"Despot" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I says to Liverpool, 'you scum of a despot limited monarchy, and have another dose of Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr. Pendergast,' says I, 'said we were to observe the day in a befitting manner, and I'm not going to see ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... times fraught with the seeds of discontent and danger to the common weal, and which in this case ultimately led to such sad and momentous consequences as only religious feuds can. Charles I. was playing the despot with his subjects, not only in Scotland, but in England. He was governing without a Parliament, defying and trying to crush the desires and aspirations of a people born to govern themselves and to be ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... of Augustus, his four and forty years of total, absolute, superhuman power, such as no despot has known even in his dreams! He had taken to himself every title, united every magistracy in his person. Imperator and consul, he commanded the armies and exercised executive power; pro-consul, he was supreme in the provinces; perpetual censor and princeps, he reigned ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... parable or apologue. He is mild in his treatment of the prisoners that fall into his hands, and ready to forgive even the heinous crime of rebellion. He has none of the pride of the ordinary eastern despot, but converses on terms of equality with those about him. We cannot be surprised that the Persians, contrasting him with their later monarchs, held his memory in the highest veneration, and were even led by their affection ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... you please, and welcome; but while you are under my command you must obey my orders or else stand the chances of a court-martial. I don't think that the miners agree with you," the military despot continued, after a moment's consultation with the commissioner; "I desire that you take command of the escort which is about to start for Melbourne with the prisoners. You will lose not a moment, but report yourself ready in an ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... is infinite, we admit, nay, we joyfully believe; but yet it is not a power which works according to the lawless pleasure of an unmitigated despot. It moves within a sphere of light and love. God's infinite wisdom and goodness superintend and surround all its workings; otherwise its omnipotent actings would soon carry the goodly frame of the world, ...
— A Theodicy, or, Vindication of the Divine Glory • Albert Taylor Bledsoe
... Robespierre, whom she regarded as a principal in all the evils she deplored. The difficulty of obtaining an audience of him irritated her to make some comparison between an hereditary sovereign and a republican despot; and she avowed, that, in desiring to see Robespierre, she was actuated only by a curiosity to "contemplate the features of a tyrant."—On being examined by the Committee, she still persisted that her design was "seulement pour voir comment etoit fait un tyrant;" ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... disappearance of the Theodosian race to the last Constantine who dies on the ramparts of the city made by the first, shows a great deterioration.[29] There was no acknowledged principle of succession. Arbitrary force determined it. One robber followed another upon the throne; so that the eastern despot seemed to imitate that ghastly rule, in the wood by Nemi, "of the priest who slew the slayer and shall himself be slain". If the army named one man to the throne, the fleet named another. If intrigue and ...
— The Formation of Christendom, Volume VI - The Holy See and the Wandering of the Nations, from St. Leo I to St. Gregory I • Thomas W. (Thomas William) Allies
... streets of Florence, still pleads for civic righteousness; the sound of Martin Luther's hammer nailing his thesis to the door of his Wittenberg church continues to echo around the world; the battle-cry of Cromwell's Ironsides shouting, "The Lord of Hosts!" still causes the tyrant and the despot to tremble upon their thrones; out of the fire and blood of the French Revolution, "Liberty and Equality" survive; Abraham Lincoln comes from the backwoods of Kentucky, and the prairies of Illinois, to receive the approval of all succeeding generations of mankind for his Proclamation ...
— Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence - The Best Speeches Delivered by the Negro from the days of - Slavery to the Present Time • Various
... may well have wished to revenge his father; his mother had once already helped to betray James to an attack of the most insulting nature; he himself was strong for the Kirk, over which James was playing the despot; or, he desired toleration for Catholics; he had been well received in England, where all such plots—their name was legion—had always been fostered; he was very young, and he risked everything. Only ...
— James VI and the Gowrie Mystery • Andrew Lang
... of Poland. The abuses of confidence and power, with the final treachery of Priest Sylvester (Ivan's adviser in ecclesiastical affairs), and of Adasheff (his adviser in temporal matters), had changed the Tzar from a mild, almost benevolent, sovereign, into a raging despot. On arriving in Poland, Prince Kurbsky promptly wrote to Ivan announcing his defection, and plainly stating the reasons therefor. When Ivan received this epistle—the first in the celebrated and valuable ...
— A Survey of Russian Literature, with Selections • Isabel Florence Hapgood
... broke every promise he had made to his people when he needed their aid to keep his kingdom out of the grasp of Napoleon. He became the vindictive persecutor of the men who had led his subjects in the war to rush to arms, without counting the odds they had to encounter at first. He was a despot of the old pattern, as far as a sovereign of the nineteenth century could be one. It does not appear that he acted thus from love of power for its own sake, to which so much of tyrannical action is due. In most respects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... since the peninsula, divided into four states, was parcelled out again and placed under the hated yoke of Austria. Soldiers from Piedmont and Lombardy, from Venice and Naples, Parma and Modena, had fought side by side, sharing the glory of a military despot and willing to endure a tyranny that gave them a firm administration and a share of justice. They saw that prosperity for their land would follow the more regular taxation and the abolition of the social privileges oppressive to the peasants. They looked forward ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead
... barquenteen The black frieze-coated sailors bore Their dying despot to the shore And ...
— The Garden of Bright Waters - One Hundred and Twenty Asiatic Love Poems • Translated by Edward Powys Mathers
... was any despot in Europe or in the world that wanted a master architect in framing and putting together a despotic and oppressive law, I would, if my slight voice could reach him, by all means say to him, Seek the laboratory of the Senator from Illinois. If he has not proved himself an adept in this kind of legislation, ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... a triumph as fanaticism enjoyed over the fine arts in England during and for some time after the great Civil War, no parallel can be found in the history of any other nation. And it was not, be it remembered, the work of a capricious and cruel despot; it was the tyranny of a solemn legislative assembly. Hypocrisy had some share in the proceeding, very likely; but in the main the Puritanism of the time was sincere even to its frenzies of intolerance. Good men and true held that they were doing only what was sound, ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... glorious person, a towering beneficent despot when he did appear.... As for me I adored him with whole-hearted hero-worship. He was the "protector of the poor," who kept the rest of us in order. He was a magnificent person who revolutionized the art of war by the introduction of explosives. ...
