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More "Usurp" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to allow the study of psychism to usurp the legitimate place in life of intellectual and spiritual pursuits, and I look with abhorrence upon the flippant use made of the psychic faculties by a certain class of pseudo-occultists who serve up this kind of thing with their five o'clock ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... every thing else, nothing can be safe for him while you are under popular government: should any reverse ever befall him, (and many may happen to a man,) all who are now under constraint will come for refuge to you. For you are not inclined yourselves to encroach and usurp dominion; but famous rather for checking the usurper or depriving him of his conquests, ever ready to molest the aspirants for empire, and vindicate the liberty of all nations. He would not like that a free spirit should ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... thy lyre, my Harry, and I hear From thee some raptures of the rare Gotiere; Then if thy voice commingle with the string, I hear in thee rare Laniere to sing; Or curious Wilson: tell me, canst thou be Less than Apollo, that usurp'st such three? Three, unto whom the whole world give applause; Yet their three praises ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... have been taken long in advance. How are we to account for the fact that this young lady who came but the other day among us a stranger, even her name being scarcely known, and who still refrains from those 'bold advertisements,' which in the case of so many other managers and performers usurp the functions of the trumpet of fame, has made her way in a few short months only to the very highest place in the estimation of our play going public? We can see no possible explanation save the ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... way,' put in Agatha; 'she does not realize what a sting her words have. She told me last Sunday, when I unfortunately gave an order to some of my Sunday class in front of her, that however much I might try to slight her and usurp her place in the vicarage and parish I would not be successful, for the vicar was proof ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... king and his surrounding prelates, said, "There are the crown and sceptre which Canute intrusted to my charge. To you, I neither give nor refuse them, you may take them if you please; but I strictly forbid any of my brother bishops to usurp an office, which is the ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... nor bend over without getting palpitation—stumbling in my high-heeled shoes over the fields ploughed by cavalry and shell—breathlessly bent on carrying consolation to the dying. I knew that I should surely have to be picked up with the dead and dying, or, worse still, usurp a place in an ambulance, unless eternal justice—in spite of my age, my sex, and my white hairs—left me lying where I fell—and serve ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... remain a personality (i.e. a legal entity), such is the main interest and right of all persons, singly or collectively, and therefore of local communities and of the State itself; it must be careful not to abdicate and be careful not to usurp.—It renounces in favor of local societies when, through optimism or weakness, it hands a part of the public domain over to them; when it gives them the responsibility for the collection of its taxes, the appointment of its judges and police-commissioners, the employment ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... armed with his pains and penalties is the scientific sovereignty; and in the scientific diagrams the passions, 'the poor and private passions,' and the arbitrary will, in whomsoever they speak, no matter what symbols of sovereignty they have contrived to usurp, make no better figure in their struggles with that law, than that same which the poet's vivid imagination and intense perception of incompatibilities, has seized on here. The king struggles vainly against the might of the universal nature. It is but ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... can be the more readily transport me to you: it is then that my spirit holds with you a more tender and undivided commune. In the day the world can force itself upon my thoughts, and its trifles usurp the place which "I love to keep for only thee and Heaven;" but in the night all things recall you the more vividly: the stillness of the gentle skies,—the blandness of the unbroken air,—the stars, so ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... always been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the power which belongs to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... to me is a turn in an old Massachusetts road, over which, boy and man, I have traveled hundreds of times; one of those delightful back-roads, half road and half lane, where the grass grows between the horse-track and the wheel-track, while bushes usurp what ought to be the sidewalk. Here, one morning in the time when every day was disclosing two or three new species for my delight, I stopped to listen to some bird of quite unsuspected identity, who was calling and singing and scolding in the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... a Frenchman, Sir Norman! And what if the lady herself, finding her dazzling suitor drop his barnyard feathers, and soar over her head in his own eagle plumes, may not give you your dismissal, and usurp the place of ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... with the further narrative. "The King had entertained suspicions in consequence of the Prince's excesses, and the great recourse of people unto him, of which his court (p. 306) was at all times more abundant than his father's, that he would presume to usurp the crown; so that, in consequence of this suspicious jealousy, he withdrew in part his affection and singular love from the Prince.[292] He was accompanied by a large body of lords and gentlemen; but those he would not ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... dancing," or ballet dancing, by representations of historical incidents with graceful motion. In his "History of Pantomimes" the author is careful to distinguish between those entertainments where "Grin and grimace usurp the passions and affections of the mind," and those where "A nice address and management of the passions take up the thoughts of the performer." "Spectators," says Weaver, in 1730, or thereabouts, "are now so pandering ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... more of Flames in Love, That common dull pretence, Fools in Romances use to move Soft Hearts of little Sense: No, Strephon, I'm not such a Slave, Love's banish'd Power to own; Since Interest and Convenience have So long usurp'd his Throne. ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... highly dubious honor of being the one written law in the civilized world which fearlessly carries out absolutism to its last consequences."[779] In the Kongelov it was made lese-majeste in any manner to usurp or infringe the king's absolute authority; it was asserted that the moment the sovereign ascends the throne crown and scepter are vested in him by his own right; and the sole obligation of the king was affirmed to be to maintain the indivisibility ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... scorning safety, boldly roams Through woods and dreary wilds, to scour the land Of thieves and robbers? Is nought left for us? Must gentle woman quite forego her nature,— Force against force employ,—like Amazons, Usurp the sword from man, and bloodily Revenge oppression? In my heart I feel The stirrings of a noble enterprize; But if I fail—severe reproach, alas! And bitter misery will be my doom. Thus on my knees I supplicate the gods. Oh, are ye truthful, as men say ye are, Now prove it by your countenance ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Locke suggested is of more doubtful value. Government, he says, in substance, is a trustee and trustees abuse their power; let us therefore divide it as to parts and persons that the temptation to usurp may be diminished. There is a long history to this doctrine in its more obvious form, and it is a lamentable history. It tied men down to a tyrannous classification which had no root in the material it was supposed to ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... corrupted for nine centuries, but at Evreux, and in Thor's own city of Bayeux, John Bull may find good meat and good vegetables, and plenty of them to boot. Then look at those strong, well-fed horses—what a contrast to the poor, half-starved, flogged, over-worked beasts which usurp the name further south! Look at those goodly cows, fed in good pastures, and yielding milk thrice a day; they claim no sort of sisterhood with the poverty-stricken animals which, south of the Loire, ...
— Sketches of Travel in Normandy and Maine • Edward A. Freeman
... his impending fate Eluded, had not Phoebus, at his last, 235 Last effort meeting him, his strength restored, And wing'd for flight his agile limbs anew? The son of Peleus, as he ran, his brows Shaking, forbad the people to dismiss A dart at Hector, lest a meaner hand 240 Piercing him, should usurp the foremost praise. But when the fourth time to those rivulets. They came, then lifting high his golden scales, Two lots the everlasting Father placed Within them, for Achilles one, and one 245 For Hector, balancing the doom of both. Grasping it in the midst, he raised the beam. ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the young man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue her from ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... efforts. He also opposed the Absolute Veto and led the fight for the sequestration of the property of the Church. This course made him a popular idol and in the early days of the Revolution he was the leader of the extreme wing of the Republicans. When he saw, however, that mob law was about to usurp the place of the Republican institutions for which he had striven, he leaned towards the court and advocated the sacrosanctity of the King's person. Denounced as a renegade, with his life threatened ...
— The World's Best Orations, Vol. 1 (of 10) • Various
... altogether, where another scheme of nature obtained. It is colossal presumption in human beings to give examples to be followed, which, should they be followed, would end the human race. The Supreme Being will end it in His own time; it is not for us to usurp authority." ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... and utility themselves they cannot impart the art to their pupils. As I have said, librarians contend that this is true, yet many of them with opportunities to instruct teachers in these matters lying unused before them, neglect them and coolly step in to usurp one of the school's functions ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... prisoners in different chambers of the Tower. These acts of violence, exercised against the nearest connections of the late King, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenceless children; and after the murder of Hastings, the Protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. The licentious life of Edward afforded a pretence for declaring his marriage with the Queen invalid and all his posterity illegitimate. It was also maintained that the act of attainder passed against the Duke of Clarence had virtually incapacitated his children from ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... Complexion swarthy, and his Cloaths (perhaps) as rotten as if he had been bury'd in 'em. However, unpleasant as it was, she could not forbear gazing after this miserable Spectacle; and the more she beheld it, the more she was confirmed it was Gracelove, or something that had usurp'd his Figure. In short, she could not rest 'till she call'd to one of her Servants, who rode by the Coach, whom she strictly charg'd to go to that poor Traveller, and mount him on his Horse, 'till ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn
... however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble all day at will. At night he may sleep on a mat under the moon, ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... known. She had been hard and wild enough at first, but just now, when she slipped down upon the door-step with her back turned to the wretched man within—when it came upon her that, traitor as he was, she herself had given him the right to take her bright-faced lover's place, and usurp his tender power—when the fresh sea-breeze blew upon her face and stirred her hair, and the warm, rare sunshine touched her, even breeze and sunshine helped her to the end, so that she broke down into a sharp sob, as any other woman might have done, only that the repressed ...
— One Day At Arle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the new democracy, which was an object of abhorrence to the great comic genius; and Thucydides, a born aristocrat, of strong oligarchical sympathies, looked with cold scorn and aversion on the coarse mechanic, [Footnote: Cleon was a tanner by trade.] who presumed to usurp the place, and ape the style, of a true leader ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... the book she had in hand; its phrases seemed to fall into triviality. Yet—she reasoned at a later time—it should not have been so; the haggard gaze of fate should not daunt one; pity is but an element in the soul's ideal of order, it should not usurp a barren sovereignty. It is the miserable contradiction in our lot that the efficiency of the instincts of beauty-worship waits upon a force of individuality attainable only by a sacrifice of sensibility. Emily divined this. So it was ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... what he wills. You say with pride, "My people are my subjects." Granted, but what are you? The subject of your ministers. And your ministers, what are they? The subjects of their clerks, their mistresses, the servants of their servants. Grasp all, usurp all, and then pour out your silver with both hands; set up your batteries, raise the gallows and the wheel; make laws, issue proclamations, multiply your spies, your soldiers, your hangmen, your prisons, and your chains. Poor little men, what good ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... of honey. A most unexpected discovery, made a few hundred yards from my door, has warned me once again how dangerous it is to generalize. To take it for granted, as the mass of data hitherto collected seemed to justify us in doing, that all the Meloidae of our country usurp the stores of honey accumulated by the Bees, was surely a most judicious and natural generalization. Many have accepted it without hesitation; and I for my part was one of them. For on what are ...
— The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles • Jean Henri Fabre
... This, they say, is one of those matters about which we ought not to legislate at all; one of those matters which settle themselves far better than any government can settle them. Now it is most important that this point should be fully cleared up. We certainly ought not to usurp functions which do not properly belong to us: but, on the other hand, we ought not to abdicate functions which do properly belong to us. I hardly know which is the greater pest to society, a paternal government, that ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... with olive-groves and the gleam of the villages, while here and there a single palm dreamed of its brothers across the sea. Etna, of course, had the monarch's place in the landscape, but even his large, magnificent outlines could not usurp all my feeling. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland, had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they leaned towards each other, there was a promise of the flowery meadows of ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... the saddle and obeyed, while Warrington and the other man faced back to back, watching each way against surprise. In India, as in lands less "civilized," the cavalry are not allowed to usurp the functions of police, and the officer or man who tries it does so at his own risk. There came a sound of sudden thundering on teak that ceased after ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... wife to learn her secret—how that she was the only daughter of the rightful emperor, the Prince Kung-ti, whose guardian and chief adviser the present emperor had been; how this trusted protector had made away with poor Kung-ti in order that he might usurp the throne; and how she, the Princess Woo, had been flung into the swift Hwang-ho, from the turbid waters of which she had been rescued by the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... of the sun, and all other stars where God placed him on the cherubims; he had a kingly office, and was always before God's seat, to the end he might be the more perfect in all his being; but when he began to be high-minded, proud, and so presumptuous, that he would usurp the seat of God's Majesty, then was he banished out from amongst the heavenly powers, separated from their abiding, into the manner of a fiery stone, that no water is able to quench, but continually burneth until ...
— Mediaeval Tales • Various
... corroding jealousy usurp Your Royal breast, unnumber'd ills attend The wretch who ...
— The Prince of Parthia - A Tragedy • Thomas Godfrey
... hair and apt to be startled by the slightest sound when he is alone. And what a lot of them write poetry, and such poetry too! That is the manner of the man who is going to seize your house and usurp your cow, while you will be lucky if you are allowed a place on a perch in your ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... Man, said he, I would have you banish all Fear; you are not fallen into the Hands of barbarous Christians, whose Practice and Profession are as distant as the Country they came from, is from this Island, which they have usurp'd from the original Natives. Capt. Cuffey's returning the Service you once did him, by saving your Life, which we shall not, after the Example of your Country, take in cold Blood, may give you a Specimen of our Morals. We believe in, and fear a God, ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll - Latest • Robert Green Ingersoll
... the marriage in no friendly tone: "When" (says he) "King Charles was put to death, and Oliver Cromwell Protector of England, and Richard Maijor of his privy council, and Noll his eldest son Richard married to Mr. Maijor's daughter Doll, then Mr. Maijor did usurp authority over his tenants at Hursley." In another place he says that "he" (i.e. Mr. Maijor) "set forth horse and man for the Parliament, and was a captain and justice of peace. Lord Richard Cromwell was also a justice of peace, and John Dunch ...
— John Keble's Parishes • Charlotte M Yonge
... these being priests, yet presuming to meddle with the priest's office. A rule for all persons, being not church officers, yea, though they be princes or supreme magistrates, that they are hereby warned by the divine law, not to usurp church authority or offices to themselves. God rewarded the Corinthians with the judgments of weakness, sickness, and death, for unworthy receiving of the Lord's supper, 1 Cor. xi. 30. So that this is a divine warning for all after churches ...
— The Divine Right of Church Government • Sundry Ministers Of Christ Within The City Of London
... she would be happier than with him; truly and solemnly he declared that if Alice rejected him still, if even Alice were no more, his suit to Evelyn never could be renewed, and Alice's memory would usurp the place of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... This ostentatious exhibition of usurped power is always closed with a diplomatic review of the representatives of lawful Princes, who introduce on those occasions their fellow-subjects to another subject, who successfully has seized, and continues to usurp, the authority of his own Sovereign. What an example for ambition! what ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... both revered among the gods. They ask what brings her there: 'Ne'er ask,' says she, 'What brings me here, heaven is no place for me. You'll see, when night has covered all things o'er, 150 Jove's starry bastard and triumphant whore Usurp the heavens; you 'll see them proudly roll In their new orbs, and brighten all the pole. And who shall now on Juno's altars wait, When those she hates grow greater by her hate? I on the nymph a brutal form impress'd, Jove to a goddess has transformed the beast; This, this was all my weak revenge ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... looked a little perplexed, as if she could not understand how it could be otherwise than wrong for a girl to usurp ...
— The Teacher • Jacob Abbott
... peered out where the spruce-bough lodge had been and saw what made his hair leap straight up on his neck and shoulders. A gust of overpowering rage swept over him. He did not know that he growled, but he growled aloud with a terrible ferocity. For the last time in his life he allowed passion to usurp cunning and reason, and it was because of his great love for John Thornton ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... This was a question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to the suspicion of nocturnal careerings ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... Whiskers, the grasping Blackwater saloon-keeper, and with the equally avaricious Dusty Rhodes—who had been trying to steal more than their share of the prospect and to beat her out of her third. They had thought to ignore her, to brush her aside and usurp her share in the claim; but Wunpost had defended her and protected her rights and put them back where they belonged. And it was for this that he had seized Dusty Rhodes by the throat and kicked down the saloon-keeper's bar. But she wondered what would happen if, at some future ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... recalled from exile, were not restored, by that general indulgence, to the possession of their respective churches; and he expressed his astonishment, that a criminal, who had been repeatedly condemned by the judgment of the emperors, should dare to insult the majesty of the laws, and insolently usurp the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria, without expecting the orders of his sovereign. As a punishment for the imaginary offence, he again banished Athanasius from the city; and he was pleased to suppose, that this act of justice would be highly agreeable to his pious subjects. The pressing ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... world. Candidly, had they ever seen such a chauffeur and footman before? Did they look like servants? Of course they had Mr. Bumble's—their master's—confidence. But had they the jury's? He did not wish to usurp the functions of the cinema or the stage, but it was his duty to remind them that sometimes Truth was stranger than Fiction.... Here were two servants, who were obviously not servants at all, giving such overwhelming satisfaction ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... rashness of folly? And while he lived, had not his master Socrates the victory of an unjust death in my presence, whose inheritance, when afterward the mob of Epicures, Stoics, and others (every one for his own sect) endeavoured to usurp, and as it were in part of their prey, sought to draw me to them, exclaiming and striving against them; they tore the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and having gotten some little pieces of it, thinking me to be wholly in their possession, departed. Some of whom, because ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... to work miracles among them. Satan tempted Jesus to tempt the Father. It is as truly a blasphemous interference with the prerogatives of Deity to set limitations or make fixations of time or place at which the divine power shall be made manifest as it is to attempt to usurp that power. God alone must decide when and how His wonders shall be wrought. Once more the purposes of Satan were thwarted and Christ again ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... case would be far different if expeditions were set on foot within our own territories to make private war against a powerful nation. If such expeditions were fitted out from abroad against any portion of our own country, to burn down our cities, murder and plunder our people, and usurp our Government, we should call any power on earth to the strictest account for not preventing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... and moral of my readers—cannot put out the fire that nature kindles in the adoring heart of woman. Her error was not that she loved Michael more, but that she had loved Mildred less. Ambition, if it usurp the rights of love, must look for all the punishment that love inflicts. Sooner or later it must come. "Who are you?" enquires the little god of the greater god, ambition, "that you should march into my realms, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... the mother which forms the basis of the first conception of the mother. After that, the gradually discriminated taste of the mother, and scent of the mother. Till gradually sight and hearing develop and largely usurp the first three senses, as medium of correspondence ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... in America will too much supersede and usurp the place of books, and lead to a superficial knowledge of things. Gleaning the papers in search of that which is really useful, candid, and fair seems too much like hunting for grains of wheat in ...
