"Ascendency" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... fell upon them was so terrible that they were compelled to protect themselves by force of arms. Gradually they gained the ascendency in several cities, which they fortified, and where they protected refugees from the persecution which had driven them from the cities where the Catholics predominated. Such was the deplorable condition of France at the time of ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... cycads become rare. The highest types of flowering plants gain a complete ascendency, and forests of modern aspect cover the continent from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Ocean. Among the kinds of forest trees whose remains are found in the continental deposits of the Cretaceous are the magnolia, the myrtle, the laurel, the ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... feelings of the many are stained with vanity. Each wishes to be lord in a little world, to be superior at least over one; and he does not feel strong enough to retain a life-long ascendency over a strong nature. Only a Theseus could conquer before he wed the Amazonian queen. Hercules wished rather to rest with Dejanira, and received the poisoned robe as a fit guerdon. The tale should be interpreted to all those who seek ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... principles are."—"Yes, I am well aware of it; there is something in that: he is honest. But for his obstinacy, my brothers would have brought him over. They are related to him. His wife, who is Joseph's sister-in-law, has ascendency over him. As for me, have I not, I ask you, made sufficient advances to him? You have witnessed them. Moreau, who has a higher military reputation than he, came over to me at once. However, I repent of having cajoled Bernadotte. I am thinking of separating him from all his coteries ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... the trader by good hopes of profit. The western coast of America, for the most part peopled by savages, offered little save the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru, and these were monopolized jealously by the Spaniards—not a commercial nation—during their long ascendency. Being so very far from England and affording so little material for trade, Pacific America did not draw the enterprise of a country the chief and honorable inducement of whose seamen was the hope of gain, ...
— The Interest of America in Sea Power, Present and Future • A. T. Mahan
... commanding genius and daring spirit, had now obtained a great ascendency over all the New England tribes excepting the Mohegans. They, under Uncas, were strongly attached to the English, to whom they were indebted for their very existence. The character of Philip is illustrated ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... was pertinent and suggestive, but the secret of Rome's ascendency consisted in the fact that where she conquered she dwelt. Wherever the eagles pounced, Rome multiplied herself in miniature. In the army was the nation, in the legion the city. Where it camped, presto! a judgment seat ...
— Imperial Purple • Edgar Saltus
... character and greater knowledge of the world gave her an ascendency over the girlish wife such as age has over youth. There were not ten years between them, and yet Maude felt that for some reason the conversation between them could not quite be upon equal terms. The quiet ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... fact that, however natural his behaviour might be, it was obvious that he was being involved in a very awkward and disgraceful complication. A foul and wicked murder had been attempted, and he had let the murderess escape, and thereby, among other things, allowed her to gain a complete ascendency over himself. In fact, he was in a fair way to become her tool — and no more dreadful fate can befall a man than to become the tool of an unscrupulous woman, or indeed of any woman. There is but one end to it: when he is broken, or ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... absence had she wondered how he would look if he ever came back, and with that minute conscientiousness which, as it were, pervaded her whole character, she had held herself responsible before God for his fate, prayed for him, and trembled lest evil powers should gain the ascendency ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... that any show of affability from them would be construed by the democrats into a terror of their power; while the democrats were no less to blame; for hearing how their compeers were thriving in France, and demolishing every obstacle to their ascendency, they were crouse and really insolent, evidencing none of that temperance in prosperity that proves the possessors worthy of ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... the heart will finally triumph over all obstructions. The struggle was long, but gradually pride and passion yielded, and love regained the ascendency. Napoleon so far surrendered on the third day, as to enter the apartment of Josephine. She was seated at a toilet-table, her face buried in her hands, and absorbed in the profoundest woe. The letters, ...
— Napoleon Bonaparte • John S. C. Abbott
... in so young a people; and for months, and even years, the fierce contests of political parties in the United States made a declaration of war against either aggressor impracticable. Now the Franco-maniacs were in the ascendency, and the country rang with praises of France,—the nation which had cast off aristocrats, and, like America, was devoted to republican principles; the nation which had aided the Colonies in their war for freedom. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... and Mr. Stewart; and they in their first sitting advised that all the precautions established by our Orders in Council against the plague should be adopted against the cholera. This opinion was given under the authority of Dr. Warren, who, it appears, exercises the same ascendency in this Board that he had previously done in the College of Physicians on the same subject. The fact is that he takes the safe side. They have nothing to do with trade and commerce, which must shift for themselves, and probably the other members will not take upon themselves the ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. II • Charles C. F. Greville
... These were the extravagant and unconcealed joy of the High Tories and of his immediate friends, and his attending at the same time the Pitt dinner and sitting there while Lord Eldon gave his famous 'one cheer more' for Protestant ascendency. That he treated Huskisson with some degree of harshness there is no doubt, but he was angry, and not without reason; the former brought it all upon himself. During the debate upon East Retford, when Huskisson was ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... either because they became really incorporated with that nation, or merely that they recognized it for the most powerful of their tribes. Friesland, to speak in the language of that age, extended then from the Scheldt to the Weser, and formed a considerable state. But the ascendency of France was every year becoming more marked; and King Dagobert extended the limits of her power even as far as Utrecht. The descendants of the Menapians, known at that epoch by the different names of Menapians, Flemings, ...
— Holland - The History of the Netherlands • Thomas Colley Grattan
... to change their views, and in the times when they were not controlled by responsible ministers, they gave effect to their alterations of opinion. It is quite possible that at the time when he founded the Abbey, William was partial to Church ascendency, for his celebrated contest with the ecclesiastical power arose out of subsequent events. This King's disputes with the Church have a somewhat complex shape. The clergy of his own dominions had a spiritual ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... ignorance of the mountaineer, and his secluded life, he knew of no foreign countries, no land holier than the land of his home. There was no incongruity to his mind that it should have been in the solemn silence and austere solitude of the "bald," in the magnificent ascendency of the Great Smoky, that the law-giver had met the Lord and spoken with Him. Often as he lay at length on the strange barren place, veiled with the clouds that frequented it, a sudden sunburst in their midst would suggest anew what ...