— A Student in Arms - Second Series • Donald Hankey
... not a compact array of the selfish impulses against a weak instinct of justice, backed by a Titan's will, wielding a mighty intellect, that enabled Napoleon to be the disloyal usurper, then the hardened despot and the merciless devastator? Again, can it be said of Napoleon that he possessed good sense in a rare degree? Good sense is an instinctive insight into all the bearings of act or thought, an intuitive discernment of the relations and consequences ...
— Essays AEsthetical • George Calvert
... Washington just as he ordered them to be done. His friends declared that this was so because in most things his will stood for the will of the American people; his enemies, that they were done for no good reason whatever, but only because a despot commanded his ...
— Andrew Jackson • William Garrott Brown
... our despot got into a dilemma, and then he did not know how to get out of it. A boy, now and then, would be roused into open and fierce remonstrance. I recollect S., afterward one of the mildest of preachers, starting up in his place, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... and King Cotton himself, that blustering old despot, with his swarthy arms and "under-pinning," his face of brass, and body of "raw material," passed through my mind, like Georgia trains through the Oconee Swamp, till finally my darky friend came into view. He seemed at first a little ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... town of Ravenspur. Landing boldly though with such a handful of men, he was soon joined by the Percies, and other powerful leaders; and so eagerly did the people flock to him as their deliverer from a headstrong reckless despot, that in a short time he numbered as his followers sixty thousand men, who had staked their property, their liberty, and their lives, on the same die. The most probable account of his proceedings up to his return to Chester, immediately before the unfortunate ...
— Henry of Monmouth, Volume 1 - Memoirs of Henry the Fifth • J. Endell Tyler
... to govern the country of Ireland in the same way. The reign of the despot. Well, THAT is nearly over too—even as woman's degrading position to-day is almost ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... VIII. became Pope. From his accession Hallam dates the decline of the Papacy, which, for "more than two centuries, had been on throne of the earth, and reigned despot of the world."—Dowling. This was 1260 years from the death of Peter,—the earliest time from which they can date. His bull of excommunication against Philip of France, being disregarded by that monarch, who adroitly made the Pope his prisoner, his rage brought on a fever, which caused his death. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss
... Critics emulously dare Ape the great Despot; throw in pompous tone And massy words their true no meaning down! But while their envious eyes on Genius glare, While axioms false assiduously they square In arrogant antithesis, a frown Lours on the ...
— Original sonnets on various subjects; and odes paraphrased from Horace • Anna Seward
... imagine it in the world. Unlimited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the absolutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the perfectest individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... by these little despots, minions of the great despot, in the simple abode of the poor old French couple, was eloquent of the ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... were made to believe, of preventing the commission of similar atrocities in our own country. In fact, the labour, the industry, and the talent of the people, the industrious and hard-working people of England, were now heavily taxed to subsidize every despot of the continent; and the wealth of the nation, drawn from the sweat of the poor man's brow, was squandered with a lavish hand, to hire and to pay every assassin and every cut throat by trade in Europe, to enable them to prolong the war against the liberties of France, and thereby to prevent a ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... when a tyrant's hand Lay heavy and hard on his native land, And the spirit whose glory from mine he won Blessed the Alpine dwellers with Freedom's sun! The student-boy on the Gmunden-plain Heard my solemn voice, but he fought in vain; I called from the crags of the Passeir-glen, When the despot stood in my realm again, And Hofer sprang at the proud command And roused the ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... history tell us of the progress and development of man through various steps and ages, known by various names. We learn of the stone age, the bronze, and the iron age. We can see the different steps in the growth of the forms of government; how anarchy was put down by the strong arm of the despot, of the growth of aristocracy, of limited monarchies and of ...
— Have faith in Massachusetts; 2d ed. - A Collection of Speeches and Messages • Calvin Coolidge
... common pomp the despot sate, While busy preparations shook the court, Slaves, eunuchs, soldiers, guests, and santons wait; Within, a palace, and without, a fort: Here men of every ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... of Otaheite, though a despot, was a reformer. He discovered that the eating of bread-fruit was a barbarous custom, which would infallibly prevent his people from being a great nation. He determined to introduce French rolls. A party rebelled; the despot was energetic; some were ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... bears out the fact that all men are sold under sin. Sin is an exacting despot who can be vanquished by no created power, but by the sovereign power of ...
— Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians • Martin Luther
... December Rose The Fire Song A Parting The Gift of Life Incompatibilities The Stolen God—Lazarus to Dives Winter Sea-shells Hope The Prodigal's Return The Skylark Saturday Song The Champion The Garden Refused These Little Ones The Despot The Magic Ring Philosophy The Whirligig of Time Magic Windflowers As it is Before Winter The Vault—after Sedgmoor Surrender Values In the People's Park Wedding Day The Last Defeat May Day Gretna Green ...