— Personal Memoirs Of A Residence Of Thirty Years With The Indian Tribes On The American Frontiers • Henry Rowe Schoolcraft
... Dax, the Feuillants, taking the title of "Friends of the French Constitution," have split up with the Jacobins,[2133] and, moreover, they insist on excluding from the National Guard "foreigners without property or position," the passive citizens who are admitted into it in spite of the law, who usurp the right of voting and who "daily affront tranquil inhabitants." Consequently, on election day, in the church where the primary meeting is held, two of the Feuillants, Laurede, formerly collector of the vingtiemes,, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... it is this: The Emperor loves you, it is true; he calls you his most faithful servant, and promises ever to be a gracious Sovereign to you, but he will never further your projects of becoming an independent ruler, and will not assist you to effect the Elector's ruin, that you may usurp his place. He rather wishes you to remain what you are—Stadtholder in the Mark—and to exert all your energies in maintaining that position, since the Emperor relies upon your good offices for securing him an ally in the Elector. The Mark is to remain Frederick William's domain, but ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... Constantinople, on many occasions to give up the possession of it to others, as a charge full of danger and expense; and sometimes, without his permission, the Romans, seeing themselves so abandoned, created an emperor for their defense, or suffered some one to usurp the dominion. This occurred at the period of which we now speak, when Maximus, a Roman, after the death of Valentinian, seized the government, and compelled Eudocia, widow of the late emperor, to take him for her husband; but she, being of imperial blood, scorned ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... out of the whole Legislature at the same time, and the instantaneous election of a new one; on the other hand, it excludes that common interest from taking place that might tempt a whole Legislature, whose term of duration expired at once, to usurp the right of continuance. I go now ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... ambition by "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making a sop in the ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... which prides itself on ignoring nothing which is published with the idea of being read, my experiences for observation have been somewhat unusual. The increase in the number of books, and the eagerness of the public to learn about them at the earliest possible moment, have caused the daily press to usurp some of the functions formerly enjoyed by the monthly reviews. The latter do little more than mention the vast majority of publications and confine more and more their critical talents to what they consider conspicuous and ...
— The Building of a Book • Various
... not a woman to teach, not to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... went trying the land with a pole or staff until they arrived at this Huanay-pata, when they were satisfied. They were sure of its fertility, because after sowing perpetually, it always yielded abundantly, giving more the more it was sown. They determined to usurp that land by force, in spite of the natural owners, and to do with it as they chose. So they returned ...
— History of the Incas • Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa
... fair one, who usurp'st the place Of Blanch, the Lady of the matchless grace? Come, fair and pretty, tell to me Who in thy lifetime thou mightst be? Thou pretty art and fair, But with the Lady Blanch thou never must compare. No need for Blanch her history to tell, Whoever saw her face, they ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... resort to the bayonet. If such a fratricidal course should ever be thought of in our country, it will not be by those who seek redress of wrongs, by exercising the right of petition, but by those only who deny that right to others, and seek to usurp the whole power of the Government. If the ballot box fail them, the bayonet may be their resort, as mobs and violence now are. Does the Senator believe that any portion of the honest yeomanry of the country entertain such thoughts? I hope he does not. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... Commune of Paris to modify the decree, which assures pensions to the legitimate or illegitimate companions of the National Guards, killed in the defence of our municipal rights. No half measures. We, the illegitimate companions, will no longer suffer the legitimate wives to usurp rights they no longer possess, and which they ought never to have had at all. Let the decree be modified. All for the free women, ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... ground would be hypocrisy which the world would detect at once. Let her make her ultimatum, and there are enough generous minds in Europe that will counteract her in the balance. Of course her motive is to cripple a power that rivals her in commerce and manufactures, that threatens even to usurp her history. In twenty more years of prosperity, it will require a close calculation to determine whether England, her laws and history, claim for a home the Continent of America or the Isle of Britain. Therefore, finding us ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... severe— Why need the dismal powdered forms appear? When chilling horrors shake the affrighted king, And guilt torments him with her scorpion sting, When keenest feelings at his bosom pull, And fancy tells him that the seat is full; Why need the ghost usurp the monarch's place, To frighten children with his mealy face? The king alone should form the phantom there, And talk and tremble ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... paid their hongo through him. He thought it most unjust and unfair of Baraka to call him to account in that way, but he was not surprised at it, as Baraka, from the beginning of the journey to the present moment, had always been backbiting him, to try and usurp his position. Baraka, at this, somewhat taken aback, said there were no such things as perquisites on a journey like this; for whatever could be saved from the chiefs was for the common good of all, and all alike ought to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... and commonplace, not by any number of rekindlings in men's bosoms, but by out-of-door reflections without inward kindling. Saying is the royal son of Seeing; but there is many a pretender to the throne; and when these supposititious people usurp, age after age, the honors that are not theirs, the throne and government ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... among the Rhodians, who flourished by the liberty of commerce; and even among the sage Athenians, who had asserted and adorned the dignity of human kind. The acquiescence of the provincials encouraged their governors to acquire, or perhaps to usurp, a discretionary power of employing the rack, to extort from vagrants or plebeian criminals the confession of their guilt, till they insensibly proceeded to confound the distinction of rank, and to disregard the privileges ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... pow'r shall cease: behold his walls Now close encircled by the Grecian bands; Timoleon leads them on; indignant Corinth Sends her avenger forth, array'd in terror, To hurl ambition from a throne usurp'd, And bid all Sicily resume ...
— The Grecian Daughter • Arthur Murphy
... splendour which is Egypt's, the world became less mysterious, more familiar. Things relating to the day's work forced themselves upon Michael's mind. His bath and breakfast and many other practical things began to usurp his thoughts, while the barking of dogs, the movement in the hut of the "boys," brought him back to the common, everyday life of the ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... day these leaders and agitators tend more and more to usurp the place of the public authorities in proportion as the latter allow themselves to be called in question and shorn of their strength. The tyranny of these new masters has for result that the crowds obey them much more docilely than they have obeyed any government. If in consequence of ...
— The Crowd • Gustave le Bon
... led the way, followed close by old Betsy, Billy following her close and next in order. The young claybank horse, which made Moise so much trouble, now undertook to usurp a place just back of Betsy instead of falling to the rear of the train where he belonged. But as he approached meek-looking old Billy, the latter laid back his ears and kicked violently at the claybank, hitting him in ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... like to offer their services; and a king always desires as large a levy as possible, because it enables him to overawe his barons. These, when their "war", or forces, are collected together in camp, are often troublesome, and inclined to usurp authority. A volunteer is, therefore, always welcome in the ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... long shall Sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and unchain thy powers? 10 While artful shades thy downy couch inclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases year with unremitted flight; Till Want now following, ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... and that they had stood like a rampart when the kingdom was invaded by the levelling doctrines of Republicanism and equality. And though the Kalonays were men of stouter stuff than their cousins of Artois, they had never tried to usurp their place, but had set an example to the humblest shepherd of unfailing loyalty and good-will to the King and his lady. The Prince Kalonay, who had accompanied the Dominican monk to Messina, was the last of his race, and when Louis IV. had been driven off the island, he had followed his ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... led to a revolution in the very nature of musical creation and to a new form which was seemingly intended to usurp the place of the symphony. It is clear that the symphonic poem is in very essence opposed to the symphony. The genius of the symphony lies in the overwhelming breadth and intensity of its expression without the aid of words. Vainly decried by a later age of shallower perception, it achieved ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... ministry had no right to impose taxes so long as the assembly was unable peaceably to pursue its deliberations, and designed, by giving this resolution the form of a law, to lead the people in this manner to break loose from the Government. This attempt to usurp authority was doomed to be disappointed. The assembly, having overstepped its prerogatives, lost its influence. The king found himself again in possession of the reins of power. It rested with him to punish the temerity of the people by tightening ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... too much for Milton's outraged dignity. Bennett did not allow him that coveted privilege. This upstart could not usurp it. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... has been cleared off by man, gigantic grasses usurp the clearances. None of the sylvan vegetation can stand the annual grass-burnings except a species of Bauhinia, and occasionally a large tree which sends out new wood below the burned places. The parrots build thereon, and the men make a stair up 150 feet by ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone
... change the whole complexion of living. The little things, the annoyances, the disappointments, the failures, the pains, the sorrows, the passions, we see in their true perspective and they no longer usurp importance, because we are beginning to learn the significance of the things beyond. The incidents of life are no ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... Chartres was aware of this design. It is certain that in the army, as well as among the moderates of the interior, the prince would have found a crowd of adherents. But he was too conscientious to usurp a crown which had just fallen in blood—too good a son to authorize proceedings which would have endangered the life of his father; in short, too enlightened, too prudent, notwithstanding his extreme youth, to be instrumental in any ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... they seduce in all nations, and they who feel the triviality of them, imitate them. It is true that the titles of Count and Marquis have fallen into the dust because of the quantity of people without wealth, and even without land, who usurp them; and that they have become so worthless, that people of quality who are Marquises or Counts (if they will permit me to say it) are silly enough to be annoyed if those titles are given to them in conversation. It is certain, ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... dispelled at last by the new growth of learning, and the consequences following upon it. The best intelligence of the time was confined to the clergy, who used it skilfully to maintain their authority. By every device they sought to usurp to themselves the sole power of ministering to popular wants. Nothing which could strike the mind through the senses was neglected. They offset tournaments by religious shows and pageantry, rivalled the attractions of the harp by sacred music, and to wean ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman
... throne of Augustin, should be called Your Grace, and should walk in processions before the Premier Duke; but, in spite of the legislature, Sancroft would, while Sancroft lived, be the only true Archbishop of Canterbury; and the person who should presume to usurp the archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... practised, for neither the warnings of her counsellor, nor the lessons of her own experience, were proofs against the terrors which threats so desperate inspired: and though more than once she determined to fly at all events from a tyranny he had so little right to usurp, the mere remembrance of the words if you stay not till night I will not live, robbed her of all courage; and however long she had prepared herself for this very attack, when the moment arrived, its power over her mind ...
— Cecilia vol. 2 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... well, Mr. Colbert," asked Mrs. Dunmore; "or do you trespass upon the hours necessary to your repose and recreation that you are so much thinner and paler than you used to be? I fear I must usurp your prerogative and turn preacher if you are really destroying your health by too great devotion ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... bluebells' nodding carillons Each breezy morn, and then white jessamine, That star of its own heaven, snap-dragons With lolling crimson tongues, and eglantine In dusty velvets clad usurp the bed And woodland empery, and when the ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde
... of seeing an eye, warns you that watchful enemies are seeking the slightest chance to work injury to your business. This dream indicates to a lover, that a rival will usurp him if he is ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... have them do to him, as soon as a wife to a husband or a husband to a wife, I am utterly at a loss to know. The wife is "subject to her husband in all things" by divine precept. He is her "head," and God "suffers her not to usurp authority over him." Now, why in such a relation as this, we can do to others as we would they should do to us, any sooner than in a relation, securing to us what is just and equal as servants, and due respect and faithful service rendered with good ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various
... shapeless lump, like anarchy. In friendship false, implacable in hate; Resolved to ruin, or to rule the state. To compass this, the triple bond[69] he broke; The pillars of the public safety shook; And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke: Then seized with fear, yet still affecting fame, Usurp'd a patriot's all-atoning name. So easy still it proves, in factious times, 180 With public zeal to cancel private crimes! How safe is treason, and how sacred ill, Where none can sin against the people's will! Where crowds can wink, and ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... power to those who are unaccustomed to it is always dangerous, and I blame myself for permitting you to usurp the post of pilot. Though, as you seem determined to maintain it, I cannot choose but to sit down here quietly, and trust our lives to your skill. My life indeed! But yours? Seriously now, my fair young lady, would it ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... often mentioned before—the purification of Ithaca, chiefly by the slaughter of the Suitors, "the shameless set, who usurp thy house and woo thy wife." Sitting on the roots of the sacred olive, the two, the man and the deity, plan destruction to the guilty. Verily those double elements, the human and the divine, must ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... range of probability; whereas, that is not at all adhered to in many novels—witness the drinking-scene in ——, and others equally outrees, in which the author, having turned probability out of doors, ends by throwing possibility out of the window—leaving folly and madness to usurp their place—and play a thousand antics for the admiration of the public, who, pleased with ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... party turned him to ridicule, the others proclaimed him revolutionary, dangerous, and an enemy of the fundamental ideas on which society rests. The minister of one little church preached, in inuendoes, against the Prometheuses who aspired to usurp the prerogatives of Heaven. But the rector of the parish did not hesitate to say, in five or six houses, that the cure of a man as desperately sick as M. Fougas, would be an evidence of the ...
— The Man With The Broken Ear • Edmond About
... by the stipulations of the Armistice, he must have been astonished at the schools being shut on the day after his arrival. And they remained shut, both the modern school and the middle-class girls' school for months, because the Professor's quite illegal attempt to usurp the inspectorship was resented. The secondary school was closed and the teachers who had come to [vS]ibenik with their families, but whose permanent domicile was elsewhere, received an order, delivered by carabinieri, that they would have to leave the town in four days. ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... a country clown, Who yet knew something of the town, Beheld the mimic of his whim, And on the morrow challenged him Declaring to each beau and belle That he this grunter would excel. The morrow came—the crowd was greater— But prejudice and rank ill-nature Usurp'd the minds of men and wenches, Who came to hiss and break the benches. The mimic took his usual station, And squeak'd with general approbation; Again "Encore! encore!" they cry— "'Tis quite the thing, 'tis very high." Old ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... cold, and my aunt has let loose Dr. Wade upon me. Please come directly, if you will save me from ever so much nasty medicine, at the least. My aunt is not my mother, thank heaven! though she would gladly usurp that relationship. ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... conduct of it, I should willingly have assisted my country with my person or my counsels; but, my lords, this man, who engrosses all authority, seems, likewise, to believe that he is in possession of all knowledge, and that he is equally capable, as he is equally willing, to usurp the supreme and uncontroulable direction both of civil ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 10. - Parlimentary Debates I. • Samuel Johnson
... night he slept badly in his new abode, for it seemed to him as if the spectre of the man whose place he was to usurp was hovering over his couch. But with the dawn of day, and especially when the hour arrived for him to go out and give his lessons, he felt his courage return to him, though rashness perhaps would be the more correct word. And with a mien of perfect confidence he repaired ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... passions usurp the separate command of the successive periods of life. To the happiness of our first years nothing more seems necessary than freedom from restraint: every man may remember that if he was left to himself, and indulged in the disposal of his own time, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, In Nine Volumes - Volume the Third: The Rambler, Vol. II • Samuel Johnson
... (De Civ. Dei i) [*Can. Quicumque percutit, caus. xxiii, qu. 8]: "A man who, without exercising public authority, kills an evil-doer, shall be judged guilty of murder, and all the more, since he has dared to usurp a power which God ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... characters are rightly estimated. The Sagas, which in many things are ironical or reticent, do not conceal their standard of measurement or value, in relation to which characters and actions are to be appraised. They do not, on the other hand, allow this ideal to usurp upon the rights of individual characters. They are imaginative, dealing in actions and characters; they are not ethical or sentimental treatises, or mirrors ...
— Epic and Romance - Essays on Medieval Literature • W. P. Ker
... described; and here he has contrived to enliven his poem with a little of that passion which bids fair, I think, to usurp the modern muses altogether. I know not how far this episode is a beauty upon the whole, but the swain's wish to carry "some faint idea of the vision bright," to entertain her "partial listening ear," is a pretty thought. But in my opinion the most beautiful ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... you going? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach the word of God in all humility? And do you now presume to usurp these estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these fees? Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and your ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... neighbours. No better specimen can be adduced than the extravagant action of which he now stands accused, and the absurd tale by which he attempts to apologise for the commission of it. That madness may no longer usurp the palace of reason, to revel upon the ruins of his mind, deliver him to the sons of ingenuity, the preservers and restorers of health; let them purify his blood by sparing diet, abridge him of his daily potations, ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... others may design only to advance the public interest and to govern well. The system which permits an honest and well-meaning man to do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish ambition to usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power concentrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully observed and jealously maintained limitations upon the power of every public officer that the workings of free institutions ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... the one who ever keeps himself under strict discipline, who never once allows the lower to usurp the place of the higher in him; who makes his passions his servants and never allows them to be his master; who is ever led by his mind and not by his inclinations. He drills and disciplines his desires ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... acknowledged her guilt in having attempted to seize her cousin's crown. As the attempt to seize this crown failed, mankind consider her technically guilty. If it had succeeded, Mary, instead of Jane, would have been the traitor who would have died for attempting criminally to usurp ...
