicago this very day the same factory chamber was full of poor homely-clad girls working in long lines at clattering machines; that at noon they would eat a miserable lunch in a half-hour; that ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... thus taken upon himself, the difficulties he had to encounter in this unceasing vigilance, had produced a new Hamar—a Hamar that was a personality; a personality so utterly unlike the old Hamar—the meek and servile clerk—as to make one wonder if there could possibly be two Hamars—outwardly and physically the same—inwardly and psychologically diametrically opposed. A year ago, Curtis and Kelson would have ridiculed ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell

... not, you elements, with unkindness; I never gave you kingdom, call'd you children, You owe me no subscription; then, let fall Your horrible pleasure; here I stand, your slave, A poor, infirm, weak, and despis'd old man: But yet I call you servile ministers, That will with two pernicious daughters join Your high engender'd battles 'gainst a head So old and white as this. O! O! ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese

... the draught. But, gentlemen, if you wish for a nearer and a more interesting example, you have it in the history of your own Revolution; you have it at that memorable period, when the monarch found a servile acquiescence in the ministers of his folly—when the liberty of the press was trodden under foot—when venal sheriff's returned packed juries to carry into effect those fatal conspiracies of the few against the many—when the devoted benches of public justice were ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... one day to the large boys assembled in solemn conclave in the school-room, "that takes all the boorishness and brutishness out of the English character? What is it that prevents the Britishers from being servile and obsequious—traits, I tell you, boys, unknown in England—but this splendid system of fagging? Did you ever hear of an insolent Englishman, a despotic Englishman, a surly Englishman, a selfish Englishman, an obstinate Englishman, a ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... But the colleges are in part to blame. Many of them have not been in close touch with the farmers. They have often been out of sympathy with the interests of the farmers. They have too frequently been servile imitators of the traditions of the older colleges, instead of striking out boldly on a line of original and helpful work for agriculture. Today, however, we see a rapid change going on in most of our agricultural colleges. They are seeking to help solve ...
— Chapters in Rural Progress • Kenyon L. Butterfield

... squalid beggary; who with pleasure accompany Don Quixote and his squire, in the lowest paths of fortune; who are diverted with the adventures of Scarron's ragged troop of strollers, and highly entertained with the servile situations of Gil Blas; yet, when a character in humble life occasionally occurs in a performance of our own growth, exclaim, with an air of disgust, "Was ever anything so mean! sure, this writer must have been very conversant ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett

... spite of his having been apostrophized as a "dying" Poet,—the mob, always fickle and always dazzled by outward show, suddenly set up a deafening roar of cheering. The pallid hue of terror vanished from faces that had but lately looked spectrally thin with speechless dread, and crowds of servile petitioners and place-hunters began to press eagerly round their monarch's chariot, ... when all at once a woman in the throng gave a wild scream and rushed away shrieking "THE OBELISK! ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... all the follies and the horrors to which it for a time gave rise—it was just this 'drop of foreign blood in the European family of nations,' this Semitic-Christian leaven, which, when the time of servitude was past, preserved that Western mind from falling even temporarily into a servile and barbarous decay. Things will not follow the last indicated course of evolution—exploitation will not persist alongside of increased productivity; and that is the reason why the indicated moral consequences ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... obliged to you, sir," said Big James simply, quite unaware that captious Edwin found his gratitude excessive and servile. "I'm the last now, sir, of the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... Capuae. In 216 B.C. Capua was, after Rome, the richest and most powerful city in Italy. As the result of Cannae she aspired to dominion over Italy. Spartacus acer, leader of the Servile War, 73-71 B.C. 6. novis rebus infidelis faithless to revolution, because they assisted in betraying Catiline's plot 63 B.C.—Wickham. 9. impia ... aetas we an impious generation whose blood is foredoomed ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... betake himself to Athens in search of wisdom? or, if he came thither by accident, how did the love of it ever touch his heart? But so it was, to Athens he came with three drachms in his girdle, and he got his livelihood by drawing water, carrying loads, and the like servile occupations. He attached himself, of all philosophers, to Zeno the Stoic,—to Zeno, the most high-minded, the most haughty of speculators; and out of his daily earnings the poor scholar brought ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various