— The Riddle Of The Rocks - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... a disgrace to England, and a source of misery to Ireland, until the whole system inaugurated by Strongbow has been reversed. "At the commencement of the connexion between England and Ireland," says Mr. Goldwin Smith, "the foundation was inevitably laid for the fatal system of ascendency—a system under which the dominant party were paid for their services in keeping down rebels by a monopoly of power and emolument, and thereby strongly tempted to take care that there should always be rebels to keep down." There is a fallacy or two in this statement; ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... staff. Timothy Pickering had been summoned to the Governor's presence, but he kept his Excellency so long in an indecent passion that the town-meeting had to be adjourned. Troops were ordered up from the Neck and for a while an encounter seemed imminent. Later, when the Colonists were in the ascendency, Colonel Browne's estate was confiscated, and after the close of the war it was turned over to Mr. Elias Derby. Now he was removing it to make way for a much finer residence and, being a notably patriotic citizen, he did not enjoy the stigma of a Tory house. Parts were carried away as curiosities, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... of the nation." This man was Etienne Marcel, provost of the merchants of Paris—that is to say, mayor of the municipality, whom eminent historians have called the greatest personage of the fourteenth century. During a career of three years his name dominates French history—a brief ascendency, but of potent influence. His endeavor, in Thierry's view, "was, as it were, a premature attempt at the grand designs of Providence, and the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune through which those designs were destined to advance ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... to bow down to anything, and kiss anything, however vile and ugly, provided a priest commanded them; and as for the old governor, what with the influence which his daughters exerted, and what with the ascendency which the red-haired man had obtained over him, he dared not say his purse, far less his soul, was his own. Only think of an Englishman not being master of his own purse! My acquaintance, the lady's maid, assured me that, to her ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... elderly chief, who had read omens in the entrails of sacrifice warning him to be discreet and guarded in his life or it would be taken from him by one related to him, and of greater power. He could not brook the thought of Kamehameha's ascendency, for he was a man used to deference, a man of weight and dignity, while this new-found prince was a boor. He therefore made himself unpleasant by criticisms and carpings, by false interpretations of signs, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... intelligence, the class-room with its serried benches upon which clustered two hundred lads hushed in attentive respect, and when I set myself to inquire whither have fled the two hundred souls, so closely bound together by the ascendency of one man, I count more than one case of waste and eccentricity; as might be expected, I can count archbishops, bishops, and other dignitaries of the Church, all to a certain extent enlightened and moderate in their views. I come upon diplomatists, councillors ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... new posture of their affairs they might have led both races into the promised land of freedom and peace and Southern industrial expansion and greatness. Had they seized their golden opportunity for progressive and constructive statesmanship, the sceptre of their ascendency in the governments of their section could not have been wrested from them by another class of whites, risen since the war, who distrust and hate them, but they might instead have transmitted their ascendency undiminished to their descendants, ...
— The Ballotless Victim of One-Party Governments - The American Negro Academy, Occasional Papers No. 16 • Archibald H. Grimke
... blood is wholly of man, but in some way the white corpuscles of the blood seem to be related to the cold-blooded animals and hence to the past. Under conditions, such as sleeping on the ground or in a cold, damp place, these white corpuscles may be aided to gain ascendency over the heart, brain, and red corpuscles. This accomplished, the past may ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... statesmanship. You have not spoken as a diplomatist, but as a great minister, who, feeling his strength, has no reason to conceal his actions. I will answer in the same spirit. Sit down again and hear me. You fear Russia, and think that if she gains too great an ascendency among nations, she will use it to the detriment of all Europe. I agree with you, and I myself would view the aggrandizement of Russia under Catharine with disapprobation and distrust. You are right, and ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... at opposing poles of thought—the one spiritual and ideal, the other material and realistic. And, though he struggled against the influence, the doctor's rather brutal common sense and large knowledge of physical causes, gained a painful ascendency over his mind at close quarters. Knott, it must be owned, was slightly merciless to his clerical acquaintances. He loved to bait them, to impale them on the horns of some moral or theological dilemma. And it was partly with this purpose ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... announcement! Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted by an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in a similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime gained an immediate ascendency—since then he had insisted that this particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him—would she remain desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his affairs, a scandal ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... to strengthen and assert his influence as a Mexican and a Delcasar. He must go to Arriba County, open the old ranch house he owned there, go among the people. He must gain a real ascendency. He knew how to do it. It was his birthright. He was full of fight and ambition, confident, elated. The way was clear before him. Tomorrow he would ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... the State are within reach of any citizen who is competent to attain them. On the other hand, the Transvaal is an oligarchy, not a democracy, where half the inhabitants claim to be upon an entirely different footing from the other half. This rule represents the ascendency of one race over the other, such an ascendency as existed in Ireland in the eighteenth century. Technically the one country is a republic and the other a monarchy, but in truth the empire stood for liberty ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... much annoyed. Of late years his easy temper had well-nigh surrendered itself to the ascendency of Mark Gardner; and though dissatisfied, remorseful, and anxious, he had allowed himself to be led farther and farther into extravagance. The sight of his home excited regrets, therefore he shunned it; and though weary and discontented in his chains, he was devoid of force or will ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... which was also respectable for its numbers, many were found who had watched the progress of American affairs, and who sincerely believed that the real danger which threatened the republic was to be looked for in the undue ascendency of the states. To them it appeared, that the substantial powers, and the extensive means of influence, which were retained by the local sovereignties, furnished them with weapons for aggression which were not easily to be resisted, and that ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... Indeed the ascendency which this bold-talking, promise-making soldier had acquired over Dick Middlemas, wilful as he was in general, was of a despotic nature; because the Captain, though greatly inferior in information and talent to the youth whose opinions he swayed, had skill in suggesting those ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott
... comes, his superficial habit of jesting is at once postponed, and the choicer parts of manhood promptly assert themselves in clear and handsome action. We are thus given to know that, however the witty and waggish companion or make-sport may have got the ascendency in him, still he is of an inward composition to forget it as soon as the cause of wronged and suffering virtue or innocence gives him a manly and generous part to perform. And when the blameless and gentle Hero is smitten down with ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... of Pachacamac continued to maintain its ascendency; and the oracles delivered from its dark and mysterious shrine, were held in no less repute among the natives of Tavantinsuyu, (or "the four quarters of the world," as Peru under the Incas was called,) than the oracles of Delphi obtained among the Greeks. Pilgrimages ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... besieged. The crowning square tower is that of the monastic church, and St. Michael's Chair is on the battlements—a stone beacon which is of great importance to all newly-married couples in that region, for it bestows the ascendency on the husband or wife who first sits in it. It is of this chair Southey's ballad about the adventurous Rebecca was written; and he tells that ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... communities, and widely diffused over the surface of the globe; and he has written at a period when communication was facilitated by peace; while to the wonder of his own countrymen, he has to an unexampled degree established an ascendency over the tastes of foreign nations. His works have been sought by foreigners with an avidity equalling, nay, almost exceeding, that with which they have been received among us. The conflicting literary tastes of France and Germany, which twenty years ago ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 545, May 5, 1832 • Various
... habit of believing people; it was part of his simplicity. His life was a curious union of ceaseless contention and inviolable charity—a true charity, having nothing in common with a lazy spirit of unconcern. He knew men well enough, at least, to have found out that none gains such ascendency over them as he who appeals to what is the nobler part in human nature. Nestors of the whigs used to wonder how so much imagination, invention, courage, knowledge, diligence—all the qualities that seem to make ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley
... right and wrong, truth and falsehood, are allowed to blend in confusion during the first Acts of the drama. But, in the last Act, harmony is always restored, order succeeds to disorder, tranquillity to agitation; and the mind of the spectator, no longer perplexed by the apparent ascendency of evil, is soothed, and purified, and made to acquiesce in the moral lesson deducible from ...