— Queen Elizabeth - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... ones, born under evil stars, ye who rob the widows and orphans, who ravish or despoil those who possess least, who steal from and occupy or usurp the homes of other men, and with that spoil you furnish forth feasts, women, horses, arms, robes, money; you wear wonderful garments, you build marvellous palaces; and you believe that you do deeds of great liberality: and this is no other than to take the cloth from the altar ...
— The Banquet (Il Convito) • Dante Alighieri
... not with a wife at his side. Oh, yes; they would be happy at first. Then Elsa would begin to miss the things she had so gloriously thrown away. The rift in the lute; the canker in the rose. They were equally well-born, well-bred; politeness would usurp affection's hold. Could he save her from the day when she would learn Romance had come from within? No. All he could do was to help ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... William Douglas, coldly, indicating with his finger the trampled cloth, "is not the banner of Scotland, but only that of the Seneschal Stewarts. The King of Scots is but a puling brat, and they who usurp his name are murderous hounds whose necks I shall presently ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... of the whole matter: the President's insistence upon efficiency. Roosevelt, however, did not snatch rudely away from the Congressmen and Senators the appointing power which his predecessors had allowed them gradually to usurp. He continued to consult each member of the Congress upon appointments in that member's State or district and merely demanded that the men recommended for office should be honest, capable, and fitted for the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt and His Times - A Chronicle of the Progressive Movement; Volume 47 in The - Chronicles Of America Series • Harold Howland
... congregation demanded a fuller control of its own affairs, Handschuh and his elders sternly resisted the demand, and were convinced that the world would fall if the whole congregation were allowed to usurp the control which could only be wisely exercised by a few selectmen. The peril and strife grew so great, that after a long struggle it became an unavoidable necessity that Muehlenberg should be recalled ...
— The Organization of the Congregation in the Early Lutheran Churches in America • Beale M. Schmucker
... with sleeves rolled above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his features that looked to me as though he had fixed it there purposely as a protection against the weakness of an inherent amiability that, he fancied, were better concealed. And then I let supper usurp his brief ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... the camp. Certain expeditions, however, were made in the neighborhood, and several towns fell into the hands of the Christians. Meantime, news arrived that an army of Egyptian Arabs—who acknowledged the Fatimite caliphs, and had as yet resisted the attempt of the Turks to usurp dominion over all the followers of the Prophet—had captured Jerusalem. The Crusaders, filled with indignation, resumed their march to the Holy City, conquering on their way several towns. Embassadors were sent from the Caliph of Cairo with superb presents to the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... from the Java coast to Heligoland. Came Paradies, the little German trader, in his finest blacks, and chose a seat off in one corner of the room. Then "Foxy Grandpa" and the "Arizona Babe" arrived, and the old maid from Zamboanga, who, when expression failed her, would usurp the conversation with a "blab, blab, blab!" And as the serpent made for old Laocooen, so she now made ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert
... the reason, usurps its place or leaves its ally helplessly entangled in its web. Names which stand for things are confounded with them; the means are mistaken for the end; the instrument of interpretation for the object; and thus symbols come to usurp an independent character as truths and persons. Though perhaps a necessary path, they were a dangerous one by which to approach the Deity; in which many, says PLUTARCH, "mistaking the sign for the thing signified, fell into a ridiculous superstition; ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... himself in 1715 with le Triomphe de Bilboquet, ou la Defaite de l'Esprit, de l'Amour et de la Raison, a fancy inspired by the game of cup and ball, so much in vogue at that period that it threatened to usurp the time and rights of conversation, and had even made its way upon the stage, in which simple matter Marivaux ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... nest-builder, but will usurp the nest of the crow or some other large bird. If a deserted nest can be found, the sparrow-hawk will immediately take possession; but if no such presents itself, this bad-hearted, quarrelsome bird does not hesitate to depose ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... While the preparation of food should be looked upon as of so much importance as to demand the most careful consideration and thought as to its suitability, wholesomeness, nutritive qualities, and digestibility, it should by no means be made to usurp the larger share of one's time, when simpler foods and less labor would afford the partakers equal ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... princes, and magistrates to be callit lordis and dominators over their subjectis, whom they govern civilly; bot it is proper to Christ onlie to be callit Lord and Master in the spirituall government of the kirk, and all utheris that beiris office therein aucht not to usurp dominion therein, nor be callit lordis, bot onlie ministeris, disciples, and servantis. For it is Christis proper office to command and rewll His kirk universall, and every particular kirk, throw His Spirit and Word, be the ministrie of ...
— The Scottish Reformation - Its Epochs, Episodes, Leaders, and Distinctive Characteristics • Alexander F. Mitchell
... me that little spot, With grey hills compassed round, Where knotted grass neglected lies, And weeds usurp ...
— The Three Brontes • May Sinclair
... some plausible way meet the expectations of their very extended lists of subscribers, to which, it seems, they never attempt to set a limit. Here is another proof that they are mere speculators upon the labors of artists, and only seek to enlarge their subscriptions, and usurp a power and control over the great body of artists, which should never, with their consent, be allowed to any, no matter how respectable, ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... esteem those qualities of moral purity and integrity, without which life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, the forgetfulness of self in the admiration ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... in the women, nor the women in the men. A scornful superciliousness rules in literature. The aim of all the litterateurs is to find something to make fun of. A lot of churches, sects, &c., the most dismal phantasms I know, usurp the name of religion. Conversation is a mass of badinage. From deceit in the spirit, the mother of all false deeds, the offspring is already incalculable. An acute and candid person, in the revenue department in Washington, who is led by the course of his employment to regularly ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was in the house, no one else thought of answering the telephone. Mrs. Waddington would have been the last to usurp the prerogative. For that instrument was the tap root of her spy system over her daughter. By it, she picked up things; learned what this irresponsible responsibility of hers was doing. Mrs. Waddington had her mental lists of Kate's telephonic friends. She imagined that she could ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... kill Harlan had been in his heart for a long time, but he needed to reinforce it with an artificial rage. And, dwelling, with his friends, upon the irritating fact that Harlan had come among them to usurp authority to which he had no visible claim, he had succeeded in working his rage to a frenzy that took ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... us. The great ranks of the cat-tails shut out all view of the outside world; the distant sounds of civilisation serve only to accentuate the isolation. It is the land of the Indian, as it was before the strange white man, brought from afar in great white-sailed ships, came to usurp the land of the wondering natives. At any moment we fancy that we may see an Indian canoe silently round ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... should usurp his father's place overwhelmed Douglas with horror and shame; the prospect was intolerable; so were other matters; for instance, his monotonous office life, the want of variety and fresh air. For exercise, he belonged ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... the desire of domination should in time usurp the place of those laborious, enthusiastic, and pious missionaries who, so happily for the natives, had managed to revolutionize their minds, and so spared their country those scenes of blood which blot with a fearful stain the history of Spanish ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... all the wild kindred that he knew; he, Finn, was——Three seconds later, and the Wolfhound had bounded forward, his great shoulders thrusting angrily between Warrigal and the big male dingo who had dared to usurp his, Finn's, place there as leader in ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... sure but that Belle will soon usurp your place in his regard, nor would I object, for I am very anxious about the child. I know that her present life seems dull to her, and the temptations of the city to a girl with a nature like hers are legion. He can ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... committed itself beyond power of recall. It was the fortune of the Prussian State, while its King dissembled before the French in Berlin, to possess a soldier brave enough to emancipate its army, and a citizen bold enough to usurp the government of its provinces. Frederick William forgave York his intrepidity; Stein's action was never forgiven by the timid and jealous sovereign whose subjects he had summoned to arm themselves for ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... too great, and charged with too important interests, to permit its march unchecked. Of all tyrannical bodies, a railway company is the most tyrannical. It asks to be armed with powers which the common law denies to the Sovereign herself. It seeks, without your leave, to usurp your property, and will not buy it from you at your own price. It levels your house, be it grange or cottage, lays down its rails in your gardens, cuts through your policy, and fells down unmercifully the oaks which your Norman ancestor planted in the days of William Rufus. All this you ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... had not, and which was yet necessary for the full satisfaction of their craving after the Beautiful. At such a crisis of thought and taste, it was natural that the classical scholar, the man who knew old Rome, and still more old Greece, should usurp the place of the monk, as teacher of mankind; and that scholars should form, for a while, a new and powerful aristocracy, limited and privileged, and all the more redoubtable, because its power lay in intellect, and had been ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Christian neighbors who reside By right of law and ancient heritage Within the land, but not the tribe who do Usurp the places ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... is the problem of Method. Hitherto man has worked on Nature only piecemeal. The understanding and the logic-faculty are allowed to usurp the rational and creative powers. One would say that scientists systematically shut themselves out of three-fourths of their minds, and the English have been insane on Induction these two hundred years. This unholy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... but there was no water; and without water they could not remain. There was no grass, either, for their animals; as, strange to say, upon these flower-prairies grass is seldom met with. The flower-stalks usurp the soil, and no turf is ever found about their roots. The travellers, therefore, were compelled to ride on, until they should reach some spot having grass and water—two of the ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... 'I know not who you are, nor what mad fancy has induced you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that are not yours. I warn you from the soul. No sooner ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... Regulations and customs of the service, the lieutenants and noncommissioned officers are charged with certain duties and responsibilities. Let every one of them carry the full load of their responsibility. The company commander should not usurp the functions of his subordinates—he should not relieve them of any of their prescribed or logical work and responsibility. On the contrary, he should give them more, and he should see that they "deliver the goods." Skill in ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... thought it a Duty incumbent on me to impart it to you, in Hopes of a Reformation, which is only to be effected by a Restoration of the Latin to the usual Dignity in your Papers, which of late, the Greek, to the great Displeasure of your Female Readers, has usurp'd; for tho the Latin has the Recommendation of being as unintelligible to them as the Greek, yet being written of the same Character with their Mother-Tongue, by the Assistance of a Spelling-Book its legible; which Quality the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... house, and that this man had given him a full explanation of the case. The child was the son of Mandane, the daughter of the king, and he was to be destroyed by the orders of Astyages himself, for fear that at some future period he might attempt to usurp the throne. ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb. But the printers and the public are very different personages. The former may lead the latter a little out of their track, while the deviation is insensible: but the moment they usurp their direction and that of their government, they will be reduced to their true places. The two last Congresses have been the theme of the most licentious reprobation for printers thirsting after war, some against France, and ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... insurmountable, were desirous of seeing it swept away at once by the strong arm of power. They represented to the sovereigns, that it seemed like insensibility to the goodness of Providence, which had delivered the infidels into their hands, to allow them any longer to usurp the fair inheritance of the Christians, and that the whole of the stiff- necked race of Mahomet might justly be required to submit without exception to instant baptism, or to sell their estates and remove to Africa. This, they maintained, could ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... there usurp'd for her brow; her forehead: and then sleek, as the parallel to smooth, that went before. A kind of paranomasie, or agnomination: do you ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... masters nor perceive divine Sci- 167:12 ence with the material senses. Drugs and hygiene cannot successfully usurp the place and power of the divine source of all health and perfection. If 167:15 God made man both good and evil, man must remain thus. What can improve God's work? Again, an error in the premise must appear in the conclusion. ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... for one of the small unsettled stars, for whose place and wanderings we care not, to usurp the track of the Queen of night or of the God of day, as for an unpretending writer to go over ground that has been trodden by the master minds of the age. It was in the olden time that Cooper described a dinner party in all its formal, but hospitable ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... what?" returned he. "I love the holy zeal which is jealous of allowing objects, dear even to your wishes, to encroach on the sanctuary of heaven. Be ever thus, meek child of the church, and no human idol will be able to usurp that part of your virgin heart ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... the Chief Magistracy over seventy millions of people, on account of a few half-mawkish, half- blasphemous phrases in a convention speech, can bear witness to the necessity of a reform in this particular—a reform which will forbid a sensation-seeking city mob to usurp the function of the whole ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... later, in 1910, although it was examining the order of a federal rate-making agency, the Court made a similar observation which appears to be equally applicable to the judicial review of regulations of State agencies. The courts cannot, "under the guise of exerting judicial power, usurp merely administrative functions by setting aside" an order of the commission within the scope of the power delegated to such commission, upon the ground that such power ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... conflicts with the rashness of folly? And while he lived, had not his master Socrates the victory of an unjust death in my presence, whose inheritance, when afterward the mob of Epicures, Stoics, and others (every one for his own sect) endeavoured to usurp, and as it were in part of their prey, sought to draw me to them, exclaiming and striving against them; they tore the garment which I had woven with my own hands, and having gotten some little pieces of it, ...
— The Theological Tractates and The Consolation of Philosophy • Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius
... the fading away of other faces and other forms, that face and that form now began to usurp the chief place in my thoughts. Not to my relief and pleasure. That could scarcely be, remembering all that had occurred; rather to my increasing distress and passionate resentment. I longed to forget I was held by a tie, that known to the world would ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... of the vital defensive positions. Barham was far too astute to play into Napoleon's hands, and by blindly following his enemy's lead to be jockeyed into sacrificing the position which his enemy wished to secure. If our maxim be suffered to usurp the place of instructed judgment, the almost inevitable result will be that it will lead us into just the kind of mistake ...
— Some Principles of Maritime Strategy • Julian Stafford Corbett
... men are merely subsidiary to their lives, externals easy to be dropped; with others they usurp the man. They usurp a life when it is never happy away from them, when in the midst of other occupations absent pleasures rise vivid to the mind, with an irresistible call. Young Gourlay's too-seeing imagination, always ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... by these petty experiences which usurp the hours and years. The hard soil and four months of snow make the inhabitant of the northern temperate zone wiser and abler than his fellow who enjoys the fixed smile of the tropics. The islander may ramble ...
— Essays • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... Temple so glorious were wanting in the second could it be said (Hag. ii. 9), "The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former"? It is a question which it is natural to ask, and it should be ingenuously answered. Is it that these were tending to usurp the place of the spiritual, of which they were but the assurance and the symbol, and darken rather than reveal ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various
... I am, I usurp the right. What damnable infatuation can bind you to that miserable poltroon, who skulks in safety, knowing that the penalty of his evil deeds falls on you? One explanation has suggested itself: it haunts me like a fiend, and only you can exorcise it. Are you married to that brute, and is ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... held him—would have made him remember what was best for her among this crowd of hostile women—flew to the winds. He must go to her—must show her he loved and would protect her, and, above all, that he would permit no other man to usurp his place. ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... usurps the power of others may design only to advance the public interest and to govern well. The system which permits an honest and well-meaning man to do this will afford equal opportunity for selfish ambition to usurp power in its own interest. Unlimited official power concentrated in one person is despotism, and it is only by carefully observed and jealously maintained limitations upon the power of every public officer that the workings of free ...
— Experiments in Government and the Essentials of the Constitution • Elihu Root
... which the foreign priests were branded as triple enemies—of the country, of the Kami, and of the Buddhas. This proclamation wound up with the charge that the Christian band had come to Japan to change the government of the country, and to usurp possession of it. Whether or not he really had sufficient written proof of conspiracy against the nation's sovereignty, it is certain that in this state paper, Iyeyas[)u] shrewdly touched the springs of Japanese patriotism. Not desiring, however, to shed blood ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Lebrun visited but seldom. Notwithstanding his elevation, his character remained unaltered; and Bonaparte considered him too moderate, because he always opposed his ambitious views and his plans to usurp power. When Bonaparte left the breakfast-table it was seldom that he did not add, after bidding Josephine and her daughter Hortense good-day, "Come, Bourrienne, come, let ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... polygamy, but prevents the administration of justice through ordinary instrumentalities of law." He expressed the opinion that Congress should prohibit polygamy, and not allow "any ecclesiastical organization to usurp in the smallest degree the functions and power, of the national government." President Arthur, in his message in December, 1881, referred to the difficulty of securing convictions of persons accused of polygamy—"this ...