— Many Voices • E. Nesbit
... they were no more than his subjects and slaves; and he also excited the common people by telling them that although they were enjoying a fancied freedom they really had been deprived of their ancestral privileges and sacred rites, and made to endure the rule of one foreign despot, instead of that of many good kings of ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... door as it would be to charge Him with inflicting the disease which the dissolute man brings upon himself. It is no arbitrary appointment of God's that 'he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption'; nor is it His will acting as that of a jealous despot which makes it inevitably true that here and hereafter, 'Every transgression and disobedience shall receive its just recompense of reward,' and that to be parted ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... The despot treads thy sacred sands, Thy pines give shelter to his bands, Thy sons stand by with idle hands, Carolina! He breathes at ease thy airs of balm, He scorns the lances of thy palm; Oh! who shall ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... victim. Uncovered in the sun, weary and faint, Bowed to the earth with chains of ravished gold, With feet unsandaled, walked Zenobia, Slave to the craven tyrant's cruelty. Neither her peerless beauty, nor her sex, Nor yet her grievous sufferings could melt The despot's stony heart. She, who surpassed Her conqueror in all the qualities Of head or heart which crown humanity With nobleness and high preeminence— She, whose misfortunes in a glorious cause, And not her errors, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 4 October 1848 • Various
... to my room—well out of Mr. Gracedieu's hearing, if he happened to be awake—at the other end of the passage. Having opened the door, she paused on the threshold. The decrees of that merciless English despot, Propriety, claimed her for their own. "Oh, dear!" she said to herself, "ought I ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... around approached him with unsteady feet, and raised him in their arms. His soul had burst the bonds of vice in which others had entangled it; the voice of Death had whispered to the slave of the great despot, Crime—'Be free!' ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... three-and-a-half millions, against the decree to make Bonaparte consul for life, writing after his name on the polling register the statement that he could not vote for such a measure till public freedom was sufficiently guaranteed. This insured the continued displeasure of the military despot, who revenged himself by refusing to Lafayette's only son, George Washington, the promotion that he had earned by his brilliant exploits in the army. President Jefferson's offer in 1803, of the governorship of the province of Louisiana, just after its purchase from France, was rejected by Lafayette, ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... the Christian, the Hamlet, hero of all time, and Shallow and Slender from the fat pastures of English rural life, come all together, each as true as if on him alone the poet's eye had fixed. And Scott is like him, setting before us with unerring pencil the old superstitious despot of mediaeval France, the bustling pedant of St. James's, the ploughmen and shepherds, the churchmen, the Border reivers and Highland caterans, the broad country lying under a natural illumination, without ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... industrious man alive May yet be studious of his nails; What boots it with the age to strive? Custom the despot soon prevails. A new Kaverine Eugene mine, Dreading the world's remarks malign, Was that which we are wont to call A fop, in dress pedantical. Three mortal hours per diem he Would loiter by the looking-glass, And from his dressing-room would pass Like Venus when, ...
— Eugene Oneguine [Onegin] - A Romance of Russian Life in Verse • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... her silent worshipper and faithful champion. They soon learned that the way to secure his help in anything was to get Vashti Mills to ask it, and the little girl quickly discovered her power and used it as remorselessly over her tall slave as any other despot ever did. They were to be seen any day trailing along the plantation paths which the school-children took from the district, the others in a clump, and the tall boy and little calico-clad girl, who seemed in summer mainly sun-bonnet and bare legs, either following or going before the others ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... monarch and is many in one; and the many have the power in their hands, not as individuals but collectively.... And the people, who is now a monarch, and no longer under the control of law, seeks to exercise monarchical sway, and grows into a despot; the flatterer is held in honour; this sort of democracy being relatively to other democracies what tyranny is to other forms ...
— The Cult of Incompetence • Emile Faguet
... fought, are made major-generals, and the former put in command over Wise in Virginia, and all the generals in North Carolina. Ripley, another Northern general, was sent to South Carolina, and Winder, from Maryland, has been allowed to play the despot in Richmond and Petersburg. ...
— A Rebel War Clerk's Diary at the Confederate States Capital • John Beauchamp Jones
... especially for democracies against despots. What do I mean? Mistrust. Keep this, hold to this; preserve this only, and you can never be injured. What do ye desire? Freedom. Then see ye not that Philip's very titles are at variance therewith? Every king and despot is a foe to freedom, an antagonist to laws. Will ye not beware, I said, lest, seeking deliverance from ...
— The Olynthiacs and the Phillippics of Demosthenes • Demosthenes
... Whoever has, in the course of his life, indulged the absorbing passion of the gamester, will remember bow all other pursuits and objects vanished from his mind, how solely he was wrapped in the one wild delusion; with what a sceptre of magic power the despot demon ruled every feeling and every thought. Far more intense than the passion of the gamester was the frantic yet sublime desire that mastered the breast of Glyndon. He would be the rival of Zicci, not in human and perishable affections, but in preternatural and eternal lore. He would have ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Secession; the throne of Greece put up to auction; Poland in chains, defying the Russian Bear; the ghost of Charles I. warning the King of Prussia, by the block to which he points, of the punishment that awaits the would-be despot; Napoleon crushing the prostrate figure of France; the wars between "father-in-law Denmark," Germany, and Austria, and between the latter two (as Robbers in the Wood); Reform; Irish Church Disestablishment; "Dizzy" as the ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... A certain Eastern despot, whose attention had been painfully drawn to the odious character of selfishness, by finding it exhibited in a very marked manner towards himself by some who had, in looking after their own interests, ventured to thwart the royal will, was resolved to get rid of ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... inhabitants of Canada, to become willing subjects, or slaves, to the Despot who rules the nations of continental Europe ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... of Asia. That of one female associating her fate and fortune with all the brothers of a family, without any restriction of age or numbers. The choice of a wife is the privilege of the elder brother; and singular as it may seem, a Thibetan wife is as jealous of her connubial rites as ever the despot of an Indian Zenana is of the favours of his ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... reform, be morally and for a time justifiable. Their adoption is, however, liable to an almost insuperable objection. Democracy in Great Britain does not comport with official autocracy in Ireland. Every government must be true to its principles, and a democracy which played the benevolent despot ...