— Sakoontala or The Lost Ring - An Indian Drama • Kalidasa
... brilliant as a shock of armies, which feels the conflict and leaps to it as the storm-waves leap upon the sword edges of the cliffs—a courage which counts no odds. There is another courage, moral rather than physical. Valjean possessed both, with moral courage in ascendency. He has the agility and strength sometimes found in criminals. He is now in the galleys for life. One day, while engaged in furling sail, a sailor has toppled from the yard; but in falling caught a rope, but hangs, swinging ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... formed an order comprising many occupations and professions. They were distributed all over the country, possessing exclusively the means of reading and writing, and the whole stock of medical and scientific knowledge. Their ascendency, both direct and indirect, over the minds of the people was immense, for they prescribed that minute religious ritual under which the life of every Egyptian, not excepting ...
— History of Education • Levi Seeley
... Cecil, was openly opposed to Northumberland's designs, and prudently advanced a plea of ill health to excuse his absence from his duties: but Cheke at this time was an avowed partisan of the Duke, and of the policy which professed to secure the ascendency of the anti-Papal party. Cardan, living in daily intercourse with Cheke, might reasonably have taken up the point of view of his kind and genial friend; but no,—he evidently rated Northumberland, from beginning ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... with severity, and sometimes with contempt, against the President. He had said that the war was for the Union; but they scornfully retorted that this was to reduce it to "a mere sectional strife for ascendency;" that "a Union, with slavery spared and reinstated, would not be worth the cost of saving it." It was true that to save the Union, without also removing the cause of disunion, might not be worth a very great price; yet both Union and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... would. It was interesting to see the ascendency which the uneducated woman, bound to him by no legal tie, had acquired over the brilliant, unstable man. Mrs. Athelny treated Philip with motherly kindness now that he was in a different position, ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... do you mean intellectual cultivation?—by the reign of knowledge, the ascendency of the most ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... Dutch, whom they detested, and to free their country from a ruinous war, which had all the appearance of becoming habitual to the constitution. They foresaw the risk they would run by entering into such measures, should ever the opposite faction regain the ascendency; they knew the whigs would employ all their art and influence, which was very powerful, in obstructing the peace, and in raising o popular clamour against the treaty. But their motives for treating were such as prompted them to undervalue all those difficulties and ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... deeply incensed against the Court party that had brought about his fall; and keen and bitter were his feelings at finding himself in the hands of the Prince himself. He chafed all the more at feeling the ascendency which Edward's lofty demeanour and personal kindness had formerly exerted over him, reviving again by force of habit; he hated himself for not having at once challenged his father's murderer; so as, ...
— The Prince and the Page • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to point out to the intelligent reader that the witchcraft of the mother consisted only in the ascendency of a powerful mind over a weak and melancholy one, and that the harshness with which she exercised her superiority in a case of delicacy had driven her daughter first to despair, then to frenzy. Accordingly, the Author has endeavoured to explain the ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... on Nassau; and Jamaica was threatened. Had England not given up the place to the Spaniards, not only would these things have been impossible, but she might have employed it with effect in her own military operations, and have maintained her ascendency in the West-Indian seas. Or, if she had preferred that course, she might have made it the price of Spain's neutrality during the American War, returning it to her on condition that she should not assist the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... struggle it would have been madness to attempt; and in the final battle of the war, begun on the 4th November, the crossing of the Sambre and the clearing of the great Mormal Forest furnished a wonderful tribute to the complete ascendency which their earlier victories had enabled our troops to establish ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... nobility.—Once upon a time, King Solomon, while making a royal progress, was much, incommoded by the powerful rays of the sun, and as he had ascendency over the birds, and knew their language, he called upon the vultures to come and fly betwixt the sun and his nobility, but the vultures refused. Then the kindly Hoopoes assembled, and flew in close mass above his head, thus forming a shade under which he proceeded ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... felt that the family should be alone as soon as possible, that they were facing problems which could better be solved without witnesses. It was her hope now to nurse her charge back to health, and, by the utmost exercise of tact, gain such an ascendency over the girl as to win her completely. Granting that the matron's effort was part of a scheme, it was one prompted by deep affection, a yearning to call her niece daughter and to provide for the idolized son just the kind of wife believed to be essential to ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... years to the action of the air, had undergone decay. The bones are therefore found in greatest number at those places where the sand of the dune has been recently carried away by the spring floods or by the furious winds which prevail here, and which easily gain the ascendency over the dry sand, bound together only by widely scattered Elymus-stalks. The largest crania belonged to a species nearly allied to the Balaena mysticetus. Crania of a species of Rachianectes are also found along with some bones of smaller varieties of the whale. No complete skeleton however ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... rabbits feeding in a glade, and almost got a squirrel. It was play seasoned with plentiful disputing between me and young Garvell, for each firmly insisted upon the leading roles, and only my wider reading—I had read ten stories to his one—gave me the ascendency over him. Also I scored over him by knowing how to find the eagle in a bracken stem. And somehow—I don't remember what led to it at all—I and Beatrice, two hot and ruffled creatures, crept in among the tall bracken and hid from him. The great fronds rose ...
— Tono Bungay • H. G. Wells
... more romantic. The Jew in it no longer wears his gaberdine. If he wears a prayer-shawl at all, it is one made of silk. The Jeremiah of the desert has given way to the young, amorous, dream-filled poet, a poet of the sort that arose among the Jews in Spain during the years of the Moorish ascendency. Yet, a certain intensity, a certain originality, a certain vein of genius, has undergone eclipse in the change. Something a little brilliant, a little facile, a little undistinguished, has introduced itself, even into the best of the newest pieces. The texture is thinner, ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... infidelium, a younger son of the Duke of Retz, an Italian family introduced by Catherince de Medici. There seemed to be a hope that the nobility, angered at their own systematic depression, and by Mazarin's ascendency, might make common cause with the Parliament and establish some effectual check to the advances of the Crown. This was the origin of the party called the Fronde, because the speakers launched their speeches at one another as boys ...