— The Story of the Mormons: • William Alexander Linn
... to usurp my privileges, my lord," said Darby, firmly. "There's no sense in taking matters out of my hands. And if you will pardon my saying so, I should have been sent for ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... imposition, lion's share. usurper, pretender. V. be undue &c adj.; not be due &c 924. infringe, encroach, trench on, exact; arrogate, arrogate to oneself; give an inch and take an ell; stretch a point, strain a point; usurp, violate, do violence to. disfranchise, disentitle, disqualify; invalidate. relax &c (be lax) 738; misbehave &c (vice) 945; misbecome^. Adj. undue; unlawful &c (illegal) 964; unconstitutional; illicit; unauthorized, unwarranted, disallowed, unallowed^, unsanctioned, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... is a contemptible master; and Iglesias proposed that, while his soul continued to inhabit it, it should, as always before, be kept very much in its place. It must remain unobtrusive, obedient, not daring to usurp, in its present hour of failure and impediment, an interest and consideration to which, in its full usefulness and vigour, it had not presumed to aspire. Therefore Dominic Iglesias held calmly on his way, seeing the circle of his occupations, pleasures, and activities dwindle ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... awed restraint when he and Susy were kept apart, a strange and artificial interest taken little note of by him, but afterwards remembered when others had forgotten it; the burial of Mrs. Silsbee beneath a cairn of stones, with some ceremonies that, simple though they were, seemed to usurp the sacred rights of grief from him and Susy, and leave them cold and frightened; days of frequent and incoherent childish outbursts from Susy, growing fainter and rarer as time went on, until they ceased, he knew not when; the haunting by night of that morning ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... slept badly in his new abode, for it seemed to him as if the spectre of the man whose place he was to usurp was hovering over his couch. But with the dawn of day, and especially when the hour arrived for him to go out and give his lessons, he felt his courage return to him, though rashness perhaps would be the ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... the Church proclaims a commission not subject to human control, by virtue of which it would impose creed and ritual, and assumes those great offices, reserved in Puritan thought to God only,—then does it not usurp the function of the soul itself, suppress the personal revelation of the divine by taking from the soul the seals of original sovereignty, remove God to the first year of our era, relying on his mediate revelation in time, and thus take from common man ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry
... by which this fine Constitution of theirs has been obtained. They are a sort of people who affect to proceed as if they thought that men may deceive without fraud, rob without injustice, and overturn everything without violence. They are men who would usurp the government of their country with decency and moderation. In fact, they are nothing more or better than men engaged in desperate designs with feeble minds. They are not honest; they are only ineffectual and unsystematic in their ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IV. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... there was no question. He did not at all usurp her office, nor interfere with it. But when he saw her getting weary of a parliamentary discussion, or a long discourse on politics or parties, his hand would gently draw away the paper from hers and his voice carry ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... "A discourse which I overheard not many evenings ago as I went with a friend of mine into Hyde Park. We found, as usual, a great number of gentlemen's servants at the park gate, and my friend, being unacquainted with the saucy custom of those fellows to usurp their masters' titles, was very much surprised to hear a lusty rogue tell one of his companions who inquired after his fellow-servant that his Grace had his head broke by the cook-maid for making ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... perverts, exaggerates, some essential facts in the case. There is so much in it that is grateful and beautiful that we cannot wonder at its reception where the tender instincts of the heart are stronger than the stern decisions of the conscience, where the kindly sentiments usurp the province of the critical reason and sit in judgment upon evidence for the construction of a ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... surprising that a mother-state should trust large bodies of mercenary troops in her colonies, at so great a distance from her; lest, in process of time, when the spirits of the people shall be depressed by the military power, another Caesar should arise and usurp ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... followers would try to do also; indeed, it is wonderful that the damning prerogative was not invaded much oftener than it was. It was very rarely intruded upon, however. Once, indeed, a misguided and too venturous believer named Cooper took upon him to usurp authority, and pronounced the sentence of damnation upon a small batch of fifteen scoffers who had jeered at him and the prophet's mission. The precedent was a dangerous one, there was no telling what it would lead to if such random and promiscuous ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... abide by the stipulations of the Armistice, he must have been astonished at the schools being shut on the day after his arrival. And they remained shut, both the modern school and the middle-class girls' school for months, because the Professor's quite illegal attempt to usurp the inspectorship was resented. The secondary school was closed and the teachers who had come to [vS]ibenik with their families, but whose permanent domicile was elsewhere, received an order, delivered by carabinieri, that ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... whether light or grave, God's messenger sent down to thee; do thou With courtesy receive him; rise and bow; And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave; Then lay before him all thou hast; allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow, Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate The soul's marmoreal calmness: Grief should be, Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles; to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... thy graces, which white papers drink, 140 Even as thy beauties did the foul black seas; I must describe the hell of thy decease, That heaven did merit: yet I needs must see Our painted fools and cockhorse peasantry Still, still usurp, with long lives, loves, and lust, The seats of Virtue, cutting short as dust Her dear-bought issue: ill to worse converts, And tramples in the blood of all deserts. Night close and silent now goes fast before The captains and the soldiers to the shore, 150 On whom attended the appointed fleet ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... with Queen Isabel [i.e., Elizabeth of England], being witnesses of that event [i.e., the defeat of the armada], were encouraged to aspire to greater efforts, in disobedience to their religion and to their sovereign, to usurp the eastern riches—mines, spices, drugs, and silks—as is seen by their reckless voyages, in which they have been emulous of the recent examples set by the English, and by the more ancient ones left us by Colon, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... usurp Jussuf's place? Who dares here to pass for Jussuf's wife? I am Jussuf, who was thought lost! Where is the impostor? Let him come here, that he may receive the just ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... has been often mentioned before—the purification of Ithaca, chiefly by the slaughter of the Suitors, "the shameless set, who usurp thy house and woo thy wife." Sitting on the roots of the sacred olive, the two, the man and the deity, plan destruction to the guilty. Verily those double elements, the human and the divine, must co-operate ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... known in the gates." There was doubtless a great difference among the husbands at the gate, and I feel sure that this one took a specially large and public-spirited view of the business there discussed. The Virtuous Woman would not usurp his office, just because she had the power of speaking well,—she would remember the Russian proverb, "The Master is the Head of the House, while the Mistress is its Soul," and she would be a very ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... proof that I acknowledge you the Author Of giving me my Birth, I have discharg'd A part of my Obedience. But if now You should (as cruel fathers do) proclaim Your right, and Tyrant-like usurp the glory Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd From successary, but purchas'd with my bloud, Then I must stand first Champion for my self Against ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the sons of Vlademer, whose name was Sviatopolk, chanced to be at Kief at the time of his father's death. He resolved to usurp the throne and to cause the assassination of all the brothers from whom he could fear any opposition. Three of his brothers speedily fell victims to his bloody perfidy. Yaroslaf, who had been entrusted with ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... it, and faster than any badger. In size, habits, and the form of many parts of its body, it bears a striking resemblance to its South American cousin the "tamanoir," which of late years has become so famous as almost to usurp the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... perfectly occupied, sight becomes superfluous and I close my eyes. And straightway the scent and the murmur usurp my whole mind with a vivid memory. I am still squatting, but in a dark, fragrant room; and the murmur is still of doves; but the room is in the cool, still heart of the Queen's Golden Monastery in northern Burma, within storm-sound of Tibet, and the doves are perched ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... letter, herewith enclosed, that deeds of beneficence ought not to be done hap-hazard. Nothing needs more reflection than a good action. We never know whether that which seems best at one moment may not prove an evil later. The exercise of beneficence, as I have lived to discover, is to usurp ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... best narrative poems in modern literature. It rises from calm to the fiercest and most tumultuous passions that usurp the throne of reason. Love, jealousy, hate, revenge, murder, succeed in cumulative force. Then the calm of unmitigated and hopeless woe returns, and we leave the widow in a solitude peopled only with memories. ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... not who you are, nor what mad desire has induced you to usurp a name and an appalling destiny that are not yours. I warn you from the soul. No sooner ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bright yellow handkerchief shade forth the felon's bar; the daring burglar eyeing with confidence the counsel learned in the law's defects, fee'd by its produce to defend its quondam owner. The effigies of Pride, Extravagance, honest Distress, and reckless Plunder, all by turns usurp the scene. In my last waking sleep, just as I had composed myself in delicious indolence, a parcel fell with more than ordinary force on one beneath. These were two of my talking friends. I stirred not, but sat silently to listen to their curious conversation, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... wedlock not to be beloved, what to be slighted, what to be contended with in point of house-rule who shall be the head, not for any parity of wisdom (for that were something reasonable), but out of a female pride! 'I suffer not,' saith Saint Paul, 'the woman to usurp authority over the man.' If the Apostle could not suffer it, into what mould is he mortified that can? Solomon saith that 'a bad wife is to her husband as rottenness to his bones, a continual dropping: better dwell in a corner ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... was trouble in Ili. After the death of Galdan II., son of Arabtan, an attempt was made by one, Amursana, to usurp the principality. He was, however, driven out, and fled to Peking, where he was favourably received by Ch'ien Lung, and an army was sent to reinstate him. With the subsequent settlement, under which he was ...
— China and the Manchus • Herbert A. Giles
... last to allow the study of psychism to usurp the legitimate place in life of intellectual and spiritual pursuits, and I look with abhorrence upon the flippant use made of the psychic faculties by a certain class of pseudo-occultists who serve ...
— Second Sight - A study of Natural and Induced Clairvoyance • Sepharial
... any respect justifiable. And although this rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, and the freedom of our laws ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... analogous, so that the illusion of a change of roles without a change of characters may retain some colour. It was a just insight, for instance, in the Christian fable to make the first rebel against God the chief among the angels, the spirit occupying the position nearest to that which he tried to usurp. Lucifer's fallacy consisted in thinking natural inequality artificial. His perversity lay in rebelling against himself and rejecting the happiness proper to his nature. This was the maddest possible way of rebelling against his true creator; ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... by him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained. But no injury is still done to the people; for what they never had, they have never lost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius; but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people; and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never taken away. Supposing, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Reformers did in this matter, they did without exaggeration; even as they had shown the same wise moderation in still higher matters. They gave to the Latin side of the language its rights, though they would not suffer it to encroach upon and usurp those of the Teutonic part of the language. It would be difficult not to believe, even if many outward signs said not the same, that great things are in store for the one language of Europe which thus serves as connecting ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... entertained suspicions in consequence of the Prince's excesses, and the great recourse of people unto him, of which his court (p. 306) was at all times more abundant than his father's, that he would presume to usurp the crown; so that, in consequence of this suspicious jealousy, he withdrew in part his affection and singular love from the Prince.[292] He was accompanied by a large body of lords and gentlemen; but those ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... the United States will protect each state against one man or a few men who may try to usurp the functions of the state government. By inference, the United States could insist upon a republican form of government even if the people of the state desired some other. Happily, no necessity for the exercise of ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... foot within our own territories to make private war against a powerful nation. If such expeditions were fitted out from abroad against any portion of our own country, to burn down our cities, murder and plunder our people, and usurp our Government, we should call any power on earth to the strictest account for not preventing ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... intended to be given by the people, should be left dependent upon the effect of general expressions, and such, too, as were obviously applicable to another subject, to a particular exigency contemplated at that time? Sir, what is this power we propose now to usurp? Nothing less than a power changing all the proportions of the weight and influence possessed by the potent sovereignties composing this Union. A stranger is to be introduced to an equal share without their consent. Upon a ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... of the saddle and obeyed, while Warrington and the other man faced back to back, watching each way against surprise. In India, as in lands less "civilized," the cavalry are not allowed to usurp the functions of police, and the officer or man who tries it does so at his own risk. There came a sound of sudden thundering on teak that ceased after ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... dancing, by representations of historical incidents with graceful motion. In his "History of Pantomimes" the author is careful to distinguish between those entertainments where "Grin and grimace usurp the passions and affections of the mind," and those where "A nice address and management of the passions take up the thoughts of the performer." "Spectators," says Weaver, in 1730, or thereabouts, "are now so pandering away their applause ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Europe. Pius VII. had long studied canonical interdictions; he consulted neither his ministers nor his doctors; it was a personal reply he addressed to the emperor. "It is out of our power." said he, "to pronounce the judgment of nullity; if we were to usurp such an authority that we have not, we should render ourselves culpable of an abominable abuse before the tribunal of God; and your Majesty yourself, in your justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary to the testimony of our conscience ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... Madame furnished a topic of eager discussion among the maids. More or less covertly, they nearly all hated and feared her. They fancied that she was making good her footing with 'the Master;' and that she would then oust Mrs. Rusk—perhaps usurp her place—and so make a clean sweep of them all. I fancy the honest little housekeeper did not discourage ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... should attempt to usurp the supreme authority, he could not be supposed to have an equal authority and credit in all the confederate states. Were he to have too great influence over one, this would alarm the rest. Were he to subdue a part, that which would still remain free might oppose him with forces ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... and bulbous multiplicity of breeches, sat on his "stoep" and smoked his pipe in lordly silence; nor did it ever enter his brain that the active, restless Yankee, whom he saw through his half-shut eyes worrying about in dog day heat, ever intent on the main chance, was one day to usurp control over these goodly Dutch domains. Already, however, the races regarded each other with disparaging eyes. The Yankees sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper-heads;" while the latter, glorying in their own nether rotundity, ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... rolled above his elbows. There was a sort of grim, steady scowl on his features that looked to me as though he had fixed it there purposely as a protection against the weakness of an inherent amiability that, he fancied, were better concealed. And then I let supper usurp his brief occupancy ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... learn in silence, with all subjection. I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... thou, fair one, who usurp'st the place Of Blanch, the lady of the matchless grace? Come, fair and pretty, tell to me, Who, in thy life-time, thou might'st be. Thou pretty art and fair, But with the lady Blanch thou never must ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... agonizing search on the part of his wife failed to find him, and the Prince only broke the silence long enough to usurp a woman's privilege by telling a lie, and declaring he did not know where Rubens was, "but I believe he has ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... he blocked the way for Peter and Nat, not only by refusing to pass on to them any information, but by influencing the other men to follow his example. Whether he feared Peter Strong might usurp the vacant foremanship, or whether he simply cherished a grudge toward the lad because of his previous good fortune, it was impossible to discover. Whichever the case, his attitude was, from the moment the boys set foot in the new tannery, one of complete antagonism. Had it not been for ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... whereas, that is not at all adhered to in many novels— witness the drinking scene in —, and others equally outrees, in which the author, having turned probability out of doors, ends by throwing possibility out of the window—leaving folly and madness to usurp their place—and play a thousand antics for the admiration of the public, who, pleased with novelty, cry out ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... turned furiously on his tormentor. Overcome by his vigil and anxiety, he was oblivious of everything but the presence of the man who seemed to usurp the functions of his own conscience. "Who are you, who speak thus?" he said hoarsely, advancing upon Cranch with outstretched and anathematizing fingers. "Who are you, Senor Heathen, who dare to dictate to me, a Father of Holy Church? I tell you, I will have none of this. Never! I will ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte
... led the young man to a small chamber where they were greeted by Princess Eleanor, his wife, and by Bertrade de Montfort. The girl was frankly glad to see him once more and laughingly chide him because he had allowed another to usurp his prerogative and rescue her ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... invidious distinction; the office of perpetual presidents in the councils of each province was conferred on the bishops of the principal city; and these aspiring prelates, who soon acquired the lofty titles of Metropolitans and Primates, secretly prepared themselves to usurp over their episcopal brethren the same authority which the bishops had so lately assumed above the college of presbyters. [120] Nor was it long before an emulation of preeminence and power prevailed among ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... all progress for Cornelia, and she well knew it, and yet she was not at ease nor satisfied. She began to find out that it was no such light matter to usurp the place of such a woman as Sophie, though the latter was laboring under the great disadvantage of being ignorant of the plot against her. In most cases, indeed, the attempt would have been wellnigh hopeless, but Cornelia had two exceptionally powerful allies—her own supreme ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... early morning till late evening; only as twilight came on did a new thought begin to keep me awake, a thought to which as yet I had paid no attention: "What kind of a child could it be, for whom I was now being exchanged? Who was to usurp my place at table, in my bed-room, and in my mother's heart? Was she small or large? beautiful or ugly? obedient or contrary? had she brothers or sisters, to whom I was to be a brother? was she as much afraid of me as I was ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... interested in an endeavor to solve the mystery of life—that he would ever attempt to utilize the secret should he have been so fortunate as to discover it had never occurred to me. I mean that he should try to usurp the functions of the Creator I could never have believed, but my knowledge of him, coupled with what you have said, and the extreme lengths to which he has gone to maintain absolute secrecy for his present experiments can only lead to one inference; ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... affection was now changed into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the childless ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fancy for these odd names, but they seduce in all nations, and they who feel the triviality of them, imitate them. It is true that the titles of Count and Marquis have fallen into the dust because of the quantity of people without wealth, and even without land, who usurp them; and that they have become so worthless, that people of quality who are Marquises or Counts (if they will permit me to say it) are silly enough to be annoyed if those titles are given to them in conversation. It is certain, however, that these titles emanated ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... an object of abhorrence to the great comic genius; and Thucydides, a born aristocrat, of strong oligarchical sympathies, looked with cold scorn and aversion on the coarse mechanic, [Footnote: Cleon was a tanner by trade.] who presumed to usurp the place, and ape the style, of ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... were incapable of cultivating the spiritual vineyard, which they were so desirous to possess. A patriarch [107] might seat himself on the throne of Carthage; some bishops, in the principal cities, might usurp the place of their rivals; but the smallness of their numbers, and their ignorance of the Latin language, [108] disqualified the Barbarians for the ecclesiastical ministry of a great church; and the Africans, after the loss of their orthodox pastors, were deprived of the public exercise ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... booty—be alone extoll'd? Or he who, scorning safety, boldly roams Through woods and dreary wilds, to scour the land Of thieves and robbers? Is nought left for us? Must gentle woman quite forego her nature,— Force against force employ,—like Amazons, Usurp the sword from man, and bloodily Revenge oppression? In my heart I feel The stirrings of a noble enterprize; But if I fail—severe reproach, alas! And bitter misery will be my doom. Thus on my knees I supplicate the gods. Oh, ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... securing ecclesiastical promotion by purchase. But it is much rather the belief that 'the gift of God can be purchased with' anything but personal faith in Jesus, the Giver and the Gift. The effects of it are patent among us. Ceremonies usurp the place of faith. A priesthood is exalted. The universal Christian prerogative of individual access to God is obscured. Christianity is turned ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... so convinced of my powerlessness to love, that the thought of a serious passion did not at first enter my mind. However, a remembrance of my beautiful traveller pervaded my thoughts more and more, and threatened to usurp the place of everything else. I then subjected myself to a rigid analysis; I sought for the exact location of this sentiment whose involuntary yoke I already felt; I persuaded myself, for some time yet, that it was ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... no country, however abject its inhabitants may appear, where the most daring and ambitious can venture to usurp the supreme power without first obtaining a hold on public opinion; we cannot have a stronger proof of this fact, as applicable to Persia, than what we find in the conduct of Nadir upon this memorable occasion. Though ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... their endeavour to usurp our Practice is, their absurd calling the sick their Patients, for 'tis most certain that in all reason and language the Physician and Patient only have relation to each other, but not to the Apothecary, who is but a Tradesman, and manual Operator. Now a Tradesman ...