... Houston was staring down at the printed lines of a copy of the contract and lease which had been shown him, days before, out in the mountains of Colorado. Blankly he looked toward the servile Jenkins, awaiting the return of the documents, then toward ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper

... speech on the militia bill in the House of Representatives, December 10, 1811, said: "I speak from facts when I say that the night-bell never tolls for fire in Richmond that the mother does not hug her infant more closely to her bosom." This was said apropos of the danger of a servile insurrection in the event of a war with England—a war which actually broke out in the year following, but was not attended with the slave rising which Randolph predicted. Randolph was a thorough-going "States rights" man, and though opposed to slavery on principle, ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers

... Socialism, for and against. Although every effort was made to boycott the Socialist contention in the Press, the Fabians were at last strong enough to compel its discussion, and they have by now canalized the whole thing into the direction of their "Servile State." I myself am no more than middle-aged, but I can remember the time when popular newspapers such as "The Star" openly printed arguments in favour of Collectivism, and though to-day those ...
— The Free Press • Hilaire Belloc

... by a young nation with a sort of fanatical admiration. The genius of those countries having been so often placed before it as the perfect model of all greatness and all beauty, every spontaneous movement has been repressed, in order to make room for the most servile imitation; and every national attempt to develop an original character has been sacrificed to the reproduction of something conformable to the model which has been always ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... 'We are human, and we need also the testimony of Poetry; and the priceless value of poetry for us lies in this, that it does not echo the Gospel like a parrot. If it did, it would be servile, superfluous. It is ministerial and useful because it approaches truth by another path. It does not say ditto to Mr. Burke—it corroborates. And it corroborates precisely because it does not say ditto, but employs a natural process of its own which it employed ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... records of vast empires. Under the Tsars a territory which was almost three times the size of the United States of America was occupied by a people who, with the exception of a few cases of individual revolt, were accustomed to the most servile obedience. Under Nicholas II a few men exercised rule in a most despotic form over more than 180,000,000 individuals spread over an immense territory. All obeyed blindly. Centralization was so great, and ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... them in the more advanced. Competitive industry introduced intelligence and self-reliance among the people. The doctrine of the equality of men elevated the spirit of the laborer, and dispersed, to a greater or less extent, as the doctrine made itself felt, that servile veneration which the lower classes paid to the higher; the essential dignity of labor is becoming acknowledged. To all these benefits, there have been, nevertheless, corresponding losses. Competitive industry has developed ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... Polish nobleman, selfish and wicked as now seems the fashion to describe him, force the peasant of Samogitia to servile work, when the latter had an opportunity of drawing a good profit from the results of his labor in the neighboring marts of Memel, Liban, Riga, Mittau, Venden, etc.? No, must we answer to our readers. There might have been seen a boor's wife dressed in sky blue lined with fox fur, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... simple and charming, yet melancholy in his hour, Montaigne is a thorough representative of the French spirit in literature. His English translator in 1776 declares that "he meets with a much more favourable entertainment in England than in his native country, a servile nation that has lost all sense of liberty." Like many other notions current in 1776, this theory of Montaigne's popularity at home and abroad has lost its truth. Perhaps it would be more true to say that Montaigne is one of the last authors whom ...
— Lost Leaders • Andrew Lang

... which the Law was read and expounded; and in the solemnity whereof they were put in mind, that their King was God; that having created the world in six days, he rested the seventh day; and by their resting on it from their labour, that that God was their King, which redeemed them from their servile, and painfull labour in Egypt, and gave them a time, after they had rejoyced in God, to take joy also in themselves, by lawfull recreation. So that the first Table of the Commandements, is spent all, in setting down the summe of Gods absolute Power; not ...
— Leviathan • Thomas Hobbes