— Stray Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... seemed to value, associated itself with the actual figure of his companion, standing there before him, his face enthusiastic with the sudden thought of all that; and struck him vividly as precisely the fitting opportunity for a nature like his, so hungry for control, for ascendency over men. ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater
... exercised over his fellow-countrymen, he holds one of the noblest positions in the history of German literature. He was a critic, and in his Dramaturgie of Hamburg and elsewhere, with all his strength, and often unjustly, he combated French literature to arrest the ascendency which, according to his indolent opinion, it exercised over the Germans; and in his Laocooen, with admirable lucidity, he made a kind of classification of the arts. As author, properly speaking, he wrote Fables ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... who has a lively faith and a blind zeal for opinions contradictory to common sense, is more irrational, and consequently more wicked than the man whose mind is untainted by such detestable doctrines; for when once the priests have gained their fatal ascendency over his mind, and have persuaded him that, by committing all sorts of enormities, he is doing the work of the Lord, there can be no doubt that he will make greater havoc in the happiness of the world, than the man whose reason tells him that such excesses cannot be acceptable ...
— Letters to Eugenia - or, a Preservative Against Religious Prejudices • Baron d'Holbach
... result of an early determination to curb the demonstrations of an impetuous temper and passionate feelings. It had become her second nature when I knew her, however, and contributed not a little to the immense ascendency she soon acquired over my vehement and stormy character. She charmed me into absolute submission to her will and wishes, and ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... millions of Frenchmen who survived the Reign of Terror gain more than was lost by the thousands who were guillotined at Paris, or drowned at Nantes, or shot down at Lyons? Is not Germany likely to turn Kiel to far better account than Denmark ever did or could have done? and will not German ascendency be abundant compensation for Danish decadence? How culpably misplaced, then, were conscientious scruples that would have impeded the march of events in such directions! Ends need but to be great enough to justify any means. Let but the good ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... must use tools; and of all tools used in the shadow of the moon, men are most apt to get out of order. He knew, for example, that however magnetic his ascendency in some respects was over Starbuck, yet that ascendency did not cover the complete spiritual man any more than mere corporeal superiority involves intellectual mastership; for to the purely spiritual, the intellectual but stand in a sort of corporeal relation. Starbuck's body and Starbuck's ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... had long been famed for loyalty, which had often cost them dear, since their neighbours, the Lords of Clarenham, never failed to take advantage of the ascendency of the popular party, and make encroachments on ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that look, and a deadly chill passed over him, as it had done at the Jew's first charge—not doubt; such heresy to his creeds, such shame to his comrade and his corps could not be in him; but a vague dread hushed his impetuous vehemence. The dignity of the old Lyonnesse blood asserted its ascendency. ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... mainly on its superior adaptation to this end, under the blessing of God, for its success and usefulness. If it shall be found on trial to be a superior instrument of piety and virtue, it will doubtless meet with favor and do good. The ascendency of practical religion is not so general or complete, that any additional help for its promotion can ...
— The New Testament • Various
... uniform opposition to every measure of a Liberal description. He knew of no principles but those (if they merit the name of principles) of the narrowest Toryism and of High Church, and as soon as more enlarged and enlightened views began to obtain ascendency, he quitted (and for ever) public life. I suppose he was a very great lawyer, but he was certainly a contemptible statesman. He was a very cheerful, good-natured old man, loving to talk, and telling anecdotes with considerable humour and point. I remember ...
— The Greville Memoirs (Second Part) - A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1852 - (Volume 1 of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... poems of Southern Europe, the Scandinavians proceeded to adapt them to their own use, giving them a new force and beauty. The marvellous in Southern poetry became with them something fraught with deeper meaning; and the Northern version of the Nibelungen-lied acquired an ascendency in its strength and poetical beauty, over the German heroic. Hence, during the Middle Ages, the Scandinavians in general, and Icelanders in particular, came to possess a peculiar chivalrous poetry of their own. It was, ...
— The Interdependence of Literature • Georgina Pell Curtis
... well as soldiers, blacks as well as whites; but no such distribution is possible, because there are but indifferent means for the conveyance of food from places where it is abundant to places where famine's ascendency is becoming established. The Southern railways have been terribly worked for three years, and are now worn out, with no hope of their rails and rolling-stock being renewed. Our troops have rendered hundreds of miles of those ways useless, and they have possession ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... before the shell buried itself and so gave the shell a very great splinter effect. It was usual for the enemy to fire on cross roads and similar targets in salvoes of four. The British artillery replied and kept up a lively fire most of the time, and it appeared to have the ascendency. Gas shells were frequently used on ...
— The Story of the "9th King's" in France • Enos Herbert Glynne Roberts
... and expressed at length his own personal views on the election laws, public service appointments, the financial problems of the day, common schools, the tariff, national improvements, and a Republican ascendency, saying, in conclusion, that he did not doubt that success awaited the Republican party, and that its triumph would assure a just, economical, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... points of Mrs. Thayer's history; she would be required to learn enough of astrology, clairvoyance and mesmerism, to pass for one of the genuine tribe; the plan would be so arranged that Mrs. Thayer would voluntarily consult this fortune-teller, who would soon gain a complete ascendency over her superstitious nature by revealing to her all her past life; finally Mrs. Thayer could be brought to tell all she knew of Pattmore as a means of aiding the sibyl to ...
— The Somnambulist and the Detective - The Murderer and the Fortune Teller • Allan Pinkerton
... division into counties; but there were county-meetings quite vigorous with political life. Of the leading county families a great many were descended from able and distinguished Cavaliers or King's-men who had come over from England during the ascendency of Oliver Cromwell. Skill in the management of public affairs was hereditary in such families, and during our revolutionary period Virginia produced more great leaders than any of ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske
... England and the Continent at the time when Lady Cecily wished to send her children, George and Richard, away after their father's death, and who assisted in arranging their flight. He was a man of great power and influence, and of such an age and character that he exerted a vast ascendency over all within his influence. Without him, Edward never would have conquered the Lancaster party, and he knew very well that if Warwick, and all those whom Warwick would carry with him, were to desert him, ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... commanded by de Boigne; and although Doulut Rao is but twenty, and as yet we know but little of his disposition, he is of course surrounded by the advisers of his uncle, and may be expected to pursue the same policy. His uncle gained great ascendency over the Peishwa, and his death was a fortunate circumstance. Still, it is certain that the prince, until his powers are matured, will yield to the advice of those to whom the conduct of affairs ...