— A Short View of the Frauds and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries • Christopher Merrett
... utili. Use up (wear out) eluzi. Useful utila. Useless senutila. Uselessness senutileco. Usher (school) submajstro. Usher (beadle) pedelo. Usual ordinara, kutima. Usually kutime. Usufruct gxuado. Usurer procentegisto. Usurp uzurpi. Usurpation uzurpo—ado. Usurper uzurpulo. Usury procentego. Utensil uzajxo, ilo, ujo. Utilise utiligi. Utility utilo—eco. Utmost ekstrema. Utopia utopio. Utopian utopia. Utter ekparoli. Utterance ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... to think me. I have more sense than people give me credit for, though I dare say I shall find you very skeptical on the subject. Beulah, I know very well why you took it into your wise head to be a teacher. You were unwilling to usurp what you considered my place in Uncle Guy's home and heart. You need not straighten yourself in that ungraceful way. I know perfectly well it is the truth; but I am no poor, suffering, needy innocent, that you should ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... work that Sister Teresa was cured." "If any fact has come to your knowledge, Sister, it is your duty to tell it to me, the spiritual adviser of the nuns, notwithstanding all the attempts of the Prioress to usurp ...
— Sister Teresa • George Moore
... suffer under a most disfiguring disease caused by want of exercise and excess of nourishment: the legs swell to such a degree from the knees downward, that the form of the calf and foot is entirely lost, and the thick cylinders which usurp the place of legs, and from under which the toes only project, resemble nothing but the legs of elephants; thence the name of elephantism has been bestowed on the complaint by Europeans. It does not appear ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... me, monsieur," said he to the composer of dance-music, "how it is that the Napoleon of these tunes can condescend to usurp the place of Palestrina, Pergolesi, and Mozart,—poor creatures who must pack and vanish at the advent of that tremendous ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... loathed stage, And this more loathsome age, Where pride and impudence, in faction knit, Usurp the chair of wit! Inditing and arranging every day Something ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... this, my brethren? To what lengths are you going? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and that you would traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the case required, barefooted and unostentatiously, in order to preach the word of God in all humility? And do you now presume to usurp these estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these fees? Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and your doctrines to ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... forget his head-ache by the anodyne of mirth! Truly, humour has its laudable and kindly uses: it is the mind's play-time after office-drudgery—an easy recreation from thought, anxiety, or study. Only when it usurps, or foolishly attempts to usurp, the office of more than a temporary alleviation; when it affects to set up as an atheistic panacea; when it professes to walk as an abiding companion, lighting you on your way with injurious gleams (as that dreadful ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Paul observed: "It's like a dreadful dream, And Uncle Ben has fallen ten Per cent. in my esteem. Not only did he first usurp us, But now he's left ...
— Grimm Tales Made Gay • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... and loved it ...surely it must do him good to have it? If he were stretched upon a bed of sickness, and it were hung where he could see it, it must help him. It would bring diversion of thought, cheer him, suggest bright memories—perhaps give him brave dreams that would usurp the place ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... erred in giving them, as a painter would who should dress a peasant in robes of state or give the nose or any other feature of a Venus to a satyr. What had the destroyers of mankind, that glorious pair, one of whom came into the world to usurp the dominion and abolish the constitution of his own country; the other to conquer, enslave, and rule over the whole world, at least as much as was well known to him, and the shortness of his life would give him leave to visit; what had, I say, such as these to do with clemency? Who cannot ...
— The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great • Henry Fielding
... embittered, that nothing but divine love can sweeten it; so enraged, that devotion only can becalm it; and so broke down, that it takes all the force of heavenly hope to raise it. In short, religion is the only sovereign and controlling power over man. Bound by that, the rulers will never usurp, nor the people rebel. The former will govern like fathers, and the latter obey like children. And thus moving on, firm and united as a host of brothers, they will continue invincible as ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... question for which Mrs. Woolper could find no answer. She knew that the pain and horror which she felt were something more than natural, but beyond this point her thoughts refused to travel. A superstitious feeling arose at this point, to usurp the office of reason, and she accounted for the strangeness of Miss Halliday's illness as she might have done had she lived in the sixteenth century, and been liable to the suspicion ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... that the national policy should be one of 'drift,' although I admit that there are many most excellent persons who by their attitude seem to resent any attempt to steer the ship of State along a definite course as being an impious attempt to usurp the functions of Providence, whose special business they conceive ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... seemed to fall into triviality. Yet—she reasoned at a later time—it should not have been so; the haggard gaze of fate should not daunt one; pity is but an element in the soul's ideal of order, it should not usurp a barren sovereignty. It is the miserable contradiction in our lot that the efficiency of the instincts of beauty-worship waits upon a force of individuality attainable only by a sacrifice of sensibility. ...
— A Life's Morning • George Gissing
... that I understood the object of those who are planning to ruin us in this cowardly manner. But I don't now. If they ruin us they also destroy the chances of any other company that may be scheming to usurp our place. For ...
— Flower of the North • James Oliver Curwood
... of Sangoa to guard all knowledge of the island's whereabouts from the outside world, as well as the fact that its pearl fisheries are very rich. We understand that an influx of treasure-seekers would embarrass the Sangoans. But we are close friends of young Mr. Jones and have no desire to usurp his island kingdom or seize his pearls. Our only anxiety is to free him from an unjust suspicion. A foolish man named Le Drieux accuses Jones of stealing a choice collection of pearls from a lady in Austria and fleeing with them to America. He has ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Out West • Edith Van Dyne
... encamped among them, but there was no water; and without water they could not remain. There was no grass, either, for their animals; as, strange to say, upon these flower-prairies grass is seldom met with. The flower-stalks usurp the soil, and no turf is ever found about their roots. The travellers, therefore, were compelled to ride on, until they should reach some spot having grass and water—two of the necessary requisites of ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... the borders," and seem to keep pace with the "march of intellect." A garden seems to bloom on their exterior, and roses and lilies vie with each other above and below, for underneath the living roses flourish on the cheeks of the fair. Perhaps in a few years small bonnets will usurp ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, - Vol. 12, Issue 328, August 23, 1828 • Various
... "Protus" sets in contrast the representations by artist and annalist of the two busts and the two lives of Protus, the baby emperor of Byzantium, born in the purple, gently nurtured and cherished, yet fated to obscurity, and of John, the blacksmith's bastard, predestined to usurp his throne and save the empire ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... has been! Quimby, my dear boy, how can I thank you? I shall take possession of my half of your apartment at once, to be sure no one shall again usurp my place; until then, au revoir!" and, in parting, perceptibly held Nattie's hand longer than was absolutely necessary, Quimby followed him with dejected mien, fully aware that of all the mistakes he had ever made he committed the worst, when he asked his ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... a good thrashing, Mr Terry, for playing the bully. There, there, my good lad, forget and forgive, and don't try and usurp my duties here. I will look ...
— Syd Belton - The Boy who would not go to Sea • George Manville Fenn
... exacted forfeit from herself, and rigorously. So much for excess of partiality, so much for over-consideration, so much for lack of faith in over-anxiety, so much more of late for the keen mother-jealousy that had quickened in her to anguish at the thought that another would one day usurp her undivided throne, and claim and take the lion's share of the love that had been all hers. Her spiritual director was far too lenient, in her opinion. She was all the more exacting towards herself. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... Duke of Chartres. Many persons have imagined that the Duke of Chartres was aware of this design. It is certain that in the army, as well as among the moderates of the interior, the prince would have found a crowd of adherents. But he was too conscientious to usurp a crown which had just fallen in blood—too good a son to authorize proceedings which would have endangered the life of his father; in short, too enlightened, too prudent, notwithstanding his extreme youth, to be instrumental in any ambitious or ill-conceived scheme ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... worship, and I said to my heart: Can these be true gods, or have I perchance been duped? Thenceforward I held my peace, and set myself to watch, and now after much watching—alas! I must say it to my shame—I have discovered that they are no true gods, but wicked liars who have sought to usurp ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... just referred to. In later years (it is Mr Humphry Ward, I think, who is our sufficient authority for it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of getting through their work somehow or other, that they may devote themselves to parerga which ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... elect their own governor. A charter was drawn up by Penn and confirmed in 1681, and he became proprietor. No man ever assumed such a trust with less of personal ambition or desire for gain than he. "You shall be governed by laws of your own making," said he; "I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person." He had already made inroads on his estate by fighting the cause of his brethren in England in the courts; but when a speculator offered him six thousand pounds down and ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... But, under frivolous pretexts, they excluded from his seat among them, John Smith, one of the most extraordinary men of his age, whose courage and talents had excited their envy. During the passage, he had been imprisoned on the extravagant charge of intending to murder the council, usurp the government, and make himself king ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 1 (of 5) • John Marshall
... different with the office of Treasurer. The President ought not to usurp the power of his appointment, which ought, after serious discussion by the Council, to be made ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying, afterward, the very engine which had ...
— Key-Notes of American Liberty • Various
... and addressing the king and his surrounding prelates, said, "There are the crown and sceptre which Canute intrusted to my charge. To you, I neither give nor refuse them, you may take them if you please; but I strictly forbid any of my brother bishops to usurp an office, which is ...
— Coronation Anecdotes • Giles Gossip
... Men only and not the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the Church by way of propounding ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the supreme power would undoubtedly devolve on Protestants. Those Tories who held most firmly the doctrine that nothing could justify them in resisting their liege lord would have no scruple about drawing their swords against a Popish woman who should dare to usurp the guardianship of the realm and of the infant sovereign. The result of a contest could scarcely be matter of doubt. The Prince of Orange or his wife, would be Regent. The young King would be placed in the hands of heretical instructors, whose arts might speedily efface from his mind ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... of twenty at the time she entered Mr. Mordecai's family. Although coarse and ill-bred, she was also shrewd and designing, often making pretence of friendship and affection to gain her ends when in reality hatred and animosity were burning in her bosom. Such was Rebecca Hartz. Such the woman to usurp the household government, when the gentle ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... proud; A pert, prim, prater of the northern race,[16] Guilt in his heart, and famine in his face, Stood forth,—and thrice he waved his lily hand, And thrice he twirled his tye, thrice stroked his band:— At Friendship's call (thus oft, with traitorous aim, Men void of faith usurp Faith's sacred name) 80 At Friendship's call I come, by Murphy sent, Who thus by me develops his intent: But lest, transfused, the spirit should be lost, That spirit which, in storms of rhetoric toss'd, Bounces about, and flies ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... encounter. Chosen by the people at a period when civil war had distracted the government and uprooted all the landmarks so long the guide for those who preceded him—when a manifest determination of the so-called Congress, representing but two-thirds of the States, was apparent to usurp all power—when the State governments of ten States, though that of their people, were threatened with military usurpation, Jenkins remained firm to his convictions of duty. The credit of the State had never suffered while under his guardianship; ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... or nothing to the understanding of Plato, it throws an interesting light on the Alexandrian times; it realizes how a philosophy made up of words only may create a deep and widespread enthusiasm, how the forms of logic and rhetoric may usurp the place of reason and truth, how all philosophies grow faded and discoloured, and are patched and made up again like worn-out garments, and retain only a second-hand existence. He who would study this degeneracy of philosophy and of the ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... school without it, and regarded the masters, as a matter of course, as his natural enemies. Matters were not so comfortable in the house, either. The new praeposters of the Sixth Form were not strong, and the big Fifth Form boys soon began to usurp power, and to fag ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... into play. We learn that there are other impulses beside the dictates of conscience, that there are powers within us and without us ready to usurp the throne of conscience, and busy in tempting us to transfer our allegiance. We learn that there are many things contrary to conscience, and therefore to be rejected and utterly excluded, and many that can coexist with its supremacy ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... child of a martyr to the highest cause on earth; and the love of the whole family encompassed her. One of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she was yet very little, and she had grown up among them as their youngest sister; but the doctor, from a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place of his brother in her childish thought, would not let her call him father, and in obedience to the rule which she soon began to give their love, they all turned and called him Uncle Jack with her. Yet the Ellisons, though they loved their little cousin, did not spoil her,—neither the ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... personal character of the monarch. Henry VIII was always master; Elizabeth was more guided than guiding; the Councils of the Valois and Hapsburgs profited by the preoccupation or the stupidity of their masters to usurp the royal power for themselves. In public opinion the Council occupied a great place, similar to that of an English Cabinet today. The first Anglican prayerbook {478} contains petitions for the Council, though it did not occur to the people to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... and, in case of doubt, let him incline rather to mildness than to severity. Let him hear quarrels and discussions with the alcaldes, but let him not allow them to fleece his sheep. Let him defend his own jurisdiction, but not usurp that of another. Let him not become an alcalde unless the alcalde tries to become a cura. If he is unable to settle the quarrels of the Indians satisfactorily, he shall allow them to go to the alcalde, who will quickly render them harmonious by laughing at the matter ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 28 of 55) • Various
... of something big, bloated, and crawling. I could distinguish nothing further. On reaching the door it paused, and I felt it was eyeing him—or rather his material body—anxiously. Perhaps it feared lest some other shadow, equally baleful, equally sly and subtle, would usurp its home. Its hesitation was, however, but momentary, and, passing through the door, it glided across the dimly lighted hall and out into the freedom of the open air. Picture succeeding picture with great rapidity, I followed it as it curled ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... repine? It is past twelve; I always write to you at night. It is then, my own love, that my imagination can be the more readily transport me to you: it is then that my spirit holds with you a more tender and undivided commune. In the day the world can force itself upon my thoughts, and its trifles usurp the place which "I love to keep for only thee and Heaven;" but in the night all things recall you the more vividly: the stillness of the gentle skies,—the blandness of the unbroken air,—the stars, so holy in their loveliness, ...
— Falkland, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... generically. In the natural object it indicates any species of useless weed that occupies the ground and injures the growing crop: in the spiritual application it points to the worldly cares, whether they spring from poverty or wealth, which usurp in a human heart the place due to Christ and his ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... with the gift of fern seed and enabling it to walk invisible, turned the flank of the baronial tariff-system and made the roads safe for the great liberalizer Commerce. This made Money omnipresent, and prepared the way for its present omnipotence. Fortunately it cannot usurp the third attribute of Deity,—omniscience. But whatever the consequences, this Florentine invention was at first nothing but admirable, securing to brain its legitimate influence over brawn. The latter ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... intellectual weight. It is to the credit of our institutions and our statesmen that the man least qualified by largeness of mind and moderation of temper to exercise uncontrolled power should be the man who aspired to usurp it. The constitutional instinct in the blood, and the constitutional principle in the brain, of our real statesmen, preserve them from the folly and guilt of setting themselves up as imitative Caesars and Napoleons, the moment they are trusted ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... an aid to work with the sword, it may be remarked that there are two reasons, and those important ones, why the single-stick should not be first placed in the hands of the beginner, and why it should never altogether usurp the place of the more ...
— Broad-Sword and Single-Stick • R. G. Allanson-Winn
... serene, yet not discourteous or contemptuous indifference, the statements of our esteemed, though hasty contemporary, the Mackay Planters' Friend, that Bowen may yet find that the newly-founded hamlet of Townsville on the shores of Cleveland Bay will ere long usurp the claim of beautiful Bowen to be the natural entrepot for all that vast extent of territory to the northward and the westward of Port Denison, and which, ere many decades have passed, will, through its marvellous agricultural, pastoral, and auriferous resources, ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... give rope enough, give a loose to; tolerate; relax; misrule. go beyond the length of one's tether; have one's swing, have one's fling; act without instructions, act without authority, act outside of one's authority; act on one's own responsibility, usurp authority. dethrone, depose; abdicate. Adj. lax, loose; slack; remiss &c (careless) 460; weak. relaxed; licensed; reinless^, unbridled; anarchical; unauthorized ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... assistance against his elder brother, Artaxerxes Mne'mon, should he ever require it. Accordingly, when the latter succeeded to the Persian throne, on the death of his father, Cyrus, still governor of the maritime region of Asia Minor, prepared to usurp his brother's regal power. For this purpose he raised an army of one hundred thousand Persians, which he strengthened with an auxiliary force of thirteen thousand Greeks, drawn principally from the cities of Asia under the ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... doubt or question, then, that the most desirable position possible is that of a prince. And I think it also follows that the so-called usurpations with which history is littered are the most excusable misdemeanors which men have committed. To usurp a usurpation—that is all it amounts to, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... each faithful light obscur'd, And led him wildering, sinking pale with fear! Not he more bless'd by Cynthia's light allur'd, Onward his course with happier thoughts doth steer, Than I, O Hope! blest cheerer of the soul! Who, long in Sorrow's darkening clouds involv'd, When black despair usurp'd mild Joy's control, Saw thee, bright angel, fram'd of heavenly mould, Dip thy gay pallet in the rainbow's hue, And call each scene of Peace and ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... of the subject. The distinctions which they indicate have been carefully drawn, and appear to be of such authority that they should be generally accepted. Sometimes, as, for example, in mathematics, a conventional set of symbols may quite usurp the function of ordinary language, and may enormously curtail the labor of setting forth the processes and results ...
— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton
... as a teacher when he has been attracted. Even those who start out on their career with a determination that the teaching of religion at all events should have its full share of their time and thought, find that as their teaching life goes on and fresh duties crowd in to usurp more and more all their energies, that the time they can spare, and the thought they can give, either to the preparation of their divinity lessons, or to the enriching and cultivation of their own souls, shrink. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... Because I do not teach the foolish traditions of your fathers, and because I do not teach this people to bind themselves down under the foolish ordinances and performances which are laid down by ancient priests, to usurp power and authority over them, to keep them in ignorance, that they may not lift up their heads, but be brought down according ...