... did not matter whether she was of the pure blood or of the metis. He had always ignored the Indian in her. She was a precious wildling of beauty and delight. By nature she was of the ruling race. There was in her nothing servile or dependent, none of the inertia that was so marked a mental characteristic of the Blackfoot and the Cree. Her slender body was compact of fire and spirit. She was ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine

... attained to a seat in the Cabinet—a feat one has known to be accomplished by persons of no proved intellectual agility. Having done this, I shall then, bearing in mind the aphorism of Lord Beaconsfield, that it is always better to be impudent than servile, essay an analysis of the ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell

... of the table was seated a lean, meager guide, obviously one of those Greeks who haunt the quays of Constantinople on the look out for arriving travelers. Now and then this Greek leaned forward and, with a sort of servile and anxious intelligence, spoke to his companion. He received no reply. The other man went on smoking and staring at the boite de surprises as if he were alone. And somehow he seemed actually to be alone, encompassed ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens

... Cupar a merchant whose store contained supplies of every character and description, so that he was commonly known by the sobriquet of Robbie A'Thing. One day a minister, who was well known for a servile use of MS. in the pulpit, called at the store, asking for a rope and pin to tether a young calf in the glebe. Robbie at once informed him that he could not furnish such articles to him. But the minister, being somewhat importunate, ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay

... on there was dreadful work at home. The slaves had, for the second time, broken into insurrection. This servile war was mainly in Sicily, where thousands of slaves were slain. Of the captives, many were taken to Rome to fight with wild beasts in the arena, but they disappointed the eager spectators by killing each other. This outbreak only made slavery at Rome ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... had themselves no better foundation than the conjectures derived from the tone and nature of the fables. AEsop was represented as droll, as a sort of wit, and by a development of the connection in the mind between humour and the ludicrous, they gave him an infirm body, hesitating speech, and servile condition. Improving the story, they said his figure frightened the servants of the merchant who bought him. At the same time many clever tricks and speeches were attributed to him. What we really glean from such stories is, ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange

... German tongue, as they chatted harmlessly with one another, reminded me pleasantly of home. In the rank and file, on the other hand, I could not possibly feel any confidence, for in them I saw chiefly the dull servile features of certain leading Slav races in the Austrian monarchy. One could not fail to recognise in them a certain brute force, but it was no less clear that they were entirely devoid of that naive intelligence which is such an attractive characteristic of ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner

... his hands with the deprecatory gesture of the Levantine. Long years of residence in the capitals of Europe had not wholly effaced the servile mannerisms of ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... in the sense that but for thought no motion would be an action, no change a progress; but thought is in no way instrumental or servile; it is an experience realised, not a force to be used. That same spontaneity in nature which has suggested a good must be trusted to fulfil it. If we look fairly at the actual resources of our minds we perceive ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... hundred degrees beyond kingdoms and principalities; himself is a kingdom unto himself. Compare with him the vulgar troop—stupid, base, servile, warring, floating on the sea of passions, depending wholly on others. There is more difference than between heaven and earth, yet in a blindness of custom we take little or no account of it. Whereas, if we consider a cottage and a king, a noble and a workman, a rich man and a poor, we ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various

... the government of the territory northwest of the river Ohio had contained a provision which prohibited the use of servile labor therein, subject to the condition of the extraditions of fugitives from service due in any other part of the United States. Subsequently to the adoption of the Constitution this provision ceased to ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin Pierce • Franklin Pierce

... Governantes among us in England, who being admitted into a Familiarity in Families, by Policy improve it into Friendship: this Friendship lets them into a Degree of Trust, which they are diligent to turn into the best Advantage; and having always little servile Ends of their own to obtain, their surest Step is to sow Dissention, and strengthen their own Interest, by alienating the Affections of the Wife from her Husband; whose Bread they are eating at ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe

... in relation to the sufferings and death of Christ. If God had exhausted the fearful penalty of the law upon poor, suffering, and degraded humanity, this would have been well calculated to inspire his creatures with a servile and trembling awe of him. From their limited and imperfect views of the evil of sin, and of the reasons why it should be punished, they would not have been prepared to acquiesce in such tremendous severity. Thus, one of the great ends of God's moral government would have been subverted: the affections ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe

... system. It was clearly found that, where out-door relief was abolished or rigorously limited, where no allowances were made in aid of wages, and where a manly self-reliance was encouraged instead of a servile mendicity, wages rose, honest industry revived, and the whole character of the village population was improved. Fortified by these successful experiments, the commissioners took a firm stand on the vital distinction, previously ignored, between poverty and pauperism. They did not shrink from ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick

... who could not help smiling at Burnet's weaknesses did justice to his abilities and virtues. The debate was hot. The unlucky Pastoral Letter was of course not forgotten. It was asked whether a man who had proclaimed that England was a conquered country, a man whose servile pages the English Commons had ordered to be burned by the hangman, could be a fit instructor for an English Prince. Some reviled the Bishop for being a Socinian, which he was not, and some for being a Scotchman, which he was. His defenders fought his battle gallantly. ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... in—most of the men hid and the women stood on the door-steps weeping. I suppose they expected to be treated in the manner that they had behaved to the French and Belgians, and as they would have done by us had the situation been reversed. When they found they were not to be oppressed they became servile and fawning. I had my officers' mess in the schoolmaster's house. He had been a non-commissioned officer of infantry, and yet he wanted to send his daughters in to play the piano for us after dinner. We would have despised the German less if he had been able to "hate" a little more after ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt

... two stories in height; most of the other houses are built in a circular form. The place has rather a pleasing appearance, being adorned by many clumps of trees. The soil is cultivated by a peaceable, industrious, half servile tribe, called the Cumbrie, who are often subjected to ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park

... same coffee-room windows, poor Pip looks under the reverses of his great expectations in consequence of the discovery and subsequent death of his patron. The "servile Pumblechook," who appears here uninvited, again changes his manner and conduct, becoming ostentatiously compassionate and forgiving, as he had been meanly servile in the time of Pip's new prosperity, thus:—"'Young man, I am sorry to see you ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... is this, but to give a preference to human laws before the divine? And if this is once admitted, by the same rule men may in all other things put what restrictions they please upon the laws of God. If by the Mosaical law, though it was rough and severe, as being a yoke laid on an obstinate and servile nation, men were only fined, and not put to death for theft, we cannot imagine that in this new law of mercy, in which God treats us with the tenderness of a father, He has given us a greater license to cruelty than He did to the Jews. Upon these reasons it is, that ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various

... which this conduct excited in all generous hearts was forcibly expressed by Rousseau, who, with all his errors, was seldom deficient in feeling for the wrongs of humanity. "You Frenchmen," said he, writing to one of that people, "are a thoroughly servile nation, thoroughly sold to tyranny, thoroughly cruel and relentless in persecuting the unhappy. If you knew of a freeman at the other end of the world, I believe you would go thither for the mere pleasure ...
— The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson • Robert Southey

... the menial who has no thought beyond the narrow sphere of his servitude, and the little pleasure which his light heart may transitorily enjoy. Here men saw no vitality in the hand that ruled: hence they maudled through that deadening scum of servile life that tramples ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... feudal nations spread. The pride of conquest every legion led. Each fur-clad chief, by servile crowds adored, O'er conquer'd realms assumed the name of lord, Built the proud castle, ranged the savage wood, Fired his grim host to frequent fields of blood, With new-made honors lured his subject bands, Price of their lives, and purchase of their ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow

... was summoned to her uncle's room. As she entered the door she passed a small, insignificant-looking man, plainly dressed, and of somewhat servile appearance, whom she remembered to have seen about the place several times since her arrival. He glanced at her in passing, and Virginia saw that his eyes, at any rate, were keen enough. She found her uncle, ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... perhaps most widely spread misconception about us Germans is that we are the serfs of our Princes. (Fuerstenknechte,) servile and dependent in political thought. That false notion has probably been dispelled during the initial weeks of the ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... Michaud and Sibilet mutually disliked each other. The frank and loyal soldier, with the sense of honor of a subaltern of the young "garde," hated the servile brutality and the discontented spirit of the steward. He soon took note of the objections with which Sibilet opposed all measures that were really judicious, and the reasons he gave for those that were questionable. Instead of ...
— Sons of the Soil • Honore de Balzac

... were recorded the notable events that happened in his work, or person, and as he rode over the rough roads, the broad sky became his study where he read many volumes every year. These were not done through any servile imitation, but because of an admiration and unconscious hero worship which compelled him to follow where he admired. Wesley was to William Black a saint, an ecclesiastical statesman, an acute and learned theologian, a ...
— William Black - The Apostle of Methodism in the Maritime Provinces of Canada • John Maclean

... audacity to be particular; but they'll daily have endless rows with the junior girls. (Lady Feng) has, with her fears about the future and her misgivings about the present, shown herself neither too overbearing nor too servile. This mistress of theirs is not friendly disposed towards us, but when she hears of her various proposals, shame might induce her to turn over ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... that foulness keep from sight— Fine manners in the most misfeatured wight; Fine shapes of art by servile fingers moulded; Fine wisdom ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves

... travelling blunderbuss to be only fired in the air, a circumstance "which greatly terrified all the petit monde!" It is very singular, that the Doctor should have frightened a French nobleman of Burgundy, by shaking his cane at him, and even made him assist in the most servile offices; and in the next town, terrify all the common people, by only firing ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... the said portentous Herald, and send it herewith, that you may read and know. As the human race forever stumbles up its great steps, so it is now. You remember the Reform Banquets [in Paris] last summer?—well!—the diners omitted the king's health, and abused Guizot's majority as corrupt and servile: the majority and the king grew excited; the Government forbade the Banquets to continue. The king met the Chamber with the words "passions aveugles" to characterize the dispositions of the Banqueters: and Guizot grandly declared against the spirit of Revolution all over ...
— A Writer's Recollections (In Two Volumes), Volume I • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... also mean hanging, but the usual term for the latter in The Nights is "shanak." Crucifixion, abolished by the superstitious Constantine, was practised as a servile punishment as late as the days of Mohammed Ali Pasha the Great e malefactors were nailed and tied to the patibulum or cross-piece without any sup pedaneum or foot-rest and left to suffer tortures from flies and sun, thirst and hunger. They often ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... Roman bow'd To pay his safety's vows; but when that face Had lost Tiberius once, its former grace Was soon eclips'd; no diff'rence made—alas!— Betwixt his statue then, and common brass, They melt alike, and in the workman's hand For equal, servile use, like others stand. Go, now fetch home fresh bays, and pay new vows To thy dumb Capitol gods! thy life, thy house, And state are now secur'd: Sejanus lies I' th' lictors' hands. Ye gods! what hearts and eyes Can one day's fortune change? ...
— Poems of Henry Vaughan, Silurist, Volume II • Henry Vaughan

... that I undervalue this class. I will come boldly to the other, composed of those who are neither servile not absolutists,—I repel this name, in my turn, with all the pride to which every sincere conviction has a right,—but who believe that humanity has in all times owed much to the mind and character of particular individuals; that there ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various

... Spartiate proprietor who took from them the greater part of the harvest. The Spartiates instructed them, feared them, and ill treated them. They compelled them to wear rude garments, beat them unreasonably to remind them of their servile condition, and sometimes made them intoxicated to disgust their children with the sight of drunkenness. A Spartiate poet compares the Helots to "loaded asses stumbling under their burdens and the ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos

... quenchless soul, Rising unto the stature of a man, That is to make life glorious and great, Dissolving matter in the spiritual, As the green pine dissolveth into flame; Not on the breath of popular applause That is the spectre of all nothingness; Not on the fawning of a servile crew, Who kiss the hem of fortune's purple robe, And lick the dust before prosperity, Waiting the cogging of the downward scale, To turn from slaves to bravos in the dark; Not on the favours of the politic, Who in the smile of honour, Persian-like, ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... councillors, each seems to be exercising some independent authority, but all are obedient to the presidents of stakes. The presidents apparently direct the ecclesiastical destinies of their districts, but they are, in fact, supine and servile under the commands of the apostles; and these, in turn, render implicit obedience to the Prophet, Seer and Revelator. No policy ever arises from the people. All direction, all command, comes from the man ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... Honesty is the best Policy—a maxim that few Italians believe. And here lies the trouble,—in the unfathomable, disheartening duplicity of the race. The children are not quarrelsome, nor cruel, nor brutal; but the servile defect of falsehood fixed by long generations of slavery in the Italians, is almost ineradicable. The fault is worse in Naples than elsewhere in Italy; but how bad it is everywhere, not merely travellers, but all residents in Italy, ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... by the power of His own godhead, warming into life that which had been made dead, having infused with the infinity of His divine power those humble first-fruits of our nature; made it also to be that which He himself was, the servile form to be the Lord, and the man born of Mary to be Christ, and Him, who was crucified through weakness, to be life and power, and making all such things as are piously conceived to be in God the Word to be also in that which the Word assumed; so that these attributes no longer seem to be in either ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.

... populace into castes rules here almost as imperiously as it does in India, and it will require generations of close contact with a more cultured and democratic people before these servile ideas can be obliterated. Though we hear little or nothing said about this matter, yet to an observant eye it has daily and hourly demonstration. The native Indians of Mexico are of a different race from their employers. Originally conquered ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou

... the first rank among works of the kind belonging to the sixteenth century. They contrast its sprightliness, its terse, telling phrases with the heavy, dragging constructions that disfigure the prose of contemporary works. Without copying in a servile fashion the Catilinarian speeches of Cicero, the "Tigre" breathes their spirit and lacks none of their force. Take, for example, the introductory sentences: "Tigre enrage! Vipere venimeuse! Sepulcre d'abomination! Spectacle de malheur! ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird

... of Surgeons, and such institutions which really have a motive in view—steadfastly adhered to—I saw, then as now, that every provincial museum was nothing if left to its own devices, and, if "inspired," was, at the best, but a sorry and servile imitator of the worst points ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne

... the signal," said he, "and this servile Russian nobility will rush hither, like fawning hounds, to bow before a new idol and pay ...
— The Daughter of an Empress • Louise Muhlbach

... unlawful man-trade, there's nothing to beat her in the way of thoroughness. It's true that you will find people who'll tell you that this terrific virulence in breaking through all established things, is altogether the fault of men. Such people will ask you with a clever air why the servile wars were always the most fierce; desperate and atrocious of all wars. And you may make such answer as you can—even the eminently feminine one, if you choose, so typical of the women's literal mind. "I don't see what this has to do with it!" How many arguments have ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad

... was over-servile, and elaborately cautious in pulling out his chair, but he stood, with his face quite white, and his back to the boy, and pulled out none for him. Henry Montagu had never yet bullied a waiter, and he did not bully now. But with an icy glare of reproof at the man, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... this, or any other, History to be shown essentially erroneous in our politics, who, that calls himself a Briton, can be deemed such an impious slave, as to conceal the destructive evil? The editor of this work disdains and abhors the servile thought, and wishes to live no longer than he dares to think, speak, write, and, in all things, to act worthy ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift

... as he advanced and saluted the dethroned monarch without a trace of anything servile; the Spanish gentleman spoke as he addressed his sovereign in a low tone, but his words were not audible to the young rifleman. Still the latter could interpret them to himself ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn

... These servile imitators of foreign pen soldiers were destined to see all their pet theories exploded by the grim old mountain puma from California and his brave Fifth Corps. They were to learn, so far as they are capable of learning, that ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker

... fair princess! fallen to this servile state, Wife and son rule not their actions, others ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous

... was a philosopher who minded pain little and the loss of a finger less, chuckled and chirped his satisfaction and pride of achievement in the outcome, while his three old wives, who lived only at the nod of his head, fawned under him on the floor in the abjectness of servile congratulation and worship. Long had they lived, and they had lived long only by his kingly whim. They floundered and gibbered and mowed at his feet, lord of life and death that he was, infinitely wise as ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London

... incident brings us to another feature of those times, the actual insurrections which took place among the slaves. Passing by the lesser excitements of Barbadoes and Demerara, we come to the great rising in Jamaica in 1832. A servile war is generally represented as displaying at every point its banners of flame, plashing its feet meanwhile in the blood of women and children. But the great insurrection of 1832, which, as it spread, included fifty thousand negroes in its train, was in the beginning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various

... who dream'st thy honor stands In ruling others, not thyself. Thy slaves Serve thee, and thou thy slave: in iron bands Thy servile spirit, pressed with wild passions, raves. Wouldst thou live honored?—clip ambition's wing: To reason's yoke thy furious passions bring: Thrice noble is the man who of himself is ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden

... the matting floor with the exaggerated humility of conventional gratitude. The lawyer wore a plain kimono of slate-grey silk. His American manners and his pomposity had both been laid aside with the tweed suit and the swallow-tail. He was now a plain Japanese business man, servile and adulatory in his patron's presence. Mr. Fujinami Gentaro bowed slightly in acknowledgment across the remnants ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... privileges. From this cause domestic service in America has had less of mutual kindliness than in old countries. Its terms have been so ill understood and defined that both parties have assumed the defensive; and a common topic of conversation in American female society has often been the general servile war which in one form or another was going on in their different families,—a war as interminable as would be a struggle between aristocracy and common people, undefined by any bill of rights or constitution, and therefore opening fields for endless ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... I-II, Q. 113] of which acts is the operation of God in turning the heart, according to Lam. 5:21: "Convert us, O Lord, to Thee, and we shall be converted"; the second, an act of faith; the third, a movement of servile fear, whereby a man is withdrawn from sin through fear of punishment; the fourth, a movement of hope, whereby a man makes a purpose of amendment, in the hope of obtaining pardon; the fifth, a movement of charity, whereby sin is ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... laurels for the brow Of blood-stained chief or regal conqueror; To Caesar or the Macedonian bow; Meteors of earth that set to rise no more: A hero-worship, as of old? Not now Should chieftain bend with servile reverence o'er The fading pageantry of Paynim lore. True heroes they whose consecrated vow Led them to Jewry, fighting for the Cross; While not by Avarice lured, or lust of power Inspired, they combated that Christ should reign, And life laid down for him counted no loss. On ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various

... little to laugh over. For the very rottenness of the service was due to the miserable and servile Ministry and Parliament of his Majesty, by means of which instruments he was forcing the colonies to the wall. Verily, that was a time when the greatness of England hung in the balance! How little I suspected that the young ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... innocent, at least defenceless—men, women, and children were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor; a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform any executioner's office at the bidding of the sultan had at least as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of revenge. In a political point of view this measure was not only without any rational object—for its financial purpose might have been attained without ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen



Words linked to "Servile" :   submissive, subservient, slavish, unfree, slavelike, sycophantic, bootlicking, unservile, obsequious, fawning, servility, toadyish



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