— England's Case Against Home Rule • Albert Venn Dicey
... doctrine still holds. The character of the people is, as before, the original source of this political form; and, as we have abundant proof, other forms suddenly created will not act, but rapidly retrograde to the old form. Moreover, such regulations as a despot makes, if really operative, are so because of their fitness to the social state. His acts being very much swayed by general opinion—by precedent, by the feeling of his nobles, his priesthood, his army—are in part immediate results ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer
... had been delightful to her. Her husband, without being brutal, was rough with her, as a man who is the despot of his shop is apt to be rough, without anger or hatred; to such men to give an order is to swear. He controlled himself in the presence of strangers, but in private he let loose and gave himself terrible vent, though he was himself afraid of every one. She, in sheer horror of the turmoil, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... fellow-creatures, than the avidity with which this office is accepted from the sultan; who, within the memory of the new occupant, has consigned scores of his predecessors to the bowstring. It would almost appear, as if the despot but elevated a head from the crowd, that he might obtain a more fair and uninterrupted sweep for his scimitar, when he cut it off; only exceeded in his peculiar taste by the king of Dahomy, who is said to ornament the steps of his palace with heads, fresh severed, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... successful. A revolt is generally successful against a despot, when the great mass of the population desire his downfall. Amulius made a desperate attempt to stem the torrent, but his hour had come. His palace was stormed, and he was slain. The revolution was complete, and Romulus and Remus were masters ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... Conquest, which forces nations of different habits, characters, and languages into unity, is at last the parent of degrading servitude. These nations are only held together, as in the Roman empire, by the iron hand of military power. The despot, surrounded by a foreign soldiery, appears in the conquered provinces, simply to enforce tribute, and compel obedience to his arbitrary will. But the small Greek communities, protected by the barriers of their seas and gulfs and mountains, escaped, ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... me that the Benevolent Despot, the Peter Grievous, and the Martyred Snail, are people to avoid in choosing ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... the fur companies stationed at Fort Laramie ruled with an absolute authority. They were as potent in their sway as the veriest despot, for they had no one to dispute their right to lord it over all. The nearest army outposts were seven hundred miles to the east, and, like the viceroys of Spain after the conquest of Mexico, they ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... made to feel the grinding heel of the despot! Verily the suffering race of Adam will claim their rights ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... restoration of their liberties in the very face of a TYRANT, if the necessity of the times should call for so noble an exertion. And how soon there may be such NECESSITY, GOD only knows. May HE grant them FORTITUDE as well as SOUND PRUDENCE in the day of TRIAL! He who can flatter a despot, or be flattered by him, without feeling the remonstrances of his own mind against it, may be remarkable for the guise and appearance of sanctity, but he has very little if any true religion - If he habitually allows himself in it, without any remorse, ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, volume II (1770 - 1773) - collected and edited by Harry Alonso Cushing • Samuel Adams
... the public received impressions slowly and with difficulty, and was unable to distinguish the genuine from the spurious, trivial pedantry from sterling worth, while the orchestra—out of regard for its real master and despot Costa, who can dismiss and appoint the musicians according to his will—always limited its applause to the smallest and least compromising measure. This time, at the leavetaking, it broke through all restraint. The musicians rose solemnly, and ...
— Correspondence of Wagner and Liszt, Volume 2 • Francis Hueffer (translator)
... have been true in the days of Machiavelli that cruelty and treachery would aid the unscrupulous petty despot of Italy to secure and at times to maintain his dukedom; but certainly in modern days, when in all civilized countries permanently prosperous government is based ultimately upon the will of the people, the successful ...
— The Making of a Nation - The Beginnings of Israel's History • Charles Foster Kent and Jeremiah Whipple Jenks
... reminder to the Emperor, they said, that he was trifling with the cause of Italian unity, to which he was secretly pledged. But Englishmen were slow to believe in such designs on the part of the French ruler. "How should a despot set men free?" was their thought, interpreted for them vigorously enough by an anonymous poet of the day; and they enrolled themselves in great numbers for national defence. With this movement there might be some evils mixed, but its purely defensive and manly character ...
— Great Britain and Her Queen • Anne E. Keeling
... his dubious clientele. There was also good Rhine wine or rum to be had, smuggled across from England or Germany, and no interference from the spies of some of those countless Committees, more autocratic than any ci-devant despot. It was, in fact, an ideal place wherein to conduct those shady transactions which are unavoidable corollaries of an unfettered democracy. Projects of burglary, pillage, rapine, even murder, were hatched within this underground ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... of the end," one of the students exclaimed. "Paris will assert herself, France will come to her assistance, and the Germans will find that it is one thing to fight against the armies of a despot, and another to stand before a free ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... Despot. All must bide, Later or soon, the message of his might; Princes and potentates their heads must hide, Touched by the awful sigil of his right; Beside the Kaiser he at eve doth wait And pours a potion in ...
— The Dance of Death • Hans Holbein
... everything, analyzing everything, believing nothing. Voltaire was in the midst of it, hating, with all his vehement soul, the abuses that swarmed about him, and assailing them with the inexhaustible shafts of his restless and piercing intellect. Montesquieu was showing to a despot-ridden age the principles of political freedom. Diderot and D'Alembert were beginning their revolutionary Encyclopaedia. Rousseau was sounding the first notes of his mad eloquence,—the wild revolt of a passionate and diseased ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of it. GRET. Oh, I should like to pull his Grand Ducal ears for him, that I should! He's the meanest, the cruellest, the most spiteful little ape in Christendom! OLGA. Well, we shall soon be freed from his tyranny. To-morrow the Despot is to be dethroned! LUD. Hush, rash girl! You know not what you say. OLGA. Don't be absurd! We're all in it—we're all tiled, here. LUD. That has nothing to do with it. Know ye not that in alluding to our conspiracy without having first given and received ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... think what he likes, my fairy. We are not trying to catch him for a husband. I am sure he would not want one of those monsters who are known as female artists. He would think he was marrying the devil. You are quite right, Minerva. Art is a despot. One has to give one's self entirely up to him. To toil in his service, one devotes all the ideal, all the energy, honesty, conscience, that one possesses, so that you have none of these things left for real life, and the completed labour throws you down, strengthless and without a ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... man rule—the rule of himself. Could you or any reasoning man who has followed the demagogues of this country, for a moment doubt that any one of them, on the slightest pretext or opportunity would make a despot that would shade those of ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... examples too remote, every one familiar with the historical characters of the men, will know that neither Pulaski, Franklin, Ypsilanti, or Garibaldi would ever have so degraded his cause—the cause of liberty—as to promise to the despot, whose aid he desired, a compensatory assistance in trampling down a people rising for freedom. No innocent man attacked by assassins will promise, with honest intent, to one who offers to save him, his assistance in continuing a work of murder and ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... stuff there is in Englishmen, and how naturally they take to arms, but also it inspired with martial feeling and happy faith the wives and mothers of all the gallant warriors there. It would make the blood-stained despot cower upon his throne of murder, and teach him the madness of invading any land ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... for him the great victory of Ostend, "he would have felt it his duty to make immediate arrangements for poisoning him." Doubtless the imputation is sufficiently justified by what we know of Philip; but it is uncalled for. We do not care to hear about what the despot might have done. We know what he did do, and the record is sufficiently damning. There is no harm in our giving the Devil his due, or as Llorente wittily says, "Il ne faut ...
— The Unseen World and Other Essays • John Fiske
... seemed to him the insolent little cities of Greece, and Hippias, now an old man, undertook to show him the way to Athens, and to betray his country. The battle was between the East and West—between a despot ruling mere slaves, and free, thoughtful cities, full of evil indeed, and making many mistakes, but brave and resolute, and really feeling for ...