— The Book Of Mormon - An Account Written By The Hand Of Mormon Upon Plates Taken - From The Plates Of Nephi • Anonymous
... which was either harsh, unnatural, abject, or far-fetched; and yet he was so far from confining himself to the plain and ordinary mode of speaking, that he abounded greatly in the metaphor,—but such metaphors as did not appear to usurp a post that belonged to another, but only to occupy their own. These delicacies were displayed not in a loose and disfluent style; but in such a one as was strictly numerous, without either appearing ...
— Cicero's Brutus or History of Famous Orators; also His Orator, or Accomplished Speaker. • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... Portuguese go from India to buy the cloves at Manila, and take them to Malaca. Only what is needed there it shipped to Nueva Espaa, and the rest is conveyed to various parts and kingdoms of the Orient which are convenient to Manila and the Malucas. The Dutch have again attempted to usurp that trade, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol 27 of 55) • Various
... had been wrought in the course of the last few hours, upon the thoughts and feelings of our two fair captives, a change which had caused reality to usurp for a time at least, the place of romance, and constrained them to gaze with a vacant look upon the superbly natural beauties of the island glen. Therefore with thoughts concentrated upon their immediate personal prospects and fruitless conjectures ...
— Blackbeard - Or, The Pirate of Roanoke. • B. Barker
... life is but a scene of folly and misery. It may not be possible to teach young people to love wisely, but they may at least be guarded by parental advice against the frivolous and despicable passions which so often usurp its name. "Love," it has been said, "in the common acceptation of the term, is folly; but love, in its purity, its loftiness, its unselfishness, is not only a consequence, but a proof, of our moral excellence. The sensibility to moral beauty, ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... of confusion over a thousand homes. Alas! for the palaces and hovels, that might have been nurseries for heaven, By hot intestine broils blighted into schools for hell; None knoweth his place, yet all refuse to serve, None weareth the crown, yet all usurp the scepter; The mother, heart-stricken years agone, hath dropped into an early grave; The silent sisters long to leave a home they cannot love; The brothers, casting off restraint, follow ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... who so long inhabited the vicinity, had probably invented, or at least propagated, for their own advantage. It was said that, during the times of the Galwegian independence, one Hanlon MacDingawaie, brother to the reigning chief, Knarth MacDingawaie, murdered his brother and sovereign, in order to usurp the principality from his infant nephew, and that being pursued for vengeance by the faithful allies and retainers of the house, who espoused the cause of the lawful heir, he was compelled to retreat, with a few followers whom he had involved in his crime, to his impregnable tower called ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of it, there must be other men who take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary writer, "is free men, rather than ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... itself, and ends in failure and humiliation. That humanity will profit by such a lesson, whether true or invented for didactic purposes, is doubtful, but at least Nature has done her best for once to usurp the seat of the preacher, 'to point a moral and adorn a tale.' Lady Hester, who was born on March 12,1776, was the eldest daughter of Charles, third Earl of Stanhope, by his first wife Hester, daughter of the great Lord Chatham. Lord ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... Certain expeditions, however, were made in the neighborhood, and several towns fell into the hands of the Christians. Meantime, news arrived that an army of Egyptian Arabs—who acknowledged the Fatimite caliphs, and had as yet resisted the attempt of the Turks to usurp dominion over all the followers of the Prophet—had captured Jerusalem. The Crusaders, filled with indignation, resumed their march to the Holy City, conquering on their way several towns. Embassadors were sent from the Caliph of Cairo with superb presents to the Christian ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... has an extensive influence on our conduct in regard to both these classes of emotions. This is Self-love;—which leads us to seek our own protection, comfort, and advantage. It is a sound and legitimate principle of action when kept in its proper place;—when allowed to usurp an undue influence, it degenerates into selfishness; and it then interferes in a material degree with the exercise of the affections, or, in other words, with our duty to ...
— The Philosophy of the Moral Feelings • John Abercrombie
... For proof that I acknowledge you the Author Of giving me my Birth, I have discharg'd A part of my Obedience. But if now You should (as cruel fathers do) proclaim Your right, and Tyrant-like usurp the glory Of my peculiar honours, not deriv'd From successary, but purchas'd with my bloud, Then I must stand first Champion for my ...
— The Laws of Candy - Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (3 of 10) • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... you may happen to be dancing when supper is announced to the supper-table, unless she has come with a gentleman, in which case you must not usurp his privilege. If she is disengaged, escort her to a seat in the supper-room, if possible, and see that she is served with the dishes she selects. Do not take your own supper at the same time; wait till the lady has finished; then take ...
— Frost's Laws and By-Laws of American Society • Sarah Annie Frost
... him that receives it with the same right as it was conveyed. It may, indeed, like all our possessions, be forcibly seized or fraudulently obtained. But no injury is still done to the people; for what they never had, they have never lost. Caius may usurp the right of Titius; but neither Caius nor Titius injure the people; and no man's conscience, however tender or however active, can prompt him to restore what may be proved to have been never taken away. Supposing, what I think cannot be proved, that ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... has always been: man, the highest of God's creatures, apart from all the rest, is still a creature, and he never has been able to usurp the power which belongs to ...
— Twilight And Dawn • Caroline Pridham
... rule appears to me to be scarcely applicable to our state in this stage of trial, seeing that such non-resistance, if general, would surrender our civil and religious rights into the hands of whatsoever daring tyrants might usurp the same; yet I am, and have been, inclined to limit the use of carnal arms to the case of necessary self-defence, whether such regards our own person, or the protection of our country against invasion; or of our rights of property, and the freedom of our laws and of our conscience, ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... refrained from striking, that he might seem to usurp no share in Grom's amazing achievement. He stood leaning upon his spear, calmly watching the last feeble paroxysm, till Grom came scrambling down from the ledge and stood beside him. He took the bow ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... modern, are desirous of being confounded with princes, and are ready to seize on the privileges of royal dignity. We have already come to highness. The pride of our descendants, I suspect, will usurp that ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... relax; misrule. go beyond the length of one's tether; have one's swing, have one's fling; act without instructions, act without authority, act outside of one's authority; act on one's own responsibility, usurp authority. dethrone, depose; abdicate. Adj. lax, loose; slack; remiss &c (careless) 460; weak. relaxed; licensed; reinless^, unbridled; anarchical; unauthorized &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... allow me) to tread in those successful Paths my Predecessors have so long thriv'd in, to take those Measures that both the Ancient and Modern Writers have set me, and by which they have pleas'd the World so well: If I must not, because of my Sex, have this Freedom, but that you will usurp all to your selves; I lay down my Quill, and you shall hear no more of me, no not so much as to make Comparisons, because I will be kinder to my Brothers of the Pen, than they have been to a defenceless Woman; ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... bear that you should be disappointed of your encounter," Rodriguez said, "by this spirit of Hell that has got itself clothed in fat and dares to usurp the dignity of man." ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... life, including her work. Indeed, she has contracted the habit of happiness and is so engrossed in the big elemental things of life that she can laugh at the incidental pin-pricks that others call troubles. She differentiates major from minor and never permits a minor to usurp the throne. Being an integral part of her life, her work takes on all the hues of her life. For her, culture is not something added; rather it is a something that permeates her whole nature and her ...
— The Vitalized School • Francis B. Pearson
... and so terrible crimes were actually perpetrated in the course of it, that it is only just to note the circumstances which explain the origin of these atrocities, and which enabled violent leaders and wild passions to usurp control. The efforts of the constitutionalists to save the throne were balked by the exiles and the foreign governments. Frederick William II. of Prussia (1786-1797), and Leopold II. the emperor (1790-1792), in the Declaration of Pilnitz ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... of pronouncing without preparation in inquiry and reflection just one of the causes of that remarkable diversity of opinion which is so often deplored for its unpleasant consequences? In ignorance—fancy, whim, and prejudice usurp the directing power. If we take no time for consideration, we shall be apt to plunge into an error, and afterwards persevere in it for the sake of consistency, or because it has become a thing which we regard as our ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... and give permanence to an error; as when in 'America' the discovery of the New World, which belonged to Columbus, is ascribed to another eminent discoverer, but one who had no title to this honour, even as he was entirely guiltless of any attempt to usurp it for himself. [Footnote: Humboldt has abundantly shown this (Kosmos, vol. ii. note 457). He ascribes its general reception to its introduction into a popular work on geography, published in 1507. The subject has also been very carefully treated ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... were committed prisoners in different chambers of the Tower. These acts of violence, exercised against the nearest connections of the late King, prognosticated the severest fate to his defenceless children; and after the murder of Hastings, the Protector no longer made a secret of his intentions to usurp the crown. The licentious life of Edward afforded a pretence for declaring his marriage with the Queen invalid and all his posterity illegitimate. It was also maintained that the act of attainder passed against the Duke of Clarence had virtually incapacitated his children ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... it must do him good to have it? If he were stretched upon a bed of sickness, and it were hung where he could see it, it must help him. It would bring diversion of thought, cheer him, suggest bright memories—perhaps give him brave dreams that would usurp the ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... resolution, the pretension set up by the Republicans that the President of the Senate had lawful right to assume that function. He was for urging that issue in debate in both Houses and before the country. He thought that if the attempt should be made to usurp for the president of the Senate a power to make the count, and thus practically to control the Presidential election, the scheme would break down in ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... gleam of the villages, while here and there a single palm dreamed of its brothers across the sea. Etna, of course, had the monarch's place in the landscape, but even his large, magnificent outlines could not usurp all my feeling. The purple peaks to the westward and farther inland, had a beauty of their own, and in the gentle curves with which they leaned towards each other, there was a promise of the flowery meadows of Enna. The smooth ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... provinces of the empire. In later ages these were deemed preeminently the patent of imperial power. On one occasion a feudal prince asked the question, "How heavy are these tripods?" A minister of state, suspecting an intention to remove them and usurp the power, replied in a long speech, proving the divine commission of his master, and asked in conclusion, "Why then should you inquire ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... the Parthenon, the opisthodomos of the pre-Persian temple might properly be the opisthodomos [Greek: cat exochen], but so soon as the Parthenon was finished, the new treasure-house would naturally usurp the name as well as the functions of ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... of the public peace. If we grant their request, will not the cunning fellows, in order to usurp over us a more unlimited power, claim even greater authority against ourselves, should it happen that our administration may not square in every respect with their whims. It is treason to petition against one's magistrate whether there be ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... Revolutionary fathers fought and died, but to establish the principle that such taxation was unjust. It is the same with this woman's revolution; though every law were as just to woman as to man, the principle that one class may usurp the power to legislate for another is unjust, and all who are now in the struggle from love of principle would still work on until the establishment of the grand and immutable truth, "All governments derive their just powers from the ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the mean time, how doth this concern me, or upon what reference do I usurp his habit? I confess, indeed, that to compare myself unto him for aught I have yet said, were both impudency and arrogancy. I do not presume to make any parallel, Antistat mihi millibus trecentis, [29]parvus sum, ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... he, I would have you banish all Fear; you are not fallen into the Hands of barbarous Christians, whose Practice and Profession are as distant as the Country they came from, is from this Island, which they have usurp'd from the original Natives. Capt. Cuffey's returning the Service you once did him, by saving your Life, which we shall not, after the Example of your Country, take in cold Blood, may give you a Specimen of our Morals. ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... not taken account of the case in which the vast power centralized in the chief magistrate, and the insufficient attachment of the mass of the people to free institutions, give him a chance of success in an attempt to subvert the Constitution, and usurp sovereign power. Where such peril exists, no first magistrate is admissible whom the Parliament can not, by a single vote, reduce to a private station. In a state of things holding out any encouragement to that most audacious and ...
— Considerations on Representative Government • John Stuart Mill
... our sufficient authority for it) poetry was but occasional amusement and solace to him, prose his regular avocation from task-work; and there is abundant evidence that, willingly or unwillingly, he never allowed either to usurp the place of the vocation which he had accepted. Not everybody, perhaps, is so scrupulous. It is not an absolutely unknown thing to hear men boast of getting through their work somehow or other, that they may devote themselves ...
— Matthew Arnold • George Saintsbury
... that commandment all the other commandments would be obeyed. If we secure this queen-bee we are given the swarm. To put nothing "before" God! What is left in the circle of obedience? God first, always and everywhere. Nothing allowed to usurp His throne for an hour! I was once allowed to sit on an earthly throne for a few seconds, but even that is not to be allowed with the throne of God. Nothing is to share His sovereignty, even for a moment. His dominion is to be unconditional and ...
— My Daily Meditation for the Circling Year • John Henry Jowett
... indeed Odysseus," he said, "thou speakest justly concerning the evil doings of the wooers. And there lies the cause of the mischief, Antinous, struck down by thy righteous hand. He it was who sought to slay Telemachus, that he might usurp thy place, and make himself king in Ithaca. But now that he is gone to his own place, let us, the rest, find favour in thy sight. And as for thy possessions which have been wasted, we will pay thee back out of our own goods, as ...
— Stories from the Odyssey • H. L. Havell
... accessible by the same line of railway, but he always travelled first class; the same train thus presenting the anomaly of the master being in that place which one would naturally assign to the man, and the man appearing to usurp the position of the master. One day these two alighted at the terminus in full view of each other. "Well," said Mr. B—, in that tone of banter which a superior so frequently thinks it becoming to adopt, "I don't ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... strange observation, but it is certainly true, that the brute creation differs not more from the rational in many respects, than a man from himself: That by suffering passions to usurp the dominion of the soul, human nature is stript of its dignity, debased to the beasts that perish, and still rendered more ignominious by the complications of guilt. We have already seen the duke of Wharton set up as ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. IV • Theophilus Cibber
... not, love, for Love to heaven is fled, Since sweating Lust on earth usurp'd his name; Under whose simple semblance he hath fed Upon fresh beauty, blotting it with blame; 796 Which the hot tyrant stains and soon bereaves, As caterpillars ...
— Venus and Adonis • William Shakespeare
... Scottish nobles of early times, is led, partly by his own ambition, partly by the instigation of evil supernatural powers, to murder King Duncan and usurp his place on the throne of Scotland. In this bloody task he is aided and encouraged by his wife, a woman of powerful character, whose conscience is temporarily smothered by her frantic desire to advance her husband's career. We are forced to sympathize with this guilty pair, wicked as they {188} ...
— An Introduction to Shakespeare • H. N. MacCracken
... generally came at mid-day, and stayed some time with him, often a whole hour. Lebrun visited but seldom. Notwithstanding his elevation, his character remained unaltered; and Bonaparte considered him too moderate, because he always opposed his ambitious views and his plans to usurp power. When Bonaparte left the breakfast-table it was seldom that he did not add, after bidding Josephine and her daughter Hortense good-day, "Come, Bourrienne, come, let us ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... sinking pale with fear! Not he more bless'd by Cynthia's light allur'd, Onward his course with happier thoughts doth steer, Than I, O Hope! blest cheerer of the soul! Who, long in Sorrow's darkening clouds involv'd, When black despair usurp'd mild Joy's control, Saw thee, bright angel, fram'd of heavenly mould, Dip thy gay pallet in the rainbow's hue, And call each scene of Peace and Mirth ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, Number 490, Saturday, May 21, 1831 • Various
... expectations of their very extended lists of subscribers, to which, it seems, they never attempt to set a limit. Here is another proof that they are mere speculators upon the labors of artists, and only seek to enlarge their subscriptions, and usurp a power and control over the great body of artists, which should never, with their consent, be allowed to any, no matter ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... him, by his own authority. Yet, in the eyes of religion, this union still existed. The Emperor asked the Pope to pronounce it null, but Pius VII. gave the request a formal refusal, writing in June, 1805: "It is beyond our power in the present state of things, to pronounce it null. If we should usurp an authority we do not possess, we should render ourselves guilty of an abuse abominable before the throne of God; and Your Majesty himself, in his justice, would blame us for pronouncing a sentence contrary to the testimony of our conscience, ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... astonished at the schools being shut on the day after his arrival. And they remained shut, both the modern school and the middle-class girls' school for months, because the Professor's quite illegal attempt to usurp the inspectorship was resented. The secondary school was closed and the teachers who had come to [vS]ibenik with their families, but whose permanent domicile was elsewhere, received an order, delivered by carabinieri, that they would have to leave the town in four days. A few Italians ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... his abdication in two letters, one addressed to the Metropolitan, the other to the people of Moscow. This action struck terror among the nobles and the people. The former dreaded that the people might rise and avenge the czar, and the people were afraid that the nobles would once again usurp the government. The nobles and priests consulted and decided to beg Ivan's pardon and to submit to any punishment he might impose. Ivan consented to return to Moscow (p. 117) but on his own terms. This was accepted. After his arrival in the capital he established ...
— The Story of Russia • R. Van Bergen
... felt that in this matter his mother was to be supported, whilst his detestation of this adventurer who threatened to usurp the place that should rightly be his own spurred him to ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... over the press; but we occasionally hear of movements to make the public schools of America subservient to sect or party. The success of these movements would be as great a calamity as can ever befall a free people. Ignorance would take the place of learning, and slavery would usurp ...
