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Autocrat   Listen
noun
Autocrat  n.  
1.
An absolute sovereign; a monarch who holds and exercises the powers of government by claim of absolute right, not subject to restriction; as, Autocrat of all the Russias (a title of the Czar).
2.
One who rules with undisputed sway in any company or relation; a despot. "The autocrat of the breakfast table."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Autocrat" Quotes from Famous Books



... Miss Geraldine Grey, of Allington, one of those quiet, pretty little towns which so thickly dot the hills and valleys Of New England. Her father, who died before her marriage, had been a sea-captain, and a man of great wealth, and was looked upon as a kind of autocrat, whose opinion was a law and whose friendship was an honor. When a young lady, Miss Geraldine had chafed at the stupid town and the stupider people, as she designated the citizens of Allington, and had only been happy when ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes

... Gavard was afraid of him, though he would not confess it; still, in Charvet's absence he would say that he really went too far. Robine, for his part, expressed approval of everything with his eyes. Logre sometimes opposed Charvet on the question of salaries; but the other was really the autocrat of the coterie, having the greatest fund of information and the most overbearing manner. For more than ten years he and Clemence had lived together as man and wife, in accordance with a previously arranged contract, the terms of which were strictly observed by both parties to it. Florent looked at ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... employs the thumbscrew and lash; but it still has a most pernicious hold on the minds and feelings of the American people. Naught else can explain the power of a Comstock. Like the Torquemadas of ante-bellum days, Anthony Comstock is the autocrat of American morals; he dictates the standards of good and evil, of purity and vice. Like a thief in the night he sneaks into the private lives of the people, into their most intimate relations. The system of espionage established by this man Comstock puts to shame the infamous ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... the constitution going within five years. There were various interests, and some of these would advance the request, "Tell us what you are to recommend; let us have a part in framing the laws under which we are to be governed. You are an autocrat in your ways, and it is intolerable that we should not have ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... the guiding spirit in the direction of the splendid gambling halls, the Casino at Homburg. Blanc was impervious to flattery; a hard-headed, silent man, a man without enthusiasm and without weaknesses, who kept a lavish table and ate sparingly himself, who had a wine cellar rivaling that of the Autocrat of All the Russias and yet contented himself with sipping a harmless mineral water; who kept and directed a huge gambling machine—a mighty conglomeration of gorgeously decorated halls, wine parlors and music ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... type of public worker—a mixture of the mystical and the practical—was the terror of the Vienna delegates. He put spokes in everybody's wheel, behaved as the autocrat of the Congress and felt as self-complacent as a saint. Countess von Thurheim wrote of him: "He mistrusted his environment and let himself be led by others. But he was thoroughly good and high-minded and sought after the weal, not merely of his own country, but of the whole ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon

... reigns of Necho or Amasis. It is true that they had not regained their independence and political liberty; that, as compared with the Greeks, they felt themselves an inferior race, and that they only enjoyed their civil rights during the pleasure of a Greek autocrat; but then it is to be remembered that the native rulers with whom Ptolemy was compared were the kings of Lower Egypt, who, like himself, were surrounded by Greek mercenaries, and who never rested their power on the broad base of national ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 10 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... government depend on its correspondence with the real powers of the nation and with the national conscience, the functions of government embrace something harder to attain even than this agreement. No sovereign power, be it that of an autocrat on his throne or of a nation in its councils, can directly carry out the policy which it desires to adopt. The sovereign must act through agents; and on the proper selection of these the success of his undertakings will largely depend. ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell

... contemptible and criminal, then!" roared Denzil. "If a man in his position can't rule, he should be kicked out of the back-door of his palace. I have no objection to an autocrat; I think most countries need one. I should make a ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing

... of name on walls.—Warwick. The castle. A village festival, "The Opening of the Meadows," a true exhibition of the semi-barbarism which had come down from Saxon times.—Yorkshire. "The Hangman's Stone." Story told in my book called the "Autocrat," etc. York Cathedral.—Northumberland. Alnwick Castle. The figures on the walls which so frightened my man John when he ran away from Scotland in his boyhood. Berwick-on-Tweed. A regatta going on; a very pretty ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... do that," was the quick reply. "Uncle Peter may be an autocrat in his office, but I've noticed that Aunt Hannah is the ruler of ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)

... which is nearly three miles east, sheltering under its white headland (a preliminary sketch, as one might say, for Beachy Head), we pass the Bishopstone tide mills, once the property of a sturdy and prosperous Sussex autocrat named William Catt, the grower of the best pears in the county, and the first to welcome Louis Philippe (whom he had advised on milling in France) when he landed at Newhaven in exile. A good story told of William Catt, by Mr. Lower, in his Worthies of Sussex, illustrates ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... career, if viewed from our present standpoint, falls into two portions: first, that in which he figured as the champion of Revolutionary France and the liberator of Italy from foreign and domestic tyrants; and secondly, as imperial autocrat who conquered and held down a great part of Europe in his attempt to ruin British commerce. In the former of these enterprises he had the new forces of the age acting with him and endowing him with seemingly resistless might; in the latter part of his life he mistook his place ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose

... without, and of all personal intrigue from within, is to obtain this imperial consent to measures suggested by considerations of private advantage or public necessity. The Ottoman Empire may be described as an irregular democracy, whose acts are all subject to the veto of an absolute autocrat. The officials pass their lives in proposing, and his Majesty very generally spends his time in opposing, all manner of schemes, good, bad, and indifferent. The contradictory nature of the system produces the anomalous ...
— Paul Patoff • F. Marion Crawford

... in the shrewd gray eyes that made her feel they were welcome. Carg, a seaman of vast experience, was wholly devoted to his young master. Indeed, the girls suspected that young Jones was a veritable autocrat in his island, as well as aboard his ship. Everyone of the Sangoans seemed to accept his dictation, however imperative it might be, as a matter of course, and the gray old captain—who had seen much of the world—was not the least subservient to ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne

... will look with composure at a war on the limited monarchies in her neighborhood, which she has thought proper to recognize, and that war, too, headed by Russia? Jealous as she is, and with good reason, of the alarming strides of the great autocrat, and interfering, as she certainly did, with his distant enterprise upon Turkey, will she be content to see the kingdoms in her immediate neighborhood reduced to Russian dependencies, by those armies of occupation with which the success of Russia must be followed? ...
— Celebration in Baltimore of the Triumph of Liberty in France • William Wirt