— Aunt Charlotte's Stories of Greek History • Charlotte M. Yonge
... foreman of one of the leading London houses is deputed to apprize aspiring rhymesters, that "his firm considers poetry a mild species of insanity"—Anglice, that it does not suit the appetite of the circulating library! For behold! this despot of bookmakers must have length, breadth, and thickness, to fill the book boxes dispatched to its subscribers in the country, as well as satisfy in town the demands of its charming subscriber, Lady Sylvester Daggerwood, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... wise one or that such-and-such a man might be the one to appoint to such-and-such a vacancy, it would be discovered that, with singular insight, she had made a perfect suggestion. Whereas, therefore, it might be said that she was a despot, it was universally agreed that she was a benevolent one and an enlightened one, and many even went so far as to fear that her death might actually prove ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... of a God sitting above the clouds among the cherubim, who blow their loud uplifted angel trumpets before Him, and humour [sic] Him as though He were some despot in an Oriental tale; but we enthrone Him upon the wings of birds, on the petals of flowers, on the faces of our friends, and upon whatever we most delight in of all that lives upon the earth. We then ...
— God the Known and God the Unknown • Samuel Butler
... the shadow of the dead man had pressed particularly severely, had been quite intoxicated by sudden freedom. He had been a cipher in the firm of Bannister & Son. In the firm of Bannister & Co. he was an untrammelled despot. He did that which was right in his own eyes, and there was no one to ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... was an absolute despot ruling over a tribe of fierce warriors, who knew no will but his. He was the terror of all the surrounding country, his smile was life, his frown scattered horror and death. Yet even in his savage breast there were chords that could be touched by kindness, and Moffat received many ...
— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane
... of an amiable despot Manx nodded his venerable head. Up went the signal, and in a few minutes the fleet was reduced to order. Every smack swept round into position, and, bending over on the same tack, they all rushed like a shoal of startled ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Italy; then let him appear in Constantinople, embarked from a galley, habited like a Roman, and with a suitable Italian title. He speaks Italian already, is fixed in his religion, and in knightly honor. Not all the gifts at the despot's disposal, nor the blandishments of society can shake his allegiance—he ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... only remember the late King THEBAW of Burma as a bloodthirsty and dissipated despot. It has been reserved for Sir JOHN REES to find a redeeming feature in his character. Among all his crimes, he never, it seems, prohibited the consumption of drink in his realm, though I fancy that his own efforts in that line considerably reduced ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various
... no one in France regretted the Batavian Republic when it was stricken from the roll of history by the will of a despot; or, rather, the Parisians, in their occasionally exaggerated infatuation, fancied that the Dutch would be overjoyed to ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... insidious flatteries, and will not permit him to mislead them by his deceptive promises. They received the Archduke John with genuine enthusiasm, and every day volunteers are flocking to his standards to fight against the despot who, like a demon of terror, tramples the peace and prosperity of all Europe under his bloody feet. No, Bonaparte can no longer count upon the sympathies of the nations; they are all ready to rise against him, and in the end hatred will accomplish ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... a bright boy, who enters into the spirit of the game, and it tickles him hugely to play the part of a despot. But while he is Henry VIII. in miniature, he is Henry VIII. without the king's coarseness, and in the place is a child's innocent pleasure. It was no wonder that his parents, delighted with the success of the costume, wished to have ...
— Sir Joshua Reynolds - A Collection of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... view was,—alone in the midst of Nature. I was for myself the only consciousness in the world, and all the world besides was merely a variety of material and impression, to be observed and known, to be interested in and delighted with. I was thus lonely, lonely as a despot, when Nora, your sister, appeared to me, and instantly I became aware there was another consciousness in the world as great as, or greater than, my own,—another person than myself, a person of supreme beauty and intelligence and faculty. She became to me ...
— Master of His Fate • J. Mclaren Cobban
... pilgrims graciously, and gave them letters to the Bishop of Arezzo, commanding him to furnish the new brotherhood with one of the rules authorised by Holy Church for governance of a monastic order. Guido Tarlati, of the great Pietra-mala house, was Bishop and despot of Arezzo at this epoch. A man less in harmony with coenobitical enthusiasm than this warrior prelate, could scarcely have been found. Yet attendance to such matters formed part of his business, and the legend even credits him with an inspired dream; for Our Lady appeared to him, and said: ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... thoughts or swayed his life or mastered his intellect, the world might well smile (and to my thinking had better smile than weep) at the issue of the investigation. When the first brief shock was gone, how few out of the solid twenty-four would be the hours claimed by the despot, however much the poets might call him insatiable. There is sleeping, and meat and drink, the putting on and off of raiment and the buying of it. If a man be of sound body, there is his sport; if he be sane, there are ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... Luther Repudiates the Ten Commandments 19. Luther's Invisible Church 20. Luther on the God-given Supremacy of the Pope 21. Luther the Translator of the Bible 22. Luther a Preacher of Violence against the Hierarchy 23. Luther, Anarchist and Despot All in One 24. Luther the Destroyer of Liberty of Conscience 25. "The Adam and Eve of the New Gospel of Concubinage" 26. Luther an Advocate of Polygamy 27. Luther Announces His Death 28. Luther's View of ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... order, and by reforming bishops like Ghiberti of Verona, and Carlo Borromeo of Milan. Devout and self-denying as a saint, fierce and inflexible against abuses as a puritan, resolute and uncompromising as a Jacobin idealist or an Asiatic despot, ruthless and inexorable as an executioner, his soul was bent on re-establishing, not only by preaching and martyrdom, but by the sword and by the stake, the unity of Christendom and of its belief. Eastwards and westwards, he beheld two formidable ...
— Spenser - (English Men of Letters Series) • R. W. Church
... an individual over an average. The tyranny of the specialistic oligarchy is making itself felt to-day, and I should like to fortify the revolutionary spirit of liberty, whose boast it is to detest tyranny in all its forms, whether it is the tyranny of an enlightened despot, or the tyranny of a virtuous oligarchy, or the tyranny ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... many centuries before Christ, there is such a thing as leaving mankind alone; there is no such thing as governing mankind. All modes of government are failures. Despotism is unjust to everybody, including the despot, who was probably made for better things. Oligarchies are unjust to the many, and ochlocracies are unjust to the few. High hopes were once formed of democracy; but democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the ...