— Thoughts on Educational Topics and Institutions • George S. Boutwell
... wealth to thee I part, But could not with De Stafford's heart! Nor could I mute and prudent be When all at once I found 'twas thee, Doom'd ever, in thy own despite, To take my rank, usurp my right! I told, alas! my father's name, The noble stock from which I came:— 'Marie de Brehan, sounds as well, Perhaps,' I cried, 'as Isabel! And were the elder branch restor'd, (My grandsire was the rightful lord,) I, in my injur'd father's ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... before, self-control is the secret of all power. The day is not distant when the dogmas of science will be set aside for the spirit of philosophic inquiry. Then men will no longer say that they have reached the goal of human capacity or that they can not usurp the prerogative of the gods, for it will be known ...
— The Ghost of Guir House • Charles Willing Beale
... a disbelief of the existence of the world. And though it may be said that these were only the isolated results of special schools, it is not to be forgotten that they were of schools the most advanced. The time had now arrived when the name of a master was no more to usurp the place of reason, as had been hitherto the case; when these last results of the different methods of philosophizing were to be brought together, a criticism of a higher order established, and conclusions of ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... took an interest in Winona's doings at school. She read her monthly reports, and scolded her if her work had fallen below standard. She expressed a guarded pleasure over successful matches, but rubbed in the moral that games must not usurp her attention to the detriment of ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... nobleman, described by Disraeli in a famous passage as an 'arch-mediocrity' was Prime Minister for fifteen years. He owed his long tenure of office largely to the tolerance with which he allowed his abler lieutenants to usurp his power: perhaps he owed it still more to the victories which Wellington was then winning abroad and which secured the confidence of the country; but at least he seems to have been a good judge of men. In 1811 he promoted Peel to be Under-Secretary ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Obliterates another; and we are all Vain shadows here that seem a little while, And suffer, and pass. Let me not fight in vain, O Son of God, with thine immortal word, Yon tyrant of eternity and time, Who doth usurp thy place on earth, whose feet Are in the depths, whose head is in the clouds, Who thunders all abroad, The world is mine! Laws, virtues, liberty I have attempted To give thee, Rome. Ah! only where death is Abides thy glory. Here the laurel only Flourishes on the ruins and the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... confirmed in 1681, and he became proprietor. No man ever assumed such a trust with less of personal ambition or desire for gain than he. "You shall be governed by laws of your own making," said he; "I shall not usurp the right of any, or oppress his person." He had already made inroads on his estate by fighting the cause of his brethren in England in the courts; but when a speculator offered him six thousand pounds down and an annual ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... dessert, for instance. That will be sugared roast meat,—mordioux! Ah! pardon me, monsieur, that was a little oath which escaped me, because it is a habit with my lord and master. I sometimes allow myself to usurp that little oath, as it seems in pretty good taste. I take this liberty only in his absence, please to observe, for you may understand that in his presence—but, in truth, monsieur, this cider is abominable; ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... to him more than any one that the present Khedive is indebted for having lost the whole of the Soudan. By his tyranny, following after Gordon's kindness, the province was stirred into revolt, and the Mahdi enabled to usurp authority. We ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill
... merit. It has the best landscape in it, the best portrait, and the best scene of homely life, to be found in the building. Don't think it a part of my despondency about public affairs, and my fear that our national glory is on the decline, when I say that mere form and conventionalities usurp, in English art, as in English government and social relations, the place of living force and truth. I tried to resist the impression yesterday, and went to the English gallery first, and praised and admired with great diligence; but it was of no use. I could not make anything better of it ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... yellow handkerchief shade forth the felon's bar; the daring burglar eyeing with confidence the counsel learned in the law's defects, fee'd by its produce to defend its quondam owner. The effigies of Pride, Extravagance, honest Distress, and reckless Plunder, all by turns usurp the scene. In my last waking sleep, just as I had composed myself in delicious indolence, a parcel fell with more than ordinary force on one beneath. These were two of my talking friends. I stirred not, but sat silently ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, November 6, 1841, • Various
... opens with Antonius' suit to Poppaea, which is full of passion and poetry, but is not allowed to usurp too much room in the progress of the play. Then, in fine contrast to the grovelling servility of the Emperor's creatures, we see the erect figure of the grand stoic philosopher, Persius' tutor, Cornutus, whose free-spokenness procures him banishment. ...
— Old English Plays, Vol. I - A Collection of Old English Plays • Various
... lot of a prince's favorite. Later we behold in him a papal nepot-prince in whom the Pope endeavored to embody all mundane power and honor; he made him his condottiere, his warder, his body-guard, and, finally, his worldly heir. Calixtus allowed him to usurp every position of authority in the Church domain and, like a destroying angel, to overrun and devastate the republics and the tyrannies, for the purpose of founding a family dynasty, the Papacy being of only momentary tenure, and not transmittable ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... other class of State institutions or of private citizens. It is not in the nature of things that hostility to these institutions can spring from this source, or any opposition to their course of business, except when they themselves depart from the objects of their creation and attempt to usurp powers not conferred upon them or to subvert the standard of value established by the Constitution. While opposition to their regular operations can not exist in this quarter, resistance to any attempt ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren • Martin van Buren
... cried Mary. "Betty, how can you propose anything so impossible, so unfeminine! Are not men our natural protectors?" and she threw a languishing glance at the cattle-breeder. "Shall we usurp their rights?" ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... not Brutus (I mean that Brutus, who in open senate Stabb'd the first Caesar that usurp'd the ...
— Venice Preserved - A Tragedy • Thomas Otway
... not usurp her mind. It is but sorrow guessed from far Thro' twilight dimly. She must find Her duty elsewhere: not resigned— Because she knows them what they are, Yet scarcely ruffled from ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various
... Merlin sung, Of keenest eye and truest tongue. Say not, the chiefs who first arrive Usurp the seats for which all strive; The forefathers this land who found Failed to plant the vantage-ground; Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow. But wilt thou measure all thy road, See thou lift the lightest load. Who has little, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... is not a nest-builder, but will usurp the nest of the crow or some other large bird. If a deserted nest can be found, the sparrow-hawk will immediately take possession; but if no such presents itself, this bad-hearted, quarrelsome bird does not hesitate to depose the rightful owner, ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... seventy millions of people, on account of a few half-mawkish, half- blasphemous phrases in a convention speech, can bear witness to the necessity of a reform in this particular—a reform which will forbid a sensation-seeking city mob to usurp the function of the whole people ...
— Volume I • Andrew Dickson White
... of human existence, but in accentuating the misery of the masses, driving them to desperation and to embrace illogic and deceptive maxims of socialism and violent anarchy. It is with those forces that he intends to uproot and usurp divinely instituted authority expressly set up to repress evil and to protect person and property. He wants by licence and not liberty to hasten the advent of that murderous political power prophetically depicted with the statue standing upon feet ...
— Origin of the Anglo-Boer War Revealed (2nd ed.) - The Conspiracy of the 19th Century Unmasked • C. H. Thomas
... he slept badly in his new abode, for it seemed to him as if the spectre of the man whose place he was to usurp was hovering over his couch. But with the dawn of day, and especially when the hour arrived for him to go out and give his lessons, he felt his courage return to him, though rashness perhaps would be the more correct word. And with a mien of perfect confidence ...
— Caught In The Net • Emile Gaboriau
... can usurp this height," return'd that shade, "But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest." * * * * * "Are there not thousands in the world," said I, Encourag'd by the sooth voice of the shade, "Who love their ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... J. R.'s been the one white man so far. Now we're three to one. If he can usurp a crown, I don't see but what we ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Aly was practising piety and cultivating Cardinals in Rome, with an empty purse and a pain-racked body to make a mockery of her claim to a crown, away in distant Russia Catherine II. was nursing a terrible revenge on the woman who had dared to usurp her position and threaten her throne. The succession of revolutions, at which she had at first smiled scornfully, had now roused the tigress in her. She would show the world that she was no woman to be trifled with, and the first victim of her vengeance should be that ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... at the thought of sex is the little girl who reacted too strongly to early impressions. The man of forty who is disgruntled because he is not made manager of a business created by others is the little boy who was jealous of his father and wanted to usurp his place of power. The man who suffers from a sense of inferiority because his friend has a handsomer or more intellectual wife is the same little boy who strove with his father for possession of the mother, the ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... father; and that, not owning himself, he may not destroy himself. But, leaving this metaphysical argument for what it is worth, we observe that man has a Master, Owner, Proprietor, and Sovereign Lord, God Almighty. To take your own life is to usurp the dominion of God. It is wronging the Lord of life and death. But none is wronged against his will: God is willing that murderers should be hung, may He not also be willing that men in misery should hang themselves? To this query suffice it for the present to reply, that God ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... matter of fact, simply upon a physical cause, to the exclusion of a divine, and to say that the given case actually belongs to his science because other like cases do, I must tell him, Ne sutor ultra crepidam: he is making his particular craft usurp and occupy the universe. This then is the drift of my illustration. If the creature is ever setting in motion an endless series of physical causes and effects, much more is the Creator; and as our excluding ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... he. "I love the holy zeal which is jealous of allowing objects, dear even to your wishes, to encroach on the sanctuary of heaven. Be ever thus, meek child of the church, and no human idol will be able to usurp that part of your virgin heart which belongs ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... be right to dwell in the midst of false images, even though these are known to be false. The time will come when the illusory image will usurp the place of the just idea it has seemed to represent. We shall not reduce the part of the infinite and the mysterious by employing other images, by framing other and juster conceptions. Do what we may, this part can never be lessened. It will always be found ...
— The Buried Temple • Maurice Maeterlinck
... ruffians upon a defenseless and harmless throng of spectators; but the fact remains that the ruffians in their hire did shoot into the crowd without occasion, and did so shed innocent blood. And it is enough to condemn the system that it authorizes unofficial and irresponsible persons to usurp the most delicate and difficult functions of the State and exposes the lives of citizens to the murderous assaults of hireling assassins, stimulated to violence by panic or by the suggestion of employers to strike terror by an appalling ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... also shrewd and designing, often making pretence of friendship and affection to gain her ends when in reality hatred and animosity were burning in her bosom. Such was Rebecca Hartz. Such the woman to usurp the household government, when the gentle Mrs. Mordecai had ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... therefore, which Nero delivered in the senate-chamber, he said that in assuming the imperial dignity, which he had consented to do in obedience to the will of his father the late emperor, to the general voice of the army, and the universal suffrages of the people, he did not intend to usurp the civil powers of the state, but to leave to the Senate, and to the various civil functionaries of the city, their rightful and proper jurisdiction. He considered himself as merely the commander-in-chief of the armies of the commonwealth, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... three brothers and a father upon the ocean," vociferated the demon; "for aught I know it may be one of them! but were they all aboard that hulk yonder, I would not return! But who are you, sirrah, that dares to usurp my power? Now, upstart, you shall know your place!" and he seized him by the collar, bore him aft, lashed him to a spar, called for the cat, and lifting it high in air,—it falls, but the cursed invention of man's cruelty falls wide of its mark! Ere its descent had scarred ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale
... was not enough to usurp the rights of a husband and father, he thought to play his part still better by deceiving the mistress also . . . . Ah! it is amusing, is it not? You also, Rose, you thought he was your old lover! Well, I at least am excusable, I the wife, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Beheld the mimic of his whim, And on the morrow challenged him Declaring to each beau and belle That he this grunter would excel. The morrow came—the crowd was greater— But prejudice and rank ill-nature Usurp'd the minds of men and wenches, Who came to hiss and break the benches. The mimic took his usual station, And squeak'd with general approbation; Again "Encore! encore!" they cry— "'Tis quite the ...
— The Fables of Phdrus - Literally translated into English prose with notes • Phaedrus
... do not usurp a priviledge reserved for some one more happy in your acquaintance, may I presume, Madam, to entreat (for a while) the favour of your Conversation, at least till the arrival of whom you expect, provided you are not tired of me before; for then upon the least intimation of uneasiness, ...
— Incognita - or, Love & Duty Reconcil'd. A Novel • William Congreve
... loves you, it is true; he calls you his most faithful servant, and promises ever to be a gracious Sovereign to you, but he will never further your projects of becoming an independent ruler, and will not assist you to effect the Elector's ruin, that you may usurp his place. He rather wishes you to remain what you are—Stadtholder in the Mark—and to exert all your energies in maintaining that position, since the Emperor relies upon your good offices for securing him an ally in the Elector. The Mark is to remain ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... ought to remember, that both by creation and transgression they are made to be in subjection to their own husbands. This conclusion makes Paul himself: "Let [saith he] the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence; for Adam was first formed, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, was in the transgression" (1 ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... highest cause on earth; and the love of the whole family encompassed her. One of the boys had brought her from Kansas when she was yet very little, and she had grown up among them as their youngest sister; but the doctor, from a tender scruple against seeming to usurp the place of his brother in her childish thought, would not let her call him father, and in obedience to the rule which she soon began to give their love, they all turned and called him Uncle Jack with her. Yet the Ellisons, though they loved their little ...
— A Chance Acquaintance • W. D. Howells
... appeal to the best, the most virtuous and moral of my readers—cannot put out the fire that nature kindles in the adoring heart of woman. Her error was not that she loved Michael more, but that she had loved Mildred less. Ambition, if it usurp the rights of love, must look for all the punishment that love inflicts. Sooner or later it must come. "Who are you?" enquires the little god of the greater god, ambition, "that you should march into my realms, and create rebellion there? Wait but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... then if there must be a Singing one alone must sing, not all (or if all) the Men only and not the Women.... Some object, 'Because it is not permitted to speak in the Church in two cases: 1. By way of teaching.... For this the Apostle accounteth an act of authority which is unlawful for a woman to usurp over the man, II, Tim. 2, 13. And besides the woman is more subject to error than a man, ver. 14, and therefore might soon prove a seducer if she became a teacher.... It is not permitted to a woman to speak in the Church by way ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... vast stretches of scantily peopled territory in any one of several ways. Often the statesman, no less than the soldier, plays an all-important part in winning the new land; nevertheless, it is usually true that the diplomatists who by treaty ratify the acquisition usurp a prominence in history to which they are in no way entitled by the real worth ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Jr., dead? Then he can never arise to take the place this young man is now daring to usurp. Can Richard Kildene be proved to be living? Then is he, posing as Peter Craigmile, Jr., free from the charge of murder even if he makes confession thereto. He returns and makes this plea because he would live the life of a free ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... problem of Science is the problem of Method. Hitherto man has worked on Nature only piecemeal. The understanding and the logic-faculty are allowed to usurp the rational and creative powers. One would say that scientists systematically shut themselves out of three-fourths of their minds, and the English have been insane on Induction these two hundred years. This unholy divorce has, as it always ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... be found ample excerpts from those able dissertations upon Political Economy which I have for a long time been contributing to a great metropolitan journal, and which, for reasons utterly incomprehensible to me, another party has chosen to usurp the credit ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Who dares here to usurp Jussuf's place? Who dares here to pass for Jussuf's wife? I am Jussuf, who was thought lost! Where is the impostor? Let him come here, that he may receive the just ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... of immense value. Its object, according to the king, was that every man might know and be satisfied with his rightful possessions, and not with impunity usurp the property of others. But it was also of great service to the king, so that he might know who were his vassals, the amount of taxation which he could draw from them, and the actual strength of his ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... arraign'd, That with presumption impious and accurs'd, Thou hast usurp'd God's high prerogative, Making thy fellow mortal's life and death Wait on thy moody and diseased passions; That with a violent and untimely steel Hath set abroach the blood that should have ebbed In calm and natural current: to sum all In one wild name—a name the pale ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... indeed, been too often violated by the scandalous multiplication of offices and the utter incompetence of those who have filled them. But a community little more than half a century old cannot be entitled to denounce Englishmen as foreigners, or to complain that strangers usurp the rights of the country-born. A wise administration of local patronage, without distinctions which are unnatural and absurd, would strengthen the hands of the executive and satisfy ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... refined and elevated his theory of all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of them.[52] Hence so frequently it arises that, in persons of this temperament, we see some bright but artificial idol of the brain usurp the place of all real and natural objects of tenderness. The poet Dante, a wanderer away from wife and children, passed the whole of a restless and detached life in nursing his immortal dream of Beatrice; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... lui."[32] He somewhat redeemed himself in 1715 with le Triomphe de Bilboquet, ou la Defaite de l'Esprit, de l'Amour et de la Raison, a fancy inspired by the game of cup and ball, so much in vogue at that period that it threatened to usurp the time and rights of conversation, and had even made its way upon the stage, in which simple matter Marivaux found occasion for ...
— A Selection from the Comedies of Marivaux • Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux
... etymologies, I am commonly indebted to Junius and Skinner, the only names which I have forborne to quote when I copied their books; not that I might appropriate their labours or usurp their honours, but that I might spare a perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. Of these, whom I ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructers and benefactors, Junius appears to have excelled in extent ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... before Congress?" asked Mr. Shellabarger. "I at once define and affirm it in a single sentence. It is, under our Constitution, possible to, and the late Rebellion did in fact, so overthrow and usurp, in the insurrectionary States, the loyal State Governments, as that during such usurpation such States and their people ceased to have any of the rights or powers of Government as States of the Union, and this loss of the rights and powers of Government was such that ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... people at a period when civil war had distracted the government and uprooted all the landmarks so long the guide for those who preceded him—when a manifest determination of the so-called Congress, representing but two-thirds of the States, was apparent to usurp all power—when the State governments of ten States, though that of their people, were threatened with military usurpation, Jenkins remained firm to his convictions of duty. The credit of the State had never suffered ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... lyre, my Harry, and I hear From thee some raptures of the rare Gotiere; Then if thy voice commingle with the string, I hear in thee rare Laniere to sing; Or curious Wilson: tell me, canst thou be Less than Apollo, that usurp'st such three? Three, unto whom the whole world give applause; Yet their three praises ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... often to their island, at great cost, and at their particular request, to settle a factory, and trade with them in a friendly manner, bringing them rice and other provisions, with cloth and sundry commodities, in exchange for their spices; that we had no desire to usurp over them, or to reduce them under bondage, as had been done formerly by the Hollanders and other nations; and that, if they would surrender their island of Puloroon to our sovereign the king of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... measures having been made, we have seen, in the short course of one month, a small proportion of the population of six States transcend the bounds at a single leap at once of the State and the national constitutions; usurp the extraordinary prerogative of repealing the supreme law of the land; exclude the great mass of their fellow- citizens from the protection of the Constitution; declare themselves emancipated from the obligations which the Constitution pronounces to ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 2 • George S. Boutwell
... no longer able to master his passion for royal power, made an attempt to usurp the throne, and succeeded without difficulty, since Zeno, together with his wife, sought refuge in Isauria, which was his native home. [471 A.D.] And while he was maintaining his tyranny for a year and eight months he was detested by practically everyone and in particular by the soldiers of ...