... year, 1906, Montenegro's first Skup[vs]tina assembled. Many people wondered why the autocrat bestowed a Constitution and a Skup[vs]tina upon his subjects. They for their part—at least the great majority whose knowledge of the world was gained by looking at it from their mountain fastnesses—could never for a moment ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 1 • Henry Baerlein

... and criticise the way the food is cooked. You shove back before the others are done eating, and snatch up the evening paper and read, oblivious of what has been going on in that home all day. The children are in awe before the domestic autocrat. Bubbling over with fun, yet they must be quiet; with healthful curiosity, yet they must ask no questions. The wife has had enough annoyances in the nursery, and parlor, and kitchen to fill her nerves with nettles and spikes. As you have provided the money ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage

... bird "who has only to be seen or heard, and Death adjusts an arrow," it is the cardinal's pathetic fate that impresses one most. Seen through less poetical eyes, however, the bird appears to be a haughty autocrat, a sort of "F. F. V." among the feathered tribes, as, indeed, his title, "Virginia redbird," has been unkindly said to imply. Bearing himself with a refined and courtly dignity, not stooping to soil his feet by walking on the ground like the more democratic robin, or even condescending below ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan

... once threatened Hen Smitz—that he hated Hen Smitz with the hatred of a man who has been threatened with the loss of his job. Mr. Gubb learned that Hen Smitz had been the foreman for the entire building—a sort of autocrat with, as Wiggins's crew informed him, an easy job. He had only to see that the crews in the building turned out more work this year than they did last year. "'Ficiency" had been his motto, they said, and they ...
— Philo Gubb Correspondence-School Detective • Ellis Parker Butler

... especially doomed—the main burden and trial falling on me alone of all the female teachers. The others were not expected to examine in the studies they taught; the professor of literature, M. Paul, taking upon himself this duty. He, this school autocrat, gathered all and sundry reins into the hollow of his one hand; he irefully rejected any colleague; he would not have help. Madame herself, who evidently rather wished to undertake the examination in geography—her ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... statement does not exclude the excusable embarrassment an ordinary mortal may be expected to feel in the presence of a monarch. The Emperor himself desires no "tail-wagging" from his subjects, and though there is something of the autocrat in him, there is nothing ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw

... that lay on the table within reach of her hand. "This is from my brother John—" and she turned toward Richard and Nathan. "He and Couture, in whose atelier I studied, are great friends. Now please pay attention Mr. Autocrat—" and she looked at Oliver over the edge of the letter ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith

... another great man who rejoiced in the appearance of Luther's theses; and this was Erasmus, the greatest scholar of his age, the autocrat of letters, and, at that time, living in Basle. He was born in Rotterdam, in 1467, of poor parents, but early attracted notice for his attainments, and early emancipated himself from the trammels of scholasticism, which he hated and despised as cordially ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... senators saying, "There is only one man who can deliver us. We must make Lucius Quinctius Master of the People." Master of the People meant in Rome what we now mean by Dictator,—that is, a man above the law, an autocrat supreme. What service this unambitious tiller of the ground had previously done for Rome to make him worthy of this distinction we are not told, but it is evident that he was looked upon as the man of highest ...
— Historic Tales, Volume 11 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... of the Twenty-one Demands we have already discussed the hints the Japan Representative had officially made when presenting his now famous Memorandum. Briefly Yuan Shih-kai had been told in so many words that since he was already autocrat of all the Chinese, he had only to endorse the principle of Japanese guidance in his administration to find that his Throne would be as good as publicly and solidly established. Being saturated with ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... notions of his own dignity that he would prove a tough subject to manage. But his rival from the North is still undescribed. Tremble at the sight of this ugly Cossack, with small dull eye, flat nose, and bushy red beard; for in him behold the Autocrat of all the Russias! Not yet had the genius and perseverance of Peter the Great introduced the arts and sciences into that vast region of snow and mental darkness. Ivan, the Squinter, ruled over his serfs with Oriental despotism: ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins

... liberty of the rising press, which was the most hopeful educational influence in the country; and he created superfluous ministerial portfolios for his untalented brothers. In fact he reglamented Greece from his palace at Aigina like a divinely appointed autocrat, from his arrival in January 1828 till the summer of 1831, when he provoked the Hydhriots to open rebellion, and commissioned the Russian squadron in attendance to quell them by a naval action, with the result ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... heard the story of this famous piece of road. The engineers of the line, accustomed to map out their routes in other countries with reference to the natural obstacles and the convenience of commerce, waited upon the great autocrat, Nicholas I., a very different man from his descendant, and asked him for instructions as to laying out the first ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward

... without going near his native place, where the odious lawsuit was still going on, proceeded straight to Warsaw and entered the army of the newly constituted Polish kingdom under the sceptre of Alexander I, Autocrat ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad

... meanwhile, one had virtually abandoned her. The Emperor Paul, of Russia, resenting the style in which his army under Suwarrow had been supported, withdrew it altogether from the field of its victories; and that hare-brained autocrat, happening to take up an enthusiastic personal admiration for Buonaparte, was not likely for the present to be brought back into the Antigallican league. England appeared steadfast to the cause; but it remained to be proved whether ...
— The History of Napoleon Buonaparte • John Gibson Lockhart

... calamity before us, Time, that great autocrat, who in its tremendous march destroys authors, also annihilates critics; and acting in this instance with a new kind of benevolence, takes up some who have been violently thrown down, and fixes them in their proper place; and daily enfeebling unjust criticism, has ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli

... office boy ushered Mr. Peck into Cappy's presence. The moment he was fairly inside the door the visitor halted, came easily and naturally to "attention" and bowed respectfully, while the cool glance of his keen blue eyes held steadily the autocrat of ...
— The Go-Getter • Peter B. Kyne

... Pardon the fretful autocrat who voices discontent. Pardon the colored water-color which is burnt. Pardon the intoning of the heavy way. Pardon the aristocrat who has not come to stay. Pardon the abuse which was begun. Pardon the yellow egg which has run. Pardon nothing yet, pardon what is wet, forget the opening ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein

... splendidly, quickly, and until the last moment he is trying to keep control of his machine. It is not for him to envy the days of cavalry charges. He does not depend upon the companionship of other men to carry him on, but is the autocrat of his own fate, the ruler of his own dreams. All hours of daylight are the same to him. At any time he may be called to flight and perhaps to die. The glories of sunset and sunrise are his between the sun ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer

... qualified as a legislator ever occupied a seat in Congress. A man cast in the largest mould, and incapable of a petty sentiment, his grasp of public affairs was rarely equaled, and his insight into the effects of legislation was of the deepest. But on what the author of the Autocrat calls the arithmetical side,—in the power of judging particular men and not general principles; in deciding who were the good men and who were not, he fell short of the ideal suggested by his legislative career. The brief months during which he administered the ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb

... the story of the Pullman car. It is the story of that ebony autocrat who presides so genially and yet so firmly over it. It is the story of George the porter—the six thousand Georges standing to-night to greet you and the other traveling folk at the doors of the waiting cars. And George is worthy of a passing thought. He was born in the day when the negro servant ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... instance, taken advantage of his position for personal gain. What this instance was his informant could not at that moment say—the facts were being carefully compiled, but the evidence was beyond dispute. This autocrat, who talked of principle and honor, had been caught red-handed in the very act against which he pretended to stand; and, of course, this instance was but one of many. Doctor Jekyll could take it upon himself to deliver platitudes upon moral rectitude, while ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt

... conservative. For thousands of years the military tradition has been a tradition of discipline. The conception of the common soldier has been a mechanically obedient, almost dehumanised man, of the of officer a highly trained autocrat. In two years all this has been absolutely reversed. Individual quality, inventive organisation and industrialism will win this war. And no class is so innocent of these things as the military caste. Long accustomed as they are to the importance of moral effect they put a brave face upon the business; ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells

... do with a kind of conscience in the one part, he feels compelled to blush for in the other. The despotism exercised in the school, even though exercised with a certain sense of justice and right, made the autocrat, out of school, cower before the parents of his helpless subjects. And this quailing of heart arose not merely from the operation of selfish feelings, but from a deliquium that fell upon his principles, in consequence of their sudden exposure to a more open atmosphere. But with a sudden ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald

... This autocrat, whom the republicans (to their eternal shame be it said) had placed in power after the 4th of September, is (and was then) the most successful specimen of a scamp that the human race has ever produced. At this moment ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone

... the people, but he was an autocrat too, and he had a will so unbending that even in his soldiering days he had been called Old Hickory. So now, Old Hickory had a Cabinet but he did not consult them. He simply told them what he meant to do. His real Cabinet were a few friends who had nothing at all to do with the government. ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... military purposes. The Emperor Nicholas insisted on all the lines being developed without the slightest regard to the wants of the towns and the conveniences of commerce. Even the natural facilities for engineering operations were not allowed by that autocrat to be for a moment taken into consideration. His engineers were once consulting him as to the expediency of taking the line from St. Petersburg to Moscow by a slight detour, to avoid some very troublesome obstacles. The Tsar took up a ruler, and with his pencil drew a straight ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... and Physiology at Dartmouth College, a physician in regular practice in Boston, and professor of anatomy at Harvard College—this position he held from 1847 to 1882. He was nearly fifty before he became widely known as a writer, when "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table" was published. He was successful as essayist, novelist, poet, a kindly wit playing through much of his work. His best-known poems are "Old Ironsides," "The Chambered Nautilus," "The One-hoss Shay," "The Last Leaf," and "The ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year - Edited by Katherine D. Blake and Georgia Alexander • Various

... by telling him he was an autocrat; which disturbed his graven serenity. Autocrat and autocracy were not pleasant-sounding words just then. He snapped his head up, and for the first time looked as ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly

... trustworthiness, if he were trusted with anything; which I thought at the time was rather an experiment, only it answered, as many of Mr. Gray's deeds of daring did. It was curious how he was growing to be a kind of autocrat in the village; and how unconscious he was of it. He was as shy and awkward and nervous as ever in any affair that was not of some moral consequence to him. But as soon as he was convinced that a thing was right, he "shut his eyes and ran and butted at it like a ram," as Captain James once expressed ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell

... by a bluff joviality which he—so little cunning in other things—knew to affect among the petty lairds. The man you saw trying to be jocose with Templandmuir was a very different being from the autocrat who "downed" his fellows in the town. It was all "How are ye the day, Templandmuir?" and "How d'ye doo-oo, Mr. Gourlay?" and the immediate ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown

... lighted the house would have imperilled the window-panes. To my regret, we were not allowed to see the illumination. I have since thought it a peculiarly amusing trick of fate that the palace of the Russian embassy—the property of the autocrat Nicholas—was obliged to celebrate with a brilliant display of lights the movement for liberty ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... venture upon a suggestion, sir," he said, "do not forget that Prince Shan is to all intents and purposes the autocrat of Asia. He has taught the people of the world to remodel their ideas of China and all that China stands for. And further than this, he is, according to his principles, a man of the strictest honour. I would treat him, sir, as a valued confrere ...
— The Great Prince Shan • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... addressing his favourite, generally present on these occasions, with the appeal, 'Pas vrai, Dillen?' after each broken sentence,—would have been inexpressibly droll, had not the low-comedy actor of the scene been an autocrat who might, at a wink, have transformed laughter into tears. But there was a demoniacal comicality about the performance, which, if it did not convulse the spectator, made him shudder ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 • Rupert Hughes

... breakfast, could you? Neither could I when I was a boy. I used to have my breakfast at seven," and then telling the boy all about his boyhood, the cheery poet led him to the dining-room, and for the first time he breakfasted away from home and ate pie—and that with "The Autocrat" at his own breakfast-table! ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)

... That disagreeable autocrat has succeeded in prejudicing our neighbours against us, and it hurts you. Well, nothing is irrevocable. Say the word, and we will leave the house to-morrow, and ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... any arrangement I make," he cried confidently; and Rose came to the conclusion either that "Kate" was the simple school-girl he represented her, or that Dr. Harry Ironside was an autocrat in his ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler

... his bland and diplomatic manner as he spoke, and with his jaw thrust forward showed himself the unyielding autocrat, who, in the rough and tumble of politics, had ruled his party with a rod of iron. This man whose wonderful talents and personality had fitted him for his chosen position of champion of the plain people, and whose great motive ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney

... many foreigners assume a forced, artificial manner, as though addressing themselves to an autocrat or a murderer, and are ever on the lookout for something to find fault with. My own idea is to maintain a naturally polite bearing and treat them precisely as you would your own countrymen of whatever rank in life. They strike me as being extremely responsive, ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... even the people—serfs of this boy autocrat though they were—began to murmur, and when one Sunday morning three clergymen preached from the text "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child," the young sovereign remembered the counsels of his good mother and recalled the glories of his ancestors, ...
— The Junior Classics • Various