— At the Point of the Bayonet - A Tale of the Mahratta War • G. A. Henty
... and in doing their work have evinced perhaps as much courage, sagacity, and mental power as Romulus displayed. The city of Romulus, however, became in the end the queen and mistress of the world. It rose to so exalted a position of influence and power, and retained its ascendency so long, that now for twenty centuries every civilized nation in the western world have felt a strong interest in every thing pertaining to its history, and have been accustomed to look back with ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... the combative qualities in man! The custom doubtless comes down from a time when the King was the warrior-chief, and when his kingship was acknowledged solely in virtue of his being the chief warrior. But now that the Fifth Root Race is in ascendency, whose chief characteristic and function is the development of intellect, it might have been expected that the dominant attribute of the Fourth Root Race would have been a little less conspicuously paraded. But the era of one race overlaps another, and though, ...
— The Story of Atlantis and the Lost Lemuria • W. Scott-Elliot
... took this note for a victory. David should go to Mme. de Bargeton's house! David would shine there in all the majesty of his genius! He raised his head so proudly in the intoxication of a victory which increased his belief in himself and his ascendency over others, his face was so radiant with the brightness of many hopes, that his sister could not help telling him that he ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... perfect accord with all historical analogies and with the testimony of the Old Testament histories and laws themselves. Not until the days of the latest editors did the tendency to project the Old Testament laws back to the beginning of Israel's history gain the ascendency and leave its impression upon the Pentateuch. Even then there was no thought of attributing the literary authorship of all of these laws to Moses. This was the work ...
— The Origin & Permanent Value of the Old Testament • Charles Foster Kent
... had the Assembly met, than Patrick Henry's ascendency became apparent. His sway over that body was such that it was described as "omnipotent." And by the time the session had been in progress not quite a month, Washington informed Madison that "the accounts from Richmond" were "very unpropitious to federal measures." "In one word," he ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... wanted everybody else to be happy—it was apparent in himself and in his work. In his dreamy moods his fancy spread a broader, a stronger wing, and soared with new daring to heights unexplored before. When Edgar Goodfellow was in the ascendency he threw himself with unwonted zest into the pleasures that were "like poppies spread" in the way of the successful author and editor—the literary ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... his situation, and not infrequently mingled in the parties with an unconcern and gayety that for a short time would expel all unpleasant recollections from his mind. Habit, and the buoyancy of youth, seemed to be getting the ascendency over the secret causes of his uneasiness; though there were moments when the same remarkable expression of disgust would cross his intercourse with Marmaduke, that had distinguished their conversations in the first ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... literature may learn in what manner a man of true sentiment and sound feeling regards a trait that they have seen fit to stigmatize unbecoming, "I'll tell you what I most like," he added, abruptly; "and it is the manner in which you maintain the ascendency of your own country on all proper occasions, without descending to vulgar abuse of ours. You are obliged to bring the two nations in collision, and I respect your liberal hostility." This will probably be esteemed treason in our ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... was a bit crestfallen. In a hurried, indistinct voice he began to assure me he had not dared to take these—say, symbols—down. He was not afraid of the natives; they would not stir till Mr. Kurtz gave the word. His ascendency was extraordinary. The camps of these people surrounded the place, and the chiefs came every day to see him. They would crawl. . . . 'I don't want to know anything of the ceremonies used when approaching Mr. Kurtz,' I shouted. Curious, this feeling that came ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... Low-German. The Saxon Emperors, however, did little for German literature, while the Swabian Emperors were proud of being the patrons of art and poetry. The language spoken at their court being High-German, the ascendency of that dialect may be said to date from their days, though it was not secured till the time of the Reformation, when the translation of the Bible by Luther put a firm and lasting stamp on what has since become the literary ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... deobligatus at the same time. But perhaps the most remarkable instance of Mr. Masson's figures of speech is where we are told that the king might have established a bona fide government "by giving public ascendency to the popular or Parliamentary element in his Council, and inducing the old leaven in it either to accept the new policy, or to withdraw and become inactive." There is something consoling in the thought that ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... north portal were also broken to pieces. At Evreux, the democrats had full scope for the exercise of their iconoclastic fury. Little or no previous injury had been done by the Calvinists, who appear to have been unable to gain any ascendency in this town or diocese, at the same time that they lorded it over the rest of Normandy. Evreux had been fortified against heresy, by the piety and good sense of two of her bishops: they foresaw the ...
— Account of a Tour in Normandy, Vol. II. (of 2) • Dawson Turner
... induce him to maintain a peaceful attitude, as well as to insist on his giving up all measures of aggression or further conquest. This influence is indisputable. It is based, not only on the material and moral ascendency of England, but also on the subsidies for which Shere Ali is indebted to her. Such being the case, we see in this assurance a real guarantee ...
— Indian Frontier Policy • General Sir John Ayde
... zenith, yet the same pure taste pervaded her performance. Whether vanity or interest stimulated Mara at her time of life to that undertaking, it would be difficult to determine; but whichsoever had the ascendency, her reign was short; for by singing one night afterwards at the vocal concert, the veil which had obscured her judgment was removed, and she retired to enjoy in private life those comforts which her rare talent had ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... chevalier's mind. All the poetry disappeared, as a machinist's whistle causes the disappearance of a fairy palace. Everything was seen by a different light. D'Harmental's native aristocracy regained the ascendency. Bathilde was then nothing but the daughter of this man—that is to say, a grisette: her beauty, her grace, her elegance, even her talents, were but an accident—an error of nature—something like a rose flowering on a cabbage-stalk. The chevalier shrugged his shoulders as he stood before ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... come to trial? Keith knew the character of the frontier, and of Carson City. The inclination of its citizens in such cases was to act first, and reflect later. The law had but slender hold, being respected only when backed by the strong hand, and primitive instincts were always in the ascendency, requiring merely a leader to break forth into open violence. And in this case would there be any lack of leadership? Like a flash his mind reverted to "Black Bart." There was the man capable of inciting a mob. If, ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... troop's passing, some agitation had pierced through the archdeacon's glacial envelope. He walked on. Gringoire followed him, being accustomed to obey him, like all who had once approached that man so full of ascendency. They reached in silence the Rue des Bernardins, which was nearly deserted. ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... liberty, was a wicked confederacy, between the two systems of tyranny above described.—It seems to have been even stipulated between them, that the temporal grandees should contribute every thing in their power to maintain the ascendency of the priesthood; and that the spiritual grandees, in, their turn, should employ that ascendency over the consciences of the people, in impressing on their minds, a blind, implicit ...