— History of the Wars, Books III and IV (of 8) - The Vandalic War • Procopius
... they past to regal phizzes, Compared them proudly with their own, And cried. "How could such monstrous quizzes "In Beauty's name usurp the throne!"— ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Second; but James, Duke of York, taking advantage of the absence of the said James, Duke of Monmouth, beyond the seas, did first cause the said late King to be poisoned, and immediately thereupon did usurp and invade the Crown, and doth continue so to do. We, therefore, the noblemen, gentlemen, and commons at present assembled, in the names of ourselves and all the loyal and Protestant noblemen, gentlemen, ...
— Roger Willoughby - A Story of the Times of Benbow • William H. G. Kingston
... out all view of the outside world; the distant sounds of civilisation serve only to accentuate the isolation. It is the land of the Indian, as it was before the strange white man, brought from afar in great white-sailed ships, came to usurp the land of the wondering natives. At any moment we fancy that we may see an Indian canoe silently round a ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... business to be a pale and perspiring youth, tending to long back hair and apt to be startled by the slightest sound when he is alone. And what a lot of them write poetry, and such poetry too! That is the manner of the man who is going to seize your house and usurp your cow, while you will be lucky if you are allowed a place on a perch in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, October 6, 1920 • Various
... safety, boldly roams Through woods and dreary wilds, to scour the land Of thieves and robbers? Is nought left for us? Must gentle woman quite forego her nature,— Force against force employ,—like Amazons, Usurp the sword from man, and bloodily Revenge oppression? In my heart I feel The stirrings of a noble enterprize; But if I fail—severe reproach, alas! And bitter misery will be my doom. Thus on my knees I supplicate the gods. ...
— Iphigenia in Tauris • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... who demand liberty and digest the theory of it, there must be other men who take it, and who suffer for having taken it. If liberty is consolidated with speech and pen, it is founded with tears and blood; and the sceptical apostles of toleration conveniently usurp the place of the martyrs of conviction. "What we want," rightly observes a revolutionary writer, "is free men, rather than ...
— The Heavenly Father - Lectures on Modern Atheism • Ernest Naville
... Darnford since I am upon this affecting subject, does not this text seem to give a comfortable hope to a good woman, who shall thus die, of being happy in the Divine mercies? For the Apostle, in the context, says, that he suffers not a woman to teach, nor usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.—And what is the reason he gives? Why, a reason that is a natural consequence of the curse on the first disobedience, that she shall be in subjection to her ...
— Pamela (Vol. II.) • Samuel Richardson
... and from care, His greatest sorrows flow; When these usurp the heart of man, That heart he ne'er ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... of it, requires the utmost caution, and the constant control of sober reason: woe will be sure to betide the unfortunate wight, who, in such a situation, gives the reins to fancy, and suffers imagination to usurp the place of judgment, without reflecting, as has been observed by the poet on ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... place and exercised legitimate power, they would stand by him till their blood and treasures were alike exhausted. Such was their oath of loyalty, and it was kept with sacred care. But they resisted his authority at the point where he attempted to crush conscience, rule the Church, and usurp the royal prerogatives of the Lord Jesus Christ, who is KING OF KINGS. There they drew the line, and drew it so clear, that all the world might see it, and the blindest king might pause, consider, and not pass beyond. There they uttered their solemn protest with the Bible in one ...
— Sketches of the Covenanters • J. C. McFeeters
... by main force of will. A better assistant for Father Ignatius could not have been found. It was force, will, and intellect in the service of love and meekness; only there was a doubt if the servant might not usurp the place of the master, and the sway of love be not materially advanced by its new ally. Indeed, if the truth had been known, even the Bishop of Montreal had felt that Father Francis Xavier was too ambitious a character to reside safely in too close proximity to himself; and ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... is the seal, and who are the officers, of a community unknown as an organized body to the Congress of the United States? Can the right be admitted in that community to usurp the sovereignty over territory which belongs to the States of the Union? All these questions must be answered before I can consent to any such irregular proceeding as that which is now presented in the case ...
— The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government • Jefferson Davis
... simulated affection was now changed into undisguised hatred. Moreover, by the death of Alencon, Navarre now stood next the throne, and Guise's plots became still more extensive and more open as his own ambition to usurp the crown on the death of the childless Henry III. became ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... by thy cruelty Unlawfully usurp'st the Persian seat, Dar'st thou, that never saw an emperor Before thou met my husband in the field, Being thy captive, thus abuse his state, Keeping his kingly body in a cage, That roofs of gold and sun-bright palaces Should have prepar'd to entertain his grace? And treading him beneath ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... considered and said, "Be it known unto thee, most noble sir, that the king harboureth against thee the suspicion, that thou wouldest usurp his kingdom, and he spake, as he spake, to sound thee. Arise therefore, and crop thy hair. Doff these thy fine garments, and don an hair-shirt, and at daybreak present thyself before the king. And when he asketh ...
— Barlaam and Ioasaph • St. John of Damascus
... talk between the bannerman and his wife to learn her secret—how that she was the only daughter of the rightful emperor, the Prince Kung-ti, whose guardian and chief adviser the present emperor had been; how this trusted protector had made away with poor Kung-ti in order that he might usurp the throne; and how she, the Princess Woo, had been flung into the swift Hwang-ho, from the turbid waters of which she had been rescued by the ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks
... away of other faces and other forms, that face and that form now began to usurp the chief place in my thoughts. Not to my relief and pleasure. That could scarcely be, remembering all that had occurred; rather to my increasing distress and passionate resentment. I longed to forget ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... autobiographies, so that Dr. Franklin's stands almost alone in singular merit in that class. We have an abundance of lives of notable generals, professional men, and politicians, in which indiscriminate eulogy and partisanship too often usurp the place of actual facts, and the truth of history is distorted to glorify the merits of the subject of the biography. The great success of General Grant's own Memoirs, too, has led publishers to tempt many public ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... have since, figuratively speaking, been reduced to a mere span: and their very sense of the difference of the motive—that is to say, of the difference between him who merely seeks whereon to erect his dwelling, and him who is anxious to usurp to himself the possession of almost illimitable territory —cannot be better expressed than by the different degrees of enmity manifested against the two several people. When did the fierceness of Indian hatred blaze forth against the English Colonists, who were limited in their views, ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... international relations' * * * It was the judgment of the political department that full recognition of the Soviet Government required the settlement of outstanding problems including the claims of our nationals. * * * We would usurp the executive function if we held that that decision was not final and conclusive on the courts. 'All constitutional acts of power, whether in the executive or in the judicial department, have as much legal validity and obligation ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin
... the Romish priests, and the means employed by them to usurp the ecclesiastical authority of the Irish people, is shown in the history of their councils. The 5th canon of the Council of ...
— The God-Idea of the Ancients - or Sex in Religion • Eliza Burt Gamble
... government was more and more becoming a parliamentary one. Hayes was determined to reestablish it on its constitutional foundations. When he came into power the lower house was in control of the Democrats and it was they who were determined to usurp executive power. Riders were placed on appropriation bills and efforts were made to force the President to assent to laws which would eliminate the Federal Government from all interference with the affairs of the Southern States. Notwithstanding ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 2, 1917 • Various
... No stern command, no monitory voice, Prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; Yet, timely provident, she hastes away To snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; When fruitful Summer loads the teeming plain, She crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. How long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, Unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? While artful shades thy downy couch enclose, And soft solicitation courts repose, Amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, Year chases ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... that he enrolled, they write, amounted to a hundred and sixty-four; afterwards he made several laws which added much to the people's liberty, in particular one granting offenders the liberty of appealing to the people from the judgment of the consuls; a second, that made it death to usurp any magistracy without the people's consent; a third, for the relief of poor citizens, which, taking off their taxes, encouraged their labors; another, against disobedience to the consuls, which was no less popular ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... considerably aided by an abuse of language, not sufficiently checked in its first advances, whereby that species of Religion which is opposite to the warm and affectionate kind, has been suffered almost without disturbance, to usurp to itself the epithet of rational. But let not this claim be too hastily admitted. Let the position in question be thoroughly and impartially discussed, and it will appear, if I mistake not, to be a gross and pernicious error. If amputation be indeed indispensable, we must submit to it; but we ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... career carried partisan contests beyond the point of safety. His participation in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise is an illustration, all the more pertinent and impressive because his own judgment was against the measure, and he allowed himself to be controlled by the fear that another might usurp the place in Southern regard so long held by himself. In parliamentary discussion it is not easy to overstate the power of Mr. Douglas. Indeed, it would be difficult to name his superior. He did not attain the dignity of Webster's stately style. He was ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... to the meeting of the States-General to examine into the intolerable grievances, and, if necessary, to strip the king of tyrannical powers, for such a thing the English parliament had done; but it was quite another thing for one branch of the States-General to constitute itself the nation, and usurp the powers and functions of the other two branches; to sweep away, almost in a single night, the constitution of the realm; to take away all the powers of the king, imprison him, mock him, insult him, and ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IX • John Lord
... cured of the propensity to accept bribes.[65] In 912, Gregoras and Choirosphacta were obliged to join the brotherhood to repent at leisure for having favoured the attempt of Constantine Ducas, domestic of the Scholae, to usurp the throne of Constantine VII. Porphyrogenitus when seven ...
— Byzantine Churches in Constantinople - Their History and Architecture • Alexander Van Millingen
... so much for over-consideration, so much for lack of faith in over-anxiety, so much more of late for the keen mother-jealousy that had quickened in her to anguish at the thought that another would one day usurp her undivided throne, and claim and take the lion's share of the love that had been all hers. Her spiritual director was far too lenient, in her opinion. She was all the more exacting towards herself. What right had a nun to be so bound by an earthly tie? It was defrauding ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... cannot impart the art to their pupils. As I have said, librarians contend that this is true, yet many of them with opportunities to instruct teachers in these matters lying unused before them, neglect them and coolly step in to usurp one of the school's functions and ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... newspaper and the magazines should not be allowed to usurp the place of conversation. If the art of talking is rapidly dying out, as some assert, we should do our share to revive it. We may not again have the wit and repartee, the brilliant intellectual combats of those other days, but we can at least each have a cultivated speaking-voice, ...
— Talks on Talking • Grenville Kleiser
... Party soever. That both of them were Men of Wit and Satyr, but that Erasmus, according to the Genius of his Country, had more of the Humourist in him than Lucian, and in all Parts of Learning was infinitely his Superior. That Lucian liv'd in an Age, when Fiction and Fable had usurp'd the Name of Religion, and Morality was debauch'd by a Set of sowr Scoundrels, Men of Beard and Grimace, but scandalously lewd and ignorant, who yet had the Impudence to preach up Virtue, and stile themselves Philosophers, perpetually clashing with one ...
— Colloquies of Erasmus, Volume I. • Erasmus
... day this has been! Quimby, my dear boy, how can I thank you? I shall take possession of my half of your apartment at once, to be sure no one shall again usurp my place; until then, au revoir!" and, in parting, perceptibly held Nattie's hand longer than was absolutely necessary, Quimby followed him with dejected mien, fully aware that of all the mistakes he had ever made he committed the worst, when he asked his old ...
— Wired Love - A Romance of Dots and Dashes • Ella Cheever Thayer
... temporal authority had not begun. Ambrose, indeed, had rebuked Theodosius, and set in defiance the empress when she interfered with his spiritual functions; and Leo had laid the corner-stone of the Papacy by instituting a divine right to his decrees. But a Hildebrand and a Becket had not arisen to usurp the prerogatives of their monarchs. Least of all did popes then dream of subjecting the temporal powers and raising the spiritual over them, so as to lead to issues with kings. That was a later development in the history of the papacy. The popes of the eighth and ninth centuries ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume V • John Lord
... what I desired to convey to the public, I feel confident that I am far from able to do justice to this last chapter. The events crowd upon my mind in a sort of kaliedescope confusion and scarcely have the intention of giving expression to an idea, than a hundred others crop up to usurp its place in my mind. Although I will tell the story of the tragic events as clearly and as truthfully as is possible, still I know that years after this little sketch is printed, I will remember incidents that now escape my memory. One has not time, or ...
— Two months in the camp of Big Bear • Theresa Gowanlock and Theresa Delaney
... children had put down their books. It was bed-time. They always waited for family prayers. When the Doctor was absent Mrs Morgan or Charles read them, but as he was momentarily expected, his wife and son were unwilling to usurp his office. At length the hall-door bell rang. It was the Doctor. He appeared unusually sad and serious. The family assembled. His voice, generally so firm, trembled as ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... learned scribe Nor arithmaticion Ever able to decide The usurp'd base ambition, Which in truth I shall declare, Traytors here which lately ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... to hear your side of a singular case. In an official letter to the post adjutant, Captain Devers charges that you went to the post hospital last night, ordered the attendant out of the room, and proceeded to usurp control of a patient under the doctor's care,—that you deliberately overthrew his authority and actually told the attendant his orders were of no account. This, if true, is a most serious matter, but I have learned that there are many sides to a ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... constitutional monarchy in favor of the Duke of Chartres. Many persons have imagined that the Duke of Chartres was aware of this design. It is certain that in the army, as well as among the moderates of the interior, the prince would have found a crowd of adherents. But he was too conscientious to usurp a crown which had just fallen in blood—too good a son to authorize proceedings which would have endangered the life of his father; in short, too enlightened, too prudent, notwithstanding his extreme youth, to be instrumental in any ambitious or ill-conceived scheme ...
— Louis Philippe - Makers of History Series • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... is woful, when the young usurp the place, or despise the wisdom, of the aged; and among the many dark signs of these times, the disobedience and insolence of youth are among the darkest. But with whom is the fault? Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its honor; nor did childhood ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin
... years! What! I, a citizen, vote, not only for my own dispossession, my own forfeiture, my own abdication, but for the abdication of universal suffrage for ten years, by the coming generations, over whom I have no right, over whom you, an usurper, force me to usurp power, which, by the way, be it said in passing, would suffice to nullify that monstrous ballot, if all conceivable nullities were not already piled, heaped and welded upon it. What! is that what you would have me do? You make me vote that all is finished, that nothing remains, that ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... His Majesty's Com'ds to the other Colonies been duely obey'd, and the necessary Assistance given by them, the Fr. wou'd have long ago have been oblig'd entirely to have evacuated their usurp'd Possession of the King's Lands, instead of w'ch they are daily becoming more formidable, whilst every Gov't except No. Caro. has amus'd me with Expectations that have proved fruitless, and at length refuse to give any ...
— Pioneers of the Old Southwest - A Chronicle of the Dark and Bloody Ground • Constance Lindsay Skinner
... affliction, whether light or grave, God's messenger sent down to thee. Do thou With courtesy receive him, rise and bow, And, ere his shadow pass thy threshold, crave Permission first his heavenly feet to lave, Then lay before him all thou hast. Allow No cloud of passion to usurp thy brow Or mar thy hospitality; no wave Of mortal tumult to obliterate Thy soul's marmoreal calmness. Grief should be, Like joy, majestic, equable, sedate; Confirming, cleansing, raising, making free; Strong to consume small troubles, to commend Great thoughts, grave thoughts, thoughts lasting ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people, and to usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines which had lifted ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... too important interests, to permit its march unchecked. Of all tyrannical bodies, a railway company is the most tyrannical. It asks to be armed with powers which the common law denies to the Sovereign herself. It seeks, without your leave, to usurp your property, and will not buy it from you at your own price. It levels your house, be it grange or cottage, lays down its rails in your gardens, cuts through your policy, and fells down unmercifully the oaks which your Norman ancestor planted in the days of William Rufus. All ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... winding-sheet high upon the breast of the man for whom death was waiting. Could we behold any such visible sign, the man who bore it, no matter where he stood—even if he were a slave watching Caesar pass—would usurp every eye. At the coronation of a king, the wearing of that order would dim royal robe, quench the sparkle of the diadem, and turn to vanity the herald's cry. Death makes the meanest beggar august, and that augustness would assert itself in the presence of a king. And it is ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... midst of the chaos of the rising society, small aggregations are formed which feel the want of alliance and union with each other.... Soon inequality of strength is displayed among neighbouring aggregations. The strong tend to subjugate the weak, and usurp at first the rights of taxation and military service. Thus political authority leaves the aggregations which first instituted it, to take a ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... only of obliterating remembrance of the ill-timed advent of her ex-lover, but of inducing something as closely akin to self-forgetfulness as was possible to her self-centred nature. She grew hotly anxious to obtain, to charm—if it might be, to usurp the whole field of Richard's ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
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