... from abroad one October morning several years ago, I was told that that simple spirit had passed on. His death had been little heeded; but in him had passed away an intangible genuine bit of Old Boston—as genuine a bit, in its kind, as the Autocrat himself—a personality not to be restored or replaced. Tom Folio could never ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... a Saturday night, still survives as the "Three Horseshoes"—the inn to which the secret-looking man who stirred his rum and water with a file, brought Magwitch's two one-pound notes for Pip, and the redoubtable Jaggers, the autocrat of the Old Bailey, with his burly form, great head, and huge, cross-examining forefinger announced to Pip his Great Expectations. Down the river in the direction of yonder "distant savage lair", from which the wind comes rushing, lie those long reaches, between Kent and Essex, "where ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... fearlessly and as recklessly as upon a dog bought or caught for vivisection. That was a little more than twenty years ago. To-day Stepan Borovitch wields more power than any other man on the face of the earth. In ten years he will be the autocrat of Europe, the master of the world. He never errs; for the machine that reasons beneath his silver ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 10 • Various

... argue. Military rank is conferred on its employees, and they act in military fashion. How can anyone, moreover, help obeying, unhesitatingly, orders which emanate from a monarch who has the right to employ this formula at the head of his ukase: "We, by the grace of God, Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias of Moscow, Kiev, Wladimir, and Novgorod, Czar of Kasan and Astrakhan, Czar of Poland, Czar of Siberia, Czar of the Tauric Chersonese, Seignior of Pskov, Prince of Smolensk, Lithuania, Volkynia, Podolia, and Finland, Prince of Esthonia, Livonia, Courland, and of Semigallia, ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne

... ray of light was the reported frigidity of the special officer. He was such a superior personage that ordinary mortals felt a chill radiating from his person on their slightest approach. His credentials were from the War Department and were such as to leave no doubt but that he was the autocrat of the situation, before whom all should render homage. A rigid military air prevailed about the post and grounds, quite out of the ordinary, while the officers' ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams

... no doubt arises in the mind of the reader, Will China succeed in freeing herself from bondage to this hateful vice? It is easy for an autocrat to issue a decree, but not easy to secure obedience. It [Page 306] is encouraging to know that this decisive action is favoured by all the viceroys—Yuan, the youngest and most powerful, has already taken steps to put the new law ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin

... Tracy have been accused of being so much under the rule of their party leaders that they could not possibly give New York honest government. Mr. Seth Low has been declared to be such an autocrat that he would rule the city according to his own ideas, were they good or bad. Mr. George was called a visionary person, who would turn the world upside down if ever he came into power. These were, of course, the opinions of the candidates' enemies. To their ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 54, November 18, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various

... there is a division of politicians into wire-pullers and blowers; under the voluntary system the member of Parliament would be the only momentary mouth-piece—the impotent blower; while the constituency-maker would be the latent wire-puller—the constant autocrat. He would write to gentlemen in Parliament, and say, "You were elected upon 'the Liberal ticket'; and if you deviate from that ticket you cannot be chosen again". And there would be no appeal for a common-minded man. He is no more likely to make a constituency for himself than a mole is likely ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot

... Paul that he had come into another world; the difference between this and Kentucky was so enormous. There, in the little settlements, every man spoke his mind and the life was all freedom. Here, fear and suspicion abounded, there were degrees of importance, and Alvarez was an autocrat who could make or mar as he pleased. It was an atmosphere heavy to Paul's lungs, and, like Long Jim, he longed for the great forests of the Ohio River country. Behind the chateau were some low, heavy out buildings ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler

... afternoon, and show off their paces, and if you fail in finding any of that first flight, at all events you are pretty sure to see some good teams, that can hug the three minutes very closely. Custom is second nature, and necessity is the autocrat of autocrats, which even the free and enlightened must obey; the consequence is, that the inhabitants of New Orleans look forward to the Shell-road ride, or drive, with as much interest and satisfaction as our metropolitan swells do to ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... years and more, as Germany cannot match. [Michaelis, iii. 440.] Her brother Gravenitz the page has become Count Gravenitz the prime minister, or chief of the Governing Cabal; she Countess Gravenitz and Autocrat of Wurtemberg. Loaded with wealth, with so-called honors, she and hers, there go they, flaunting sky-high; none else admitted to more than the liberty of breathing in silence in this Duchy; —the poor Duke Eberhard Ludwig making ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle

... tropics, filled with vine and palm. His chin upon his breast, his eyes deep, thoughtful and calm, his forehead majestic—grander than the mountain upon which he sat. "Crowned with the snow of his whitened hair," he looked the intellectual autocrat of ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll

... a weak man, and might very easily have been an irritable autocrat. As it was he had moods and depressions which might last for weeks, and of these there is ample evidence in his diary. The man with the nerves gets things done, but sometimes he has a terrible time in doing them. He cried more easily ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... cheering beverage A wine which no sorrow can resist The symbol of human brotherhood At once a pleasure and a medicine The beverage of the friends of God The fire which consumes our griefs Gentle panacea of domestic troubles The autocrat of the breakfast table The beverage of the children of God King of the American breakfast table Soothes you softly out of dull sobriety The cup that cheers but not inebriates[1] Coffee, which makes the politician ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers

... touch of harshness in his voice as he said the last words, the sound of the autocrat. Somehow Domini liked it. This man had convictions, and strong ones. That was certain. There was something oddly unconventional in him which something in her responded to. He was perfectly polite, and yet, she was quite sure, absolutely ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... the northern love of rocks" in this passage, and adds: "Dante could not have thought of his 'cut rocks' as giving rest even to snow. He must put it on the pine branches, if it is to be at peace." Taylor quotes Holmes, Autocrat of Breakfast Table: "She melted away from her seat like an image ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... spare the tree. Water (sold in casks) had evinced propensities to bubble over, and to prevent consequent waste it was necessary to make it simmer down to its normal tepidity. Having settled these little difficulties, the worried autocrat was about to affix his signature to the magic manuscript, when the little feathered informer alighted on his shoulder and warbled "wacht-een-beitje, what price oil?" The Colonel had no hesitation ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan

... in his report to his Government. I was not present, but Henry de Ros was, who told it me. I am thus particular from, as it seems to me, the exceeding curiosity of the anecdote, evincing on the part of the autocrat, in the midst of the insolence of unbridled power, a sort of consciousness of responsibility to European opinion, and a deferential dread of that ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville

... exchanged glances of amusement, for they were not altogether averse to seeing the clerk worsted. He was an autocrat in his own church, and ruffled them now and again with what they called his bumptiousness. Perhaps he did assume a little as he led the procession, for he forgot at times that he was a peaceable servant of the sanctuary, and ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner

... of Souvaroff, who, with a hand still reeking from the massacre of 40,000 combatants, began his dispatch to the Autocrat ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli

... wrote: "I had fine weather for Elbert, and a delightful trip. Everything went well in Elbert with my business." It usually did. There was no county in which he was more of an autocrat than in Elbert. He never failed to carry the county in politics, even when Elbert had a candidate of her own for Congress. His legal advice was eagerly sought, and he was more consulted than any other man in Georgia about ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... night of the Potlatch dance she had talked with him only in the presence of a third person. Strange to say she found now that she could look him squarely in the eyes, but when she did so it was as if steel met steel. The feeling that she was playing a game of wits against the autocrat of Katleean was not without its interest for her. It was impossible entirely to conceal her growing hostility toward the man, and she knew that her wordless antagonism was felt by Kilbuck. To her anxiety ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby

... beside the royal seat, deep in thought, silently gazing upon the thousand upturned, grimy faces. It had indeed been a curious turn of events that had conspired to place my friend upon the throne of an autocrat, and also to give, into my own unaccustomed hands, the rule and control of this most magnificent and extensive capital, and all the wondrous treasures of the ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux

... thoughts of sadness and compassion in a melancholy splendour meditating upon the short-lived peace of the waters. And I have seen him put the pent-up anger of his heart into the aspect of the inaccessible sun, and cause it to glare fiercely like the eye of an implacable autocrat out of ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... statue is in a niche at one end of the great pump-room, in wig, square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, and all the queer costume of the period, still looking ghost-like upon the scene where he used to be an autocrat. Marble is not a good material for Beau Nash, however; or, if so, it requires color to set him off adequately. . . ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... in its final accomplishment, would avenge him bitterly on the Czarina, and in the course of its accomplishment might furnish him with ample occasions for removing his other enemies. It may be readily supposed indeed that he, who could deliberately raise his eyes to the Russian autocrat as an antagonist in single duel with himself, was not likely to feel much anxiety about Kalmuck enemies of whatever rank. He took his resolution, therefore, sternly and irrevocably to effect this astonishing translation of an ancient people across the pathless ...
— Narrative And Miscellaneous Papers • Thomas De Quincey

... compatible with belief in the Divine goodness. There is no a priori reason making it inconceivable that the doctrine of absolute predestination might be true; but such a doctrine is not reconcilable with the belief that the Eternal Other is also the Eternal Father. The Divine Autocrat of Calvinism, who pre-ordained some of His creatures to eternal damnation—not for any demerit of theirs, but "just choosing so"—is not unthinkable; what is unthinkable is that we could love such a One—a God who had predestined ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer

... right and proper, or take the consequences. And what were those consequences likely to be? Judging from what he had already seen, his dethronement and utter humiliation seemed to be among the least severe of future possibilities. Instead of remaining the irresponsible autocrat he had hitherto been, he would, during the sojourn of these strangers in his vicinity, be obliged to carefully weigh and consider his every word and action, in order that he might neither say nor do anything which could by any possibility prove ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... of the many others of your seafaring art who have always been such steadfast servants of the public, the greatness of whose service has not always been well enough understood. But perhaps it is only fair that the sea captain, so unquestionable an autocrat in his own world, should be called upon to submit to that purging and erratic discipline which is so notable a feature ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley

... literature: his first book of poems, containing "The Last Leaf," had been pub. But in that year the Atlantic Monthly was started with Lowell for ed., and H. was engaged as a principal contributor. In it appeared the trilogy by which he is best known, The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1857), The Professor, The Poet (1872), all graceful, allusive, and pleasantly egotistical. He also wrote Elsie Venner (1861), which has been called "the snake story of literature," and The Guardian Angel. By many readers he is valued ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin

... Strange to say, the autocrat was not angered by the remarkable sight in front of him. Edwin knew that his father would probably come home from Manchester on the mail train, which would stop to set down a passenger at Shawport by suitable arrangement. And he had expected that his ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett

... warranted by the rough frankness, by a sort of virile sincerity in accepting the morality and the consequences of his acts. But Jim did not know the almost inconceivable egotism of the man which made him, when resisted and foiled in his will, mad with the indignant and revengeful rage of a thwarted autocrat. But if Jim did not mistrust Brown, he was evidently anxious that some misunderstanding should not occur, ending perhaps in collision and bloodshed. It was for this reason that directly the Malay chiefs had gone he asked Jewel ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad

... vindicates the wisdom of that wise but unwritten provision of the American Constitution by which there is a limit to the tenure of this office. Continued rule for half a generation must turn a man into an autocrat. The old President has said himself, in his homely but shrewd way, that when one gets a good ox to lead the team it is a pity to change him. If a good ox, however, is left to choose his own direction without guidance, he may ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle

... immediately into the presence. I had considered with some care how I was, on so critical an occasion, to conduct myself, and had resolved that the most politic course would probably be an assumption of courteous but absolute independence; to treat the Autocrat of this planet much as an English envoy would treat an Indian Prince. It was in accordance with this intention that I had assumed a dress somewhat more elaborate than is usually worn here, a white suit of a substance resembling velvet ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg

... This autocrat, who had never allowed contradiction, and before whom all her dependents bowed either with or against the grain, was now led in her turn; the bronze of her character became like wax in the little pink ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet

... to regard the foreign sovereigns of his native land with the feeling with which the Jew regarded Caesar, with which the Scot regarded Edward the First, with which the Castilian regarded Joseph Buonaparte, with which the Pole regards the Autocrat of the Russias. It was the boast of the highborn Milesian that, from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, every generation of his family had been in arms against the English crown. His remote ancestors had contended with Fitzstephen ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... doctrines are formulated in "The Prince" of Macchiavelli. He had applied those principles with remorseless logic, untinged by the fear of God or man, to the single end of making his master actually the most complete autocrat that ever sat on the throne of England. His loyalty was as unfailing as it was unscrupulous; his work had been thorough and complete—the King was placed beyond further need of him. His reward was the doom of a traitor. Unpitying he lived, unpitied he ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... Sea. His journey however was so unprecedented a step, that it brought him into trouble with Tiberius. The Emperor was half afraid that Germanicus had some designs upon the kingdom of Egypt, and as that land happened to be the granary of Rome, the jealous autocrat thought of the possibility of short-commons and a bread-riot in the Forum. But even if the tourist had no ulterior views, the Emperor thought that it did not look like business for a proconsul to be making ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne

... family; in any case it did not belong to the old nobility. After his destruction of his strongest rival, the removal of the kings who had made themselves independent in the last years of the Ch'in dynasty was a relatively easy task for the new autocrat, although these struggles occupied the greater part of his reign. A much more difficult question, however, faced him: How was the empire to be governed? Kao Tsu's old friends and fellow-countrymen, ...
— A history of China., [3d ed. rev. and enl.] • Wolfram Eberhard

... they have heard much of it from the broken wretches who have been fortunate enough to escape, after years of toil and suffering. They know that the innocent as well as the guilty are liable to be sent there; that thousands upon thousands have died or been murdered there by the autocrat's petty tyrants, placed there to guard and work them, and that their bones molder or bleach upon the inhospitable shores, where wolves lay in wait for the bodies of victims which are thrown where they can reach them, and thus ...
— The Boy Nihilist - or, Young America in Russia • Allan Arnold

... was really criminal. Everyone in Germany was convinced that Russia was preparing for war. The Tsar's pacificist ideas were of no importance whatever. In absolute monarchies it is an illusion to think that the sovereign, though apparently an autocrat, acts in accordance with his own views. His views are almost invariably those of the people round him; he does not even receive news in its true form, but in the form given it by officials. Russia was an unwieldy ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti

... by the Spaniards in the days when Padre Pedro was the autocrat and representative of Spanish law. The ruins of the former mission and the public gardens are now overgrown with grass. Sea-breezes sweep the rambling convent with its double walls, tiled courtyard, and its Spanish well. The new church, ...
— The Great White Tribe in Filipinia • Paul T. Gilbert

... we to do?" cried Lizabetha Prokofievna, irritably. "Please break your majestic silence! I tell you, if you cannot come to some decision, I will stay here all night myself. You have tyrannized over me enough, you autocrat!" ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... 27th. The cabin parted from the hull, which went down in sixty feet water. Out of 230 cabin and deck passengers, firemen, and crew, 123 were lost, of whom 82 were German and Irish emigrants, and returning Californians. On the ninth of February, the steamer Autocrat, from New Orleans to Memphis, came in contact with the steamer Magnolia, coming down the river, and sank instantly. Thirty lives ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various

... any advances," said the Emperor Napoleon. "You think that she would refuse me?"—"Oh, no; but to-morrow is the day for the post, and in five days all Paris would know all about your Majesty from head to foot." These words singularly cooled the ardor of the autocrat, who thanked the Emperor for his advice, and said to him, "But from the manner in which your Majesty speaks, I should be tempted to believe that you bear this charming actress some ill-will."—"No, in truth," replied the Emperor, "I do not know anything ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... nearly fifty when he published his first famous prose work. He had named the Atlantic Monthly, and Lowell had agreed to edit it only on condition that Holmes would promise to be a contributor. In the first number appeared The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. Holmes had hit upon a style that exactly suited his temperament, and had invented a new prose form. His great conversational gift was now crystallized in these breakfast table talks, which the Autocrat all but monopolizes. However, the other characters at the table of ...
— History of American Literature • Reuben Post Halleck

... Board of Agriculture is a very remarkable body. It is practically a Home Rule authority for agricultural purposes only. The Irish Minister for Agriculture by no means rules as an autocrat. He has to submit his policy to a large "Advisory Council" of over 100 members elected by all the County Councils of Ireland. Out of this Council a committee is chosen which is practically a Cabinet. This Agricultural Parliament now plays a most important part in the life of Ireland. ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender

... this autocrat of the printed page, the destiny whose comedy began with the world and is indefinitely continued makes sorry show. Here the wicked exceedingly flourish and keep at it to the end of their chapter; here virtue, battling ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... did not justify his sway by the least ferocity. He never uttered a threat. Where, then, was his right to the sceptre he wielded so nonchalantly? Were there only some tangible jeopardy to his pelt, Murguia would have been more resigned. But his latest autocrat was only matter-of-fact, blithely and ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle

... a canning factory, as we all know; but more than a canning factory it needs a Boss,—one of those strong characters that make tools of their fellow-men, who rule our cities with an iron hand but take care to keep the hand in a velvet glove,—a Boss that is diplomatic, yet an autocrat." ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson

... as a stagnant lake in which idlers fish. Time, social circumstances, education and a thousand and one factors determine whether one shall be a "Village Hampden," quarreling in a petty way with a petty autocrat over some petty thing, or a national Hampden, whose defiance of a tyrannical king stirs a ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... death of his persecutress, the Empress Catharine, released him. One of the first acts of the Emperor Paul was to restore him to liberty, and to load him with various marks of his favor. Among other gifts of the autocrat was a pension, by which, however, the high-spirited patriot would never consent to profit. No sooner was he beyond the reach of Russian influence than he returned to the donor the instrument by which this humiliating ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various

... indeed a good deal more encouragement than George I. The appointments of composer to the Chapel Royal and composer to the court were purely honorary, but they strengthened his position. As to the opera-house, he must by now have felt that he was its unquestioned autocrat, and he could not help being aware that he was without a rival in Europe as far as the stage was concerned, for old Scarlatti had gone to his grave, and the younger generation had produced no composer of ...
— Handel • Edward J. Dent

... in general culture, and in efficiency, she is, as you say, first among nations. Her people are a great people—but it is not them you represent. You represent an hereditary monarch, the only one in western Europe who still speaks of the divine right of Kings—a man who would be an absolute autocrat, if he dared. Supporting him is a powerful circle of hereditary nobles, whose interest it is to increase in every possible way the prestige and power of the throne. At their command, ready to do their bidding, is a magnificent army and a great navy. Did your Emperor possess my secret, ...
— The Destroyer - A Tale of International Intrigue • Burton Egbert Stevenson

... This poem of Holmes' and "The Chambered Nautilus," page 77, are from the Poetical Works (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, 1895). The latter poem appeared originally in The Autocrat ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes

... An autocrat's a ruler that does what th' people wants an' takes th' blame f'r it. A constitootional ixicutive, Hinnissy, is a ruler that does as he dam pleases ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne

... of Utah. It is the same as if he owned, individually, in addition to all his visible enterprises, one-quarter of all the wealth of the State and derived from it 5 per cent of income without taxation and without discount. The hopelessness of contending in a business way with this autocrat must be perfectly apparent to your minds. The original purpose of this vast tithe, as often stated by speakers for the church, was the maintenance of the poor, the building of meetinghouses, etc. ...
— Conditions in Utah - Speech of Hon. Thomas Kearns of Utah, in the Senate of the United States • Thomas Kearns