— A Collection of State-Papers, Relative to the First Acknowledgment of the Sovereignty of the United States of America • John Adams
... was in it, was left trustingly in Mary's hands, as with a sort of housekeeper. She was charged with all the last directions, as well as the keys to the jellies, cakes, and preserves, with discretionary power as to their use; and yet, for some reason, such was the ascendency she contrived to keep over her Hibernian friends in the kitchen, all this confidence evidently seemed to them quite as ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... exterior aspect was for centuries hostile and terrific. She grasped at dominion, from India to Britain, and her measures of colonization partook of the character of her general system. Her policy was military, because her objects were power, ascendency, and subjugation. Detachments of emigrants from Rome incorporated themselves with, and governed, the original inhabitants of conquered countries. She sent citizens where she had first sent soldiers; her law ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... disposed to compliance, but at length opened and read. What noble features has this lady! I watched them, as she read, with great solicitude, but discovered in them nothing that could cherish my hope. All was stern and inflexible. No wonder at the ascendency this spirit possesses over the ...
— Jane Talbot • Charles Brockden Brown
... nation that really was ruled by the fiercest aristocracy that ever plagued a people or perplexed monarchs. The independence of Scotland, her salvation from that English rule with which she was threatened by Edward I., whose success would have made her what Ireland became under English ascendency, was based on a deed which even some Scotch writers have not hesitated to speak of as reprehensible,—the killing, namely, of Comyn in a church at Dumfries, by Bruce and Kirkpatrick; and it seems as if the blood-stain then and there contracted clung to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... alcalde and his companions, as might easily be seen, for they all at once started to their feet and burst into excited conversation. But, as is usual in such cases, there were two or three—of whom the alcalde was one—who soon obtained an ascendency over the rest, quieting them and themselves carrying on the discussion; and after some ten minutes of earnest debate the rest sat down, leaving the alcalde standing alone to propound a still ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... rooted, as in India and China, Islam may survive the loss of military power, and even flourish. But it is equally true that in no single country has Islam been planted, nor has it anywhere materially spread, saving under the banner of the Crescent or the political ascendency of some neighboring State. Accordingly, we find that, excepting some barbarous zones in Africa which have been raised thereby a step above the groveling level of fetichism, the faith has in modern times made no ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir
... re-entered her home on the plantation. Judge then of her indignation to find that during her absence the favourite mistresses had been re-established in their old comfortable quarters, for, while she had been amusing herself at the Capital with balls and parties, they had regained their ascendency over Sir Lexicon, who, not expecting her ladyship's return for several weeks, had consented to their returning to the bungalow until suitable arrangements could be made for them. He ladyship's sudden ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... And, to complete his resemblance with the fantastic heroes of the English poet, the count seemed to have the power of fascination. Albert was constantly expatiating on their good fortune in meeting such a man. Franz was less enthusiastic; but the count exercised over him also the ascendency a strong mind always acquires over a mind less domineering. He thought several times of the project the count had of visiting Paris; and he had no doubt but that, with his eccentric character, his characteristic face, and his colossal fortune, he would ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... paralyse and defeat all your efforts to get at emancipation, and to prepare for it. It is on this account, that I wish it settled in your minds, as a fixed and immutable principle, that there is and can be no property of man in man. Adopt this principle, and give it that ascendency over your minds to which it is entitled;—and slavery is swept away.—Speech of Rev. ...
— Thoughts on African Colonization • William Lloyd Garrison
... its products, promotes levity, and that in proportion as its increase surpasses that of the general acid; and it is not until the action of the acetous becomes languid, that the putrid process gains the ascendency, when it ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... consulted but few of the Senators or Members, and they were known as his personal friends. Mr. Conkling, by his imperious will, soon gained a strong influence over the President, and from this came feuds, jealousies and enmities, that greatly weakened the Republican party and threatened its ascendency. This was a period of bitter accusations, extending from the President to almost everyone in public life. During the entire period of Grant's administration, I was chairman of the committee on finance of the Senate, and had to act upon all questions of taxation, debt, banking or finance, ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... the saddle and at his best. She saw the colour in his cheeks, the brightness in his eyes, caught his one quick glance upward—did he know her window? He could not possibly see her, but she drew back, happiness and fear fighting within her for the ascendency. Could she ever go down and face him out there in the strong June light, where he could see every curving hair of eyelash? note the slightest ebb and flow ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... worth. This was a bauble compared with the companionship of the woman I loved, the woman intended for me, who would give me peace of mind and soul and develop those truer aspirations that had long been thwarted and starved for lack of her. Gradually, as she regained the ascendency over my mind she ordinarily held—and from which she had been temporarily displaced by the arrival of Mr. Watling's letter and the talk in the bank—I became impatient and irritated by the intrusion. But what answer should I give to Dickinson and Gorse? what excuse for declining such an offer? ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... valor of officers and soldiers was never more strikingly shown than in the several engagements leading to the surrender of Santiago, while the prompt movements and successive victories won instant and universal applause. To those who gained this complete triumph, which established the ascendency of the United States upon land as the fight off Santiago had fixed our supremacy on the seas, the earnest and lasting gratitude of the nation is unsparingly due. Nor should we alone remember the gallantry of the living; the dead claim our tears, ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • William McKinley
... hand, the attitudes of the two halves of the Church toward many profound problems were radically different, and the emergence of the Roman See as the great centre of the West amid the overturn of the Roman world by the barbarians, and the steadily increasing ascendency of the State over the Church in the East tended inevitably to separate ecclesiastically as well as politically the two divisions of the Empire. As the emperors of the East attempted to use dogmatic parties in the support of a political policy, the differences between the ...
— A Source Book for Ancient Church History • Joseph Cullen Ayer, Jr., Ph.D.
... her, when seeking to find a reason for the seizure of Cuba,—even Spain, we say, could not be much moved by the prospect of Austria's reaching to that condition of vast strength which would necessarily follow from her undisputed ascendency in Italy. The lesser German States would probably have seen Austria's increase with pleasure, partly because it would have helped to remove their fears of France and Russia, and partly because it would ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... a momentous act. So great was the ascendency of the woman over her lover that from the start he became a mere tool in her hands and ruled the empire in accordance with her views. Her first act was one that showed her merciless strength of purpose. Fearing that the warm love of Kaotsong might in time grow cold, and that the ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 12 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... fought and fought all through her illness to be free of him and his world, to put it aside, to put it aside, into its place. Yet ever anew it gained ascendency over her, it laid new hold on her. Oh, the unutterable weariness of her flesh, which she could not cast off, nor yet extricate. If she could but extricate herself, if she could but disengage herself from feeling, from her body, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the favourable tide for the fortunes of Presbytery which had set in previous to the Armada flowed with a rush, which within a few years carried it to undisputed ascendency in the land. The people's attachment to it was too strong for James, and even within his own Council it had come to be recognised that acquiescence in it was inevitable. Maitland, Lethington's brother, the Chancellor ...