— The Soul of Man • Oscar Wilde
... races trouble themselves little about their political constitution, about despotism or liberty; they enjoy the passing moments of a despot's smiles, and if he turns round and crushes them, they quietly submit. We live in dread of tyranny. Our liberty is a serious object; it weighs upon our minds. Now any weight upon the mind is so much taken from our happiness; hilarity may ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... is impossible but that a traveller must often take the law into his own hands. Some countries, no doubt, are governed with a strong arm by a savage despot; to whom or to whose subordinates appeals must of course be made; but, for the most part, the system of ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... important occasion of all) Bacchylides alone was commissioned to do so; although in that year Pindar composed an ode (Olymp. vi.) for another Syracusan victor at the same festival. Nor is it difficult to conceive that a despot such as Hiero, whose constitutional position was ill-defined, and who was perhaps all the more exigent of deference on that account, may have found the genial Ionian a more agreeable courtier than Pindar, an aristocrat of the Boeoto-Aeolic type, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... diffused. This is the case with ploughing, grinding, weaving, cooking, baking, sewing, spinning; with such objects as corn, flesh, meat, vestment; with wild animals common to Europe and Asia, as the bear and the wolf. So, too, of words connected with social organization, despot, rex, queen. The numerals from 1 to 100 coincide in Sanscrit, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic; but this is not the case with 1000, a fact which has led comparative philologists to the conclusion that, though at the time of the emigration a sufficient intellectual ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... Despot as he was, the sultan was much moved; he was mortified at having yielded to his temper, and his passionate affection for me had returned. He intreated my pardon, shed tears over me, kissed my swelled feet, and humiliated himself so much, that ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... Orthodox appears in The Nights as a headstrong and violent autocrat, a right royal figure according to the Moslem ideas of his day. But his career shows that he was not more tyrannical or more sanguinary than the normal despot of the East, or the contemporary Kings of the West: in most points, indeed, he was far superior to the historic misrulers who have afflicted the world from Spain to furthest China. But a single great crime, a tragedy whose details ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... make many methods. Some are fitted for the daily use of men counting into millions; some touch only a minute few, and shrink from the common gaze; some, again, serve the needs and lives of men having simple ways, and some sustain a despot's power and hold the race as slaves: but in every case they are false and wrong save the one that a man may hold. The religious faith of the tribe to which the old black-fellow belonged formed a pitiful mass of crudities, oddities, and absurdities to the ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... people of very great capacities will get on better with a man of extremely limited intelligence than with a man of ordinary intelligence; and it is for the same reason that the despot and the plebeians, the grandparents and the grandchildren, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... the young soldier, "you have seen our Legislators at the Tuileries. What an afflicting sight! Is it seemly the Representatives of a free people should sit beneath the roof of a despot? The same lustres that once shone on the plots of Capet and the orgies of Antoinette now illumine the deliberations of our law-makers. 'Tis enough ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... unless men had some reason for supporting them, they would speedily sink to the ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of the power, and they make use of it to perpetuate these abuses. Doubtless, they are always sufficiently inclined to do so; but a privileged class, or a despot, is always a mere handful against the great body of the people; and unless their power is supported by the force of general opinion, founded on experienced utility upon the whole, it could not maintain its ground a single ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... religion and men of the middle class." What impressed observers most was the unswerving, changeless temper of his rule. The stern justice, the terrible punishments he inflicted on all who broke his laws, were parts of a fixed system which differed widely from the capricious severity of a mere despot. Hardly less impressive was his unvarying success. Heavy as were the blows which destiny levelled at him, Henry bore and rose unconquered from all. To the end of his life the proudest barons lay bound and blinded in his prison. His hoard grew greater and greater. Normandy, toss ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... an evil moment for Anna when she volunteered to learn typewriting, that she might help her adopted mother; from that day she became the willing slave bound at the chariot wheels of a good-natured despot. No amount of work tired Mrs. Herrick; she had the strength and vitality of ten women. It never entered her head that a growing girl in her teens was liable to flag and grow weary, and so the pretty pink roses that had bloomed ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... on two other circumstances of the case, the affection of the parent for the children, and the superiority of the parent in wisdom and experience; neither of which properties can be reckoned on, or are at all likely to exist, between a political despot and his subjects; and when either of these circumstances fails even in the family, and the influence of the irresponsibility is allowed to work uncorrected, the result is any thing but good government. This, therefore, ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... accept the Abolitionists as its backbone, but it must also include all violent elements of whatever persuasion, and especially all those that could be wrought into fury on the theme of the President as a despot. Above all, their coalition must absorb and then express the furious temper so dear to their own hearts which they fondly believed-mistakenly, they were destined to discover-was ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... and a man of fiery eloquence) on July 11, 1861, delivered unrebuked in the State Democratic Convention at Sacramento, this diatribe against Abraham Lincoln: "For God's sake speed the ball, may the lead go quick to his heart—and may our country be free from this despot usurper, that now claims to the name of ...
— Starr King in California • William Day Simonds
... into a power which, as soon as the opportunity was presented, he used for the grievous humiliation and distress of his generous friends. That he had not brought them to utter ruin seemed to have been owing to no want of resolute purpose on his part to advance himself as the congenial instrument of a despot. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... daughter the princess was absent; that she had been seen fleeing with the white youth in the direction of the enchanted lake:—when all this became known to the ruler, it may be said that his fury was such that no language could do it justice. It is not impossible that the despot felt thus himself, for, without pausing to give utterance to a few of his imaginings, he made instant preparations to follow the couple to the region which he never permitted a white ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... whole people, of whose misery he is the cause, will not see the angry countenance of a more powerful master: like another Menippus, he may indeed destroy himself from desperation, to avoid reiterated reproach; which only proves, that when a haughty, arrogant despot pretends to be accountable for his actions to the Divinity alone, it is because he fears his nation more than he does ...