... out the March Hare to Carter? After all, they were their own masters. They need not do so unless they chose. He had no authority over them. To advise was a very different thing from commanding. No matter what measure he advocated, his opinion was neither final nor mandatory. He was no autocrat or imperator before whose decree his subjects trembled. It would be absurd to ...
— Paul and the Printing Press • Sara Ware Bassett

... strange gift of condescending majestically to Mr. Prohack while licking his boots. He listened to Mr. Prohack as to an autocrat while giving Mr. Prohack to understand that Mr. Prohack knew not the first elements of sartorial elegance. At intervals he gazed abstractedly at the gold framed and crowned portraits that hung on the walls and at the inscriptions similarly framed and crowned and hung, and it was home in ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... committee. Mr. Carnegie was pushed to fortune by his more resolute henchmen. But Lord Leverhulme, as is very well known in America, has been the sole architect of his tremendous fortunes, and in all his numerous undertakings exercises the power of an unquestioned autocrat. ...
— The Mirrors of Downing Street - Some Political Reflections by a Gentleman with a Duster • Harold Begbie

... commissioners left Montreal in May, escorted by forty men of the 37th regiment. From Sault Ste Marie, Coltman journeyed on ahead, and arrived at 'the Forks' on July 5. In Montreal he had formed the opinion that Lord Selkirk was a domineering autocrat. Now, however, he concluded after inquiry that Selkirk was neither irrational nor self-seeking, and advised that the accusations against him should not be brought into the courts. At the same time he bound Selkirk under ...
— The Red River Colony - A Chronicle of the Beginnings of Manitoba • Louis Aubrey Wood

... by asking the indignant Sundown to frame the apology, which he did. Then the wily autocrat of the "Mesa News," after reading the apology, agreed to an armistice and mentioned the fact that it was a hot day. Sundown intimated that he knew one or two places in Usher which he was not averse to visiting under the circumstances. And so the ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs

... once to examine our credentials while we sipped at our coffee, and whiffed the small cigarettes which were immediately served. This furnished the Vali an opportunity to regain his usual composure. He was evidently an autocrat of the severest type; if we pleased him, it would be all right; if we did not, it would be all wrong. We showed him everything we had, from our Chinese passport to the little photographic camera, and related some of the most amusing incidents ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben

... perplexity—lean, soft-spoken, hawk-faced gentlemen, gentle and incorruptible, who settled scuffles with a glance, and local riots with a deadly drawl of warning which carried conviction like a bullet to the "bad" nigger of the blue-gum variety, as well as to the brutish white autocrat ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers

... Spain. Thither the caliph sent orders for his death. Much as the young ruler was esteemed, wisely as he had ruled, no one thought of questioning an order of the Commander of the Faithful, the mighty autocrat of the great Arabian empire, and the innocent Abdul was assassinated by some who had been among his chief friends. His head was then cut off, embalmed, and sent to Soliman, before whom it was laid, enclosed in a casket ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris

... Cutty pacing his study, the room blue with smoke. Of all the queer chaps he had met in his varied career this Two-Hawks topped the lot. The constant internal turmoil that must be going on, the instincts of the blood—artist and autocrat! And in the end, the owner of a cattle ranch, if he had the luck to get there alive! ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath

... young men who composed it, for their varied capacities, for their fine patriotism, and their invincible determination to face all risks and invite all dangers. It has been said of Parnell that he was an intolerant autocrat in the selection of candidates for and membership of the Party, and that he imposed his will ruthlessly upon them once they were elected. I am told by those who were best in a position to form a judgment, and whose veracity I would stake my life upon, that nothing could be farther from the truth. ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... learned, a young autocrat, much indulged by servants and generally tyrannising over them, he ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine

... and willing to guide all men in all things, so long as he is obeyed as autocrat should be obeyed,—with undoubting submission: only let not ungrateful ministers seek other colleagues than those whom Tom Towers may approve; let church and state, law and physic, commerce and agriculture, the arts of war, and the arts of peace, all listen and obey, and all ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope

... that Mount Moriah should have lent herself to such a cause, and there were murmurs even among the congregation where the Rev. Ebenezer Clay was usually an unquestioned autocrat. But, because Eve was the mother of all of us and the thing was so new, there was a great crowd on the night of the meeting. The Rev. Ebenezer Clay presided. Lane had said, "If I can't get the bellwether to jump the way I want, I'll transfer the bell." This ...
— The Strength of Gideon and Other Stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar

... familiarity would lead to something obnoxious on the part of the newcomers, so that the proper relations between herself and them could only be preserved by a judicious entrenchment of courtesy. Still, it was more the manner of the Vicar than of herself that gave the impression of her being a formidable autocrat. After the frost had been again languidly discussed, Mr. Woodman faltered out, 'His Lordship was asking—was so good as to ask—how to ...
— That Stick • Charlotte M. Yonge

... she had said between the long bouts of coughing which shook her thin frame so that speech was at times impossible. "He's so—alone. Philip represents nothing to him but an autocrat he is bound to obey. And Tony resents it. Any one who loves him can steady him—but no one will ever drive him. When I'm gone, will you do what you can for him—for him and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler

... long experience has shown me that when the ruling power is weak the people are oppressed. Those, therefore, who—like the great majority of rhetoricians—try to weaken the government, commit an abominable crime. An autocrat, who governs by his single will, may sometimes cause most deplorable results; but if he governs by popular consent there is no remedy possible. Before the majesty of the Roman arms had bestowed peace upon all the world, the ...
— Thais • Anatole France

... being in the majority as opposed to this autocrat, remain placid. A current of understanding exists between us. Miss Arnold, on the other hand, finds our ignorance a flattering background for her learning and adventures. She is so obviously a woman of the world ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst

... interference, and the English priest was glad to be relieved from payments to the curia. But the clergyman, whose soul grew indignant against the curialists, still believed that the pope was the divinely appointed autocrat of the Church universal. Being a man, a pope might be a bad pope; but the faithful Christian, though he might lament and protest, could not but obey in the last resort. The papacy was so essentially interwoven with the whole Church of the Middle Ages, that few figments have less historical ...
— The History of England - From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) • T.F. Tout