— Andrew Melville - Famous Scots Series • William Morison
... faith. It was at this time and in this state of mind that he came in contact with Peter Boehler, a Moravian teacher, whose calm and concentrated enthusiasm, united with unusual mental powers, gained a complete ascendency over his mind. From him Wesley for the first time learned that form of the doctrine of justification by faith which he afterward regarded as the fundamental tenet of Christianity. He had long held that in order to be a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... on such a subject, or unpractised in the world, might have fancied alarm and uneasiness were painted on the grave countenances of the patricians, and that the signs of the times were little favorable to the continuance of an ascendency that was dependent more on the force of convention than on the possession of any physical superiority. But, on the other hand, one who was capable of judging between the power of political ascendency, strengthened by its combinations and order, and the mere ebullitions of passion, however ...
— The Bravo • J. Fenimore Cooper
... their infant colony a moral and devotional character rarely possessed by similar establishments. While these sectional prepossessions, imbibed by their descendants, gave to their religious persuasions, an ascendency in that section of country, ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... of the old chaotic competitive system, in which factory warred against factory, and an intense struggle for survival and ascendency enveloped the whole tense sphere of manufacturing, no striking ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... although her shadow of an excuse for her apparent ill will toward us may be a little darker than that of Great Britain or France, since she doubtless hopes that by the destruction of our power and influence, she may be able to regain her ascendency over her former colonies, can scarcely be so blind as not to perceive that but little attention would probably be paid to her claims by her more powerful coadjutors in ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... been years of preparation. The fact was, however, that the party which supported the administration was no more in favor of war at the earlier period than the administration itself was; and meanwhile, till a war party had come into existence and gained the ascendency, the country had been growing every year less and less in a condition to appeal ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... were grouped into loose confederacies. The northern cities were embraced in the territory known as Akkad, and the southern in the land of Sumer, or Shumer. This division had a racial as well as a geographical significance. The Akkadians were "late comers" who had achieved political ascendency in the north when the area they occupied was called Uri, or Kiuri, and Sumer was known as Kengi. They were a people of Semitic speech with pronounced Semitic affinities. From the earliest times the sculptors depicted them with abundant ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... the balance of political power, but the spread of slavery has been gigantic. The fairest regions of the South have been opened up to the domestic institution, and Texas annexed, with Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, making an immense area of country, to be the nursery of slavery. The political ascendency of the slave States has ever given to the South a great advantage, in the extension of their favored institution, and the result has proved that what our ancestors looked upon as an evil that time would soon do away with, has grown into a monster system that threatens to make subservient ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... in the ribs, but he did not turn; he was too intent upon watching the two principal actors in the scene. Tragedy had been imminent; comedy was slowly gaining the ascendency. For at the expression that had come over Dunlavey's face several of the men were grinning broadly. Were the stakes not so great Hollis would have felt like smiling himself. Dunlavey seemed stunned. He stood erect, passing his hand over his forehead as though half convinced ...
— The Coming of the Law • Charles Alden Seltzer
... which poor "Margaret" contemplates the trinkets presented by her lover; the baleful ascendency acquired over her by her female companion; and her rapid descent in the path of evil when, as is ever the case, the commission of one sin entails so many, render this drama ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... facts before them, the American people should be prepared for further rebellious action on the part of that faction whose creed it is that rebellion is right when directed against the ascendency of their political opponents. They have done their utmost to assist the Rebels all through the war, and the great riots in New York last year were the legitimate consequences of their doctrine, if not of their labors. We know that organizations ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... accepted a situation as governess in Lord Kingsborough's family, where she was much loved by her pupils; but their mother, who did little to gain their affection herself, becoming jealous of the ascendency of Mary over them, found some pretext for dismissing her. Mary's contact, while in this house, with people of fashion inspired her only with contempt for their small pleasures and utterly unintellectual discourse. These surroundings, although she was ...
— Mrs. Shelley • Lucy M. Rossetti
... difficulty attaches itself more closely to an age in which progress has gained a strong ascendency over prejudice, and in which persons and things are, day by day, finding their real level, in lieu of their conventional value. The same principles which have swept away traditional abuses, and which are ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... singular; for the English officer, partly by virtue of his mission and partly by reason of the knowledge he had gained, carried himself as if he held that ascendency in the house which Colonel Sullivan had enjoyed—an ascendency, like his, grudged and precarious, as the men's savage and furtive glances proved. But for his repute as a duellist they would have picked a quarrel with the visitor there and then. And ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... scarlet coat, victorious, energetic, self-possessed, self-confident, self-satisfied, jovial, and proud as Beelzebub (to use his own comparison)—too proud to ask for recognition were homage refused. This portrait helps us to understand the ascendency Handel gained over ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... in the laws of Manu the primal God, first-born of the creation, from the self-existent being, in the form of a golden egg. He became the creator of all things by the power of prayer. In the struggle for ascendency which took place between the priests and the warriors, Brahma naturally became the deity of the former. But, meantime, as we have seen, the worship of Vischnu had been extending itself in one region ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... commandments in the editorial creed some editors learn by sorrowful experience. Bok was, again, fortunate in learning it under the most friendly auspices. He continued to work without sparing himself, but his star remained in the ascendency. Just how far a man's own efforts and standards keep a friendly star centred over his head is a question. But Edward Bok has always felt that he was materially helped by fortuitous conditions not of his ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... it seemed as if the Mountain, as if the revolution, would regain the ascendency, as if the terrorists would once more seize the rudder which had slipped from their blood-stained hands. But the Convention, which for a time had remained undecided, trembling and vacillating, rose at length from its lethargy to firm, energetic ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... but, this time, there was little hope. The Republican party, which Napoleon annihilated a month later, was in the ascendency. That of the Counter-Revolution was compromised by its odious excesses. The people demanded examples, and matters were arranged accordingly, as is ordinarily the custom in strenuous times; for it is with governments as with men, the weakest are always ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... outlast every other kind of government, and therefore are objects of reverence to all who love order. The Roman Republic was aristocratical in its polity, and all that is great in Roman history is due to the ascendency of the Senate in the government; and when the Forum populace began to show its power, the decay of the commonwealth commenced, and did not cease till despotism was established,—the natural effect of the resistance of the many to the government of the few being the formation of the government ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... terrible judgments, are little more to the children than words and phrases—may I not say?—at best but the "trappings" of His person. They solemnise, they inspire, perhaps, with reverent fear; but they do not, they could not, secure that true ascendency over the nature of the child by which alone there can be real control ...
— Our Master • Bramwell Booth
... follow Burke's counsel, I must enquire into the "laws, institutions, and government" which have prevailed in Germany, and which have exercised so disastrous a "mastery over the character and happiness of man." In this enquiry it would be obvious to touch military ascendency, despotic monarchy, representative institutions deprived of effective power, administration made omnipotent, and bureaucratic interference with every detail of human life. Sydney Smith's words about unreformed England apply perfectly to modern Germany. ...
— Prime Ministers and Some Others - A Book of Reminiscences • George W. E. Russell
... by their strong, manly, marvellous Will-Power that they drove their suggestions into other minds and gained an immediate ascendency over whatever environments they were placed in. The whole man is summed up in his Will. Every other power in man is subservient to the Will. And say what you will, it is this power more than any other that we respect in ...
— The Doctrine and Practice of Yoga • A. P. Mukerji
... from the columns of the The Liberator:—"We have been in the editorial harness for more than a quarter of a century, and, during that period, have had every facility to ascertain the character of the American Press, in regard to every form that has struggled for the ascendency during that period; and we soberly aver, as our conviction, that a majority of the proprietors and editors of public journals more justly deserve a place in the penitentiaries of the land than the inmates of those places generally. No felons are more lost to shame, no liars are so unscrupulous, ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... Plessis that the dominion promised me so liberally was an empire over my own passions; that the success of which I was assured, related to my progress in philosophy, and that I might become as wise and as learned as a strolling mountebank of Italy! I might surely have attained this mental ascendency at a more moderate price than that of forfeiting the fairest crown in Christendom, and becoming tenant of a dungeon in Peronne! Go, sir, and think not to escape condign punishment.—There ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... which, in their judgment formed on the spot, may seem to conduce to the proposed end. His own determination that only public considerations should inspire and attend this effort to give the ascendency in Louisiana to the things that belong to peace is evinced by his selection of commissioners who offer to the country in their own character every guaranty of the public motives and methods of the transactions ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 1 (of 3) of Volume 10. • James D. Richardson
... wizard declared that he would scatter the bones of Osiris or reveal his sacred legend, if the god proved contumacious. Similarly in India at the present day the great Hindoo trinity itself of Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva is subject to the sorcerers, who, by means of their spells, exercise such an ascendency over the mightiest deities, that these are bound submissively to execute on earth below, or in heaven above, whatever commands their masters the magicians may please to issue. There is a saying everywhere ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... valet, who had been away for a long holiday—the first for many years. Trimmer was a power for good and evil—some said a greater power than Herresford himself, over whom he had gained a mental ascendency. ...
— The Scarlet Feather • Houghton Townley
... Ascendency"—England's jealousy of her Colonists, Act passed prohibiting export of Irish woollen goods, Effects of the Act upon Ireland, Smuggling on an immense scale, ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... not till the 11th that they anchored in Altea Bay, at the mouth of the Guadalaviar, on the Valencian coast. On the other side of the roadstead stood the castle and village of Denia. The expedition was received with good will by the people, who hated the ascendency of France at Madrid and were ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... the whole, to be preferred to the other. Racine eclipsed Corneille in vogue during the lifetime of the latter. Corneille's old age was, perhaps, seriously saddened by the consciousness, which he could not but have, of being retired from the place of ascendency once accorded to him over all. His case repeated the fortune of AEschylus in relation to Sophocles. The eighteenth century, taught by Voltaire, established the precedence of Racine. But the nineteenth century has restored the crown to the brow of Corneille. To such mutations is subject ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... the production of 'Julius Caesar,' he finally left Jonson and all friends and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and reputation. This new exhibition of the force of his genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the adult actors who interpreted his work, and the boys' supremacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 Shakespeare produced 'Hamlet,' 'that piece of his which most kindled English hearts.' The story of the Prince of Denmark ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... children should be true? What if the Romans should have owed their peculiar and unparalleled success to their having been at first not more warlike, but less warlike than their neighbours? It may seem a paradox, but we suspect in their imperial ascendency is seen one of the earliest and not least important steps in that gradual triumph of intellect over force, even in war, which has been an essential part of the progress of civilization. The happy day may come when Science in the form of a benign ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... what happened to Egypt after the ambitious priesthood had gained the ascendency. The Master ...
— The New Avatar and The Destiny of the Soul - The Findings of Natural Science Reduced to Practical Studies - in Psychology • Jirah D. Buck
... in the space of a few months, been transferred from the Saxon to the Celtic population. The transfer of the military power had been not less complete. The army, which, under the command of Ormond, had been the chief safeguard of the English ascendency, had ceased to exist. Whole regiments had been dissolved and reconstructed. Six thousand Protestant veterans, deprived of their bread, were brooding in retirement over their wrongs, or had crossed the sea ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... prince in the prime of his youth, and of very attractive person and manners; and, though he was for the present an exile, as it were, from his native land, he was not by any means in a destitute or hopeless condition. His family and friends were still in the ascendency at home, and he himself, in coming to the kingdom of Vang Khan, had brought with him quite an important body of troops. Being, at the same time, personally possessed of great courage and of much military ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... his arm another little caress and they proceeded immediately to the dining room, where the string orchestra and the small talk of two hundred and fifty guests strove vainly for the ascendency in one maddening cacophony. It was nearly eight o'clock before Elkan and Yetta arose from the table and repaired to the veranda whose rockers were filled with ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... and occasionally broke into a giggling laugh. She had, however, two manners, and two kinds of conversation, which she adopted with the young man and the Academician respectively. Her talk with the youth suggested the jealous ascendency of a coarse-minded woman. She occasionally flattered him, but more generally she teased or "ragged" him. She seemed indeed to feel him securely in her grip; so that there was no need to pose for him, as—figuratively ...
— A Great Success • Mrs Humphry Ward
... "public" were the steps taken by Servius to establish his political ascendency, whilst the "private" refer to those intended ...
— The History of Rome, Books 01 to 08 • Titus Livius
... been assumed," he said, "that this war will end in the ascendency of the views of one or the other of the extremes in our country. Neither will prevail. This is the significance of the late elections. The determination of the great Central and Western States is to defend the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... their last topic of conversation and the sage reflection he was about to launch—"only observe," and, as he raised himself upon his elbow, something very like a sigh escaped from him, "how complete, in our modern system of life, is the ascendency of woman over us! Every art is hers—is devoted to her service. Poetry, music, painting, sculpture—all seem to have no theme but woman. It is her loveliness, her power over us, that is paraded and chanted on every side. Poets have been always mad on the beauty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... which the proposed series will be devoted is that of "France in the New World,"—the attempt of Feudalism, Monarchy, and Rome to master a continent where, at this hour, half a million of bayonets are vindicating the ascendency of a regulated freedom;—Feudalism still strong in life, though enveloped and overborne by new-born Centralization; Monarchy in the flush of triumphant power; Rome, nerved by disaster, springing with renewed vitality from ashes and corruption, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr. |