— The System of Nature, Vol. 1 • Baron D'Holbach
... cease to deplore the change which robbed this graceful stream of a title pregnant with all the associations of Indian valor and of the departed glory of their empire, and bestowed a name that can only recall a royal pedant and a timid despot! ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... "The despot's heel is on thy shore; His torch is at thy temple door. Avenge the patriotic gore That flecks the streets of Baltimore And be the battle queen of ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... or can it bear the shock Of rational discussion, that a man, Compounded and made up like other men, Of elements tumultuous, in whom lust And folly in as ample measure meet, As in the bosoms of the slaves he rules, Should he a despot absolute, and boast Himself the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... is a despot,' said Mark, moving off, with a bow to Theodora; Mrs. Finch, following, spoke a few words, and then shut him ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... says So-and-so is a man of principle—that's his favourite word. He seems to be self-confident, hardworking, capable of self-sacrifice (you see, I am impartial), that's to say, of sacrificing his own interest; but he is a great despot. It would be woeful to fall into his power! At dinner ...
— On the Eve • Ivan Turgenev
... he said heavily, seeming to sink more deeply into his chair. "Very clever." He shifted his eyes to the women who stood about him. "You may go," he said indifferently. His tone was exactly that of a despot dismissing his slaves. Two of them colored with instinctive resentment. His eyes lingered an instant on the third. Her face had showed only a passionate relief. "You, Senhora," he said heavily, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... me remind you that we have been recently engaged in public rejoicings. For what have we rejoiced? Because the people in another land have arisen and triumphed over the despot, who had done—what? He did not demolish presses, but he imprisoned editors. In other words, he enslaved the press. Will you then present to ...
— Personal Memoir Of Daniel Drayton - For Four Years And Four Months A Prisoner (For Charity's Sake) In Washington Jail • Daniel Drayton
... pinned up. Her hair was bound in the protecting towel. "You must telephone father. No, let's surprise him. You'll hate the dinner—built around Miz' Merz; you know—boiled. Well, you know what a despot she is." ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... of daylight, of barter and trade, of work and worry. In this world every man is his own King—the sort of King one loves to imagine, not concerned in such petty matters as wars and parliaments and taxes, but a mellow and moderate despot who is a true patron of genius—a mild old chap who has in his court the greatest men and women in the world—and all of them vying to please the most vagrant of his moods! Invite any one of them to talk, and if your highness is not pleased with him ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... Allah sees—it has warned—now it will destroy. The day of judgment is at hand. The battleship Maryland is at anchor in the Hudson River at New York. No more shall it be the weapon of a despot government. It will be destroyed at twelve o'clock on ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... an ambassador to the United States. Let him announce to the Americans that the National Convention of France, from pure friendship to America, has consented to respite the sentence of Louis. Ah, Citizens, do not give the despot of England the pleasure of seeing sent to the scaffold the man who helped my beloved brethren of America to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... the impression that they are thus protecting themselves from misinformation and also from the possibility of injury, but, as we have seen, they are in reality placing themselves at the mercy of these spies in the same manner as every despot in the past has placed himself at the mercy of those who brought him information. It may, perhaps, be possible that the Carnegie Company in 1892, the railroads in 1894, and the mine owners in 1904 were convinced that their ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... misgoverned by some prig who has no brotherly respect for him at all. But irrational despotism is always democratic, because it is the ordinary man enthroned. The worst form of slavery is that which is called Caesarism, or the choice of some bold or brilliant man as despot because he is suitable. For that means that men choose a representative, not because he represents them, but because he does not. Men trust an ordinary man like George III or William IV. because they are ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... dastard fears abash, He was born to be a slave— Let him feel the despot's lash, And sink inglorious to ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... the steppe. All at once girded and armed themselves. The Koschevoi grew a whole foot taller. He was no longer the timid executor of the restless wishes of a free people, but their untrammelled master. He was a despot, who know only to command. All the independent and pleasure-loving warriors stood in an orderly line, with respectfully bowed heads, not venturing to raise their eyes, when the Koschevoi gave his orders. He gave these ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... enemy. But Caesar's lieutenant there, the able Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus, had received orders to take away again from king Pharnaces what he had without instructions wrested from the allies of Pompeius; and, as Pharnaces, an obstinate and arrogant despot like his father, perseveringly refused to evacuate Lesser Armenia, no course remained but to march against him. Calvinus had been obliged to despatch to Egypt two out of the three legions left behind with him and formed out of the Pharsalian ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... combine and exceed all the tortures which the tyrant had made his victims endure. Antiochus, glittering on his ivory throne, appeared to be in the prime of health as well as the zenith of power; none guessed how brief was the term of mortal existence remaining to the despot, on the breath of whose lips now hung fortune or ruin, whose angry frown ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... about in a half-cowed fashion. He treated Mose like a dog. Why the fellow stood it, I don't know. The Colonel seemed never to have learned that the old slave days were over and that he no longer owned the negroes body and soul. His government of the plantation was in the manner of a despot. Everybody—from his own son to the merest pickaninny—was at the mercy of his caprice. When he was in good humor, he was kindness itself to the darkies; when he was in bad humor, he vented his anger on whoever happened ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... the House of Commons did, for the House of Lords was abolished. But it proved quite unfit for the purpose. It was thoroughly disorganized, and rent by violent factions. The anarchy which ensued was ended by a military despot, Oliver Cromwell, who entered the House of Commons in 1653 with his soldiers. The Speaker was pulled from his chair; the members were driven from the House; and Cromwell was proclaimed dictator. It is strange, indeed, that the lesson which is to be drawn from ...
— Proportional Representation Applied To Party Government • T. R. Ashworth and H. P. C. Ashworth
... cost, in ever-widening circles, "wave after wave, each mightier than the last," for as long as one body toils in fetters or one mind welters in blind ignorance, either of the slave's base delusion or the despot's specious illusion, there can be no final security for any free man, or his children, or his ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... sigh over the reflection that he has found "his warmest welcome at an inn," has something to learn at the offices of the great city hotels. The unheralded guest who is honored by mere indifference may think himself blessed with singular good-fortune. If the despot of the Patent-Annunciator is only mildly contemptuous in his manner, let the victim look upon it as a personal favor. The coldest welcome that a threadbare curate ever got at the door of a bishop's palace, the most icy reception that a country cousin ever received at the city mansion of a mushroom ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... a silent infant, and, almost before Holden could realise that he was in the world, developed into a small gold-coloured little god and unquestioned despot of the house overlooking the city. Those were months of absolute happiness to Holden and Ameera—happiness withdrawn from the world, shut in behind the wooden gate that Pir Khan guarded. By day Holden did his work with an immense pity for such as ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... any other temperament could have succeeded in retaining his post in this age of turmoil and unrest, Santa Cruz proved himself a despot, but in many respects a benevolent despot, who showed an interest in genuine progress. Realizing, for instance, the serious disadvantage under which his country laboured on account of its lack of an ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel
... the Chersonese Was freedom's best and bravest friend; That tyrant was Miltiades! Oh! that the present hour would lend Another despot of the kind! Such chains as his ...