... he did not like this—and though afterward, when he had also climbed the gate and taken up his station under a clump of trees at the autocrat's behest, he strove to soothe his ruffled feelings by the argument that it was probably the absolutely correct deportment for a shooting party, his mind remained unconvinced. Moreover, in parting from him, the ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic

... Frederick, the difficulties inherent in all such cases were intensified by the fact that the relationship between them was, in effect, that of servant and master; that Voltaire, under a very thin disguise, was a paid menial, while Frederick, condescend as he might, was an autocrat whose will was law. Thus the two famous and perhaps mythical sentences, invariably repeated by historians of the incident, about orange-skins and dirty linen, do in fact sum up the gist of the matter. 'When one has sucked the orange, one throws away the skin,' somebody ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... old indignant, yet none the less vital, sense of subjection in the presence of superiority was over him as in his childhood. He saw again Doctor Seth Prescott as the incarnation of force and power. There was, in truth, something majestic about the man—he was an autocrat in a narrow sphere; but his autocracy was genuine. The czar of a little New England village may be as real in quality as the Czar of all ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... autocrat like Alexander III, secretive and obstinate, these personal questions became very serious. Ambitious generals might anticipate his wishes, Russian regiments might be on the march before the Ministers knew anything, and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore

... St. Clair and the judges formed the first legislature; in theory they were only permitted to adopt laws already in existence in the old States, but as a matter of fact they tried any legislative experiments they saw fit. St. Clair was an autocrat both by military training and by political principles. He was a man of rigid honor, and he guarded the interests of the territory with jealous integrity, but he exercised such a rigorous supervision over the acts of his subordinate colleagues, the judges, that ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt

... no intentional disrespect towards the Hon. Lewis Cass. It is possible that he may never have seen the article in question. Contributors to periodicals are sometimes sadly neglectful of the most brilliant performances of their confreres. We doubt whether the "Autocrat" has ever read with proper attention any of our own modest, but not, we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various

... say no more," he rejoined, still using the self-command which of all men an autocrat requires, "till I find how you do in your class. That you are the best scholar in it, is no reason why you should be allowed to idle away hours in which you might have been laying up store for the time to come."—It was a phrase much favoured by the master—in present ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald

... matter which apparently was promptly forgotten in the discussion of events in Manchuria. But the apparition of Krovitch, in arms, would not so easily down in the minds of the thoughtful present, even though an autocrat had dismissed ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton

... victory—the crown of an apostolical life. It was the meeting of the eagle and the dove. What followed showed, more clearly perhaps than any other incident in his career, the stuff that Manning was made of. Power had come to him at last; and he seized it with all the avidity of a born autocrat, whose appetite for supreme dominion had been whetted by long years of enforced abstinence and the hated simulations of submission. He was the ruler of Roman Catholic England, and he would rule. The nature of Newman's influence ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... he has the whip hand of us to some extent, because if it came to a war none of our generals could stand up against him. I give him best at that game: he is the finest soldier in the world. Besides, he is an emperor and an autocrat; and I am only an elected representative of the British democracy. Not that our British democrats wont fight: they will fight the heads off all the Turanians that ever walked; but then it takes so long to work them up to it, while he has only to say the word and march. ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... life of joyous and rather indolent oblivion in their quarter of the city. They are often to be seen sauntering up and down the street by which the Charlesbridge cars arrive,—the young with a harmless swagger, and the old with the generic limp which our Autocrat has already noted as attending advanced years in their race. They seem the natural human interest of a street so largely devoted to old clothes; and the thoughtful may see a felicity in their presence where the pawnbrokers' windows display the forfeited pledges of improvidence, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells

... of their breeds, furnished the motive power. The cars were little "bobtailed" receptacles, usually badly painted and more often than not in a desperate state of disrepair. In many cities the driver presided as a solitary autocrat; the passengers on entrance deposited their coins in a little fare box. At night tiny oil lamps made the darkness visible; in winter time shivering passengers warmed themselves by pulling their coat collars and ...
— The Age of Big Business - Volume 39 in The Chronicles of America Series • Burton J. Hendrick

... please," continued Mr Bellamy, nodding to them very graciously; and they departed. In the course of ten minutes they were recalled by the autocrat himself. The gentlemen resumed their seats, and this ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXIX. January, 1844. Vol. LV. • Various

... organiser of an unrivalled system of bribery and corruption, the Minister of whom a recent apologist frankly declares that to young members of Parliament who spoke of public virtue and patriotism he would reply "you will soon come off that and grow wiser," the autocrat enamoured of power who could brook no colleague within measurable distance, the man of coarse habits and illiterate tastes, above all the man who induced his countrymen to place money before honour, and whose administration ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden

... engage a secretary to answer this deluge of letters. And though he was past eighty, he never spared himself, and was always ready to see and to be seen. He was not only an old, but a ripe and mellow man. There was no subject on which one could touch which was not familiar to the autocrat of the breakfast table. His thoughts and his words were ready, and one felt that it was not for the first time that the subject had been carefully thought out and talked out by him. That he should have been able to stand all the ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... real prime minister notices the transformation. The ego and the country soon become interblended in his mind. A prime minister under the party system as we have had it in Canada is of necessity an egotist and autocrat. If he comes to office without these characteristics his environment equips him with them as surely as a diet of royal jelly transforms a worker into a ...
— Laurier: A Study in Canadian Politics • J. W. Dafoe

... her discretion, she had already given abundant proofs. Bold and resolute, modest and reserved, she had all the simplicity of a great lady born for a great position. She became in after life something of an autocrat and overmuch of a bigot. But it could not be laid to the charge of a persecuted princess of nineteen that she was devoted to the service of her religion." Such was Isabella when she married Fernando; and the wedding was quietly celebrated at Valladolid, in the house of a friend, Don Juan de Vivero, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... King (like all the rest of them), 'never mind the young men! Turn thy eyes on a middle-aged autocrat, who has been considered not ill-looking ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Perhaps the new detective perceived the state of unrest and terrible suspense in which many of the company were on account of Squire Walker's vagaries, and chivalrously sought to deliver them. Eyeing keenly the autocrat of the breakfast table, he remarked, "I'm afraid you ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell

... the whole crew in his favour, and had mollified the martinet Miller himself. It was he who had managed the starting-rope in every race, and his voice from the towing path had come to be looked upon as a safe guide for clapping on or rowing steady. Even Miller, autocrat as he was, had come to listen for it, in confirmation of his own judgment, before calling on the crew ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes



Words linked to "Autocrat" :   despot, potentate, autocratic



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