— Lyra Heroica - A Book of Verse for Boys • Various
... German absolutism, this was a dangerous step to take. Technically he would be a deserter. He had reason to fear that he would not be allowed to make his way in the world by his own merit, unharmed and unhelped, but would be dogged by the malice of a despot and perhaps brought back to undergo the fate of Schubart. Worse still was the possibility that his father might be made to suffer from the duke's anger. Nevertheless he resolved to take the risk. He ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... passion called Spanish patriotism, or Espanolismo, is fully called into play by the recollections of the terrible scenes of their war of independence, which drove out a foreign king, and brought back into Spain a native despot infinitely meaner and more injurious. It is an impressive study in national character and thought, this self-satisfaction of even liberal Spaniards at the reflection that, by a vast and supreme effort of the nation, after countless sacrifices ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... up in the sky, And the linnet trembled, but could not fly; With a swoop to the earth the eagle fell, And rose up anon with a savage yell. The birds in the woodlands dared not move. What a despot is Liberty ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... merit in any subject was matter for jealous hatred,[188] and who now made Agricola report himself by night, and received him without one word of commendation. Had his life been prolonged he would undoubtedly have perished, like so many of the best of the Roman aristocracy, by the despot's hands; but just before the unrestrained outbreak of tyranny, he suddenly died—"felix opportunitate mortis"—to be immortalized by the love and genius of his daughter's husband. And he left Britain, as it had never been before, ...
— Early Britain—Roman Britain • Edward Conybeare
... brute force of the other. The open Bible, in our schools, is the secret of our ability to govern ourselves. Take from us the open Bible and, like Samson shorn of his locks, we would become as weak as any other people. Take away the Bible, and like Italy, Austria and Russia, we would need a despot on a throne, and a standing army of a half-million to keep the populace ...
— The Choctaw Freedmen - and The Story of Oak Hill Industrial Academy • Robert Elliott Flickinger
... her own way," said he. "She has arranged it, and there will be no end of confusion if we make another change. Charlotte always arranges everything in our house and rules us like a despot." ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... I say calm? It was the calm of abject slavery. At command of that minute despot I began to toil frenziedly. At her word I read over and over, and over once again, the Rhymes of Mother Goose and the Tales of Peter Wabbitt. The Tin Tan Book was her litany, and Red Riding Hood her sweet terror. Her interest in books was insatiate. She loved ...
— A Daughter of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... he introduced him to me as M. Petri, his godson, and nephew to his other guests, and he made him sit down at his left hand, Rosalie being on his right. I sat opposite to her, and seeing that she turned as pale as death the blood rushed to my face; I was terribly enraged. This small despot's plot seemed disgraceful to me; it was a scandalous insult to Rosalie and myself—an insult which should be washed away in blood. I was tempted to stab him at his table, but in spite of my agitation I constrained ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... of woe, however, it had still been in the power of the fierce despot otherwise to deepen. Infuriated by the flight of Perez, the king caused the wife, then pregnant, and the children of the fugitive, to be arrested and cast into the public prison, dragging them "on the day when it is usual to pardon the very worst of criminals, at the very ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... the colour of that grotesque but somewhat gloomy time. It is very unfortunate that we so often know a thing that is past only by its tail end. We remember yesterday only by its sunsets. There are many instances. One is Napoleon. We always think of him as a fat old despot, ruling Europe with a ruthless military machine. But that, as Lord Rosebery would say, was only "The Last Phase"; or at least the last but one. During the strongest and most startling part of his career, the time that made him immortal, Napoleon was ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... next morning, at breakfast, in that half-didactic, half-reproachful way of hers, which is harder to bear than her most energetic assault. Holofernes, too, is with her a pet name for any fell domestic despot. So, whenever, against her most ambitious innovations, those which saw me quite across the grain, I, as in the present instance, stand with however little steadfastness on the defence, she is sure to call me Holofernes, ...
— I and My Chimney • Herman Melville
... eagle and strikes like lightning, all the mysteries of a profound mind, associated with destiny; the river, the plain, the forest, and the hill summoned, and, to some extent, compelled to obey; the despot going so far as even to tyrannize over the battlefield; faith in a star, blended with a strategic ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 4 (of 10) • Various
... one white finger in his buttonhole, and stood looking in his face with a saucy gaze. Clarence yielded at once. His small despot knew very well how to rule him and to put down such short-lived attempts at insubordination as he ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... their effeminate devotion; and it is difficult to say which were soonest corrupted by courtiers consummate in the arts of adulation, and unwearied in their exercise. The sovereign rapidly degenerated into an accomplished despot, and the women into intriguers and coquettes. Richelieu had indeed succeeded in subjecting the State to the rule of the Church, but Ninon was destined to play an important part in modifying the evils which afflicted society, and at least elevate its tone. From the methods she employed to ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.
... approach, when Waterloo could be dimly discerned opening before Napoleon, the mournful acclamation of the army and the people to the condemned of destiny had nothing laughable in it, and, after making all allowance for the despot, a heart like that of the Bishop of D——, ought not perhaps to have failed to recognize the august and touching features presented by the embrace of a great nation and a great man on ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... a village of the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, of which he spoke with heart-moving affection, though he seldom went there. It was only after much insistence that he allowed us to conduct him thither on one memorable occasion, when I could not but admire his perfect manners as a despot. When first I met him he had been a gentleman at large, and it was as that, and a familiar friend, that he repaired to me whenever he had nothing else to do. Judging from his gifts of conversation, which we all admired, ...
— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall |
