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Dictatorial   Listen
adjective
Dictatorial  adj.  
1.
Pertaining or suited to a dictator; absolute. "Military powers quite dictatorial."
2.
Characteristic of a dictator; imperious; dogmatical; overbearing; as, a dictatorial tone or manner.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Dictatorial" Quotes from Famous Books



... subjects, except such as particularly relate to your constituents; and, in the former case, make yourself perfectly master of the subject. Never exceed a decent warmth, and submit your sentiments with diffidence. A dictatorial stile, though it may carry conviction, is always accompanied with disgust." To a friend writing of this same speech he said, "with great pleasure I received the information respecting the commencement of my nephew's political course. I ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford

... the rest of the human race will have to be humbly reverent toward them or suffer for it. That can surely happen, and when it happens, the word Irreverence will be regarded as the most meaningless, and foolish, and self-conceited, and insolent, and impudent and dictatorial word in the language. And people will say, "Whose business is it, what gods I worship and what things hold sacred? Who has the right to dictate to my conscience, and where ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain

... waiting for Mr Laffan's return, a Spanish officer entered the posada, and in a dictatorial tone ordered supper, although it was an early hour for that meal. He then eyed me narrowly, and inquired of the old woman who I was. It struck me that he was the person I had seen while I was talking ...
— In New Granada - Heroes and Patriots • W.H.G. Kingston

... the cook, attired in a dress spotlessly clean, a bright red bandanna tied around her head, was more pompous and dictatorial than ever. Her helpers had been increased for the event, and she issued her commands with a force which would have done credit to a skipper on a quarter-deck. Often she scolded those around her, but her anger was more apparent than real, and while she smote right and left with one hand, with the ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick

... Deb isn't to be compared with Mary in anything except looks. She is eaten up with vanity—one can't be surprised—and is very dictatorial and overbearing; you could see that at lunch. But Mary is so gentle, so unselfish—her father's ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... world have paid too great a compliment to critics, and have imagined them men of much greater profundity than they really are. From this complacence, the critics have been emboldened to assume a dictatorial power, and have so far succeeded, that they are now become the masters, and have the assurance to give laws to those authors from whose ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... was in danger of forgetting the delicate position he was in. "He wants to ram his notions down my throat," he thought; and it seemed to him that the parson's face had grown more like a mule's, his accent more superior, his eyes more dictatorial: To be right in this argument seemed now of great importance, whereas, in truth, it was of no importance whatsoever. That which, however, was important was the fact that in nothing could they ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... not that woman should lose any of that refinement and delicacy of spirit which, as a celestial halo, ever encircles the pure in heart. We contend not that she shall become noisy and dictatorial, and abjure the quiet graces of life. We claim not that she, any more than her brother, should engage in any vocation or appear in any situation to which her nature and abilities are not fitted. But we ask for her, as for ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... coat had caught in half-a-dozen fish hooks attached to an eel line all tangled up in the framework. It took him fully two minutes to get free. Andy climbed over the window sill and stood fumbling his cap. His old awe of his dictatorial relative was as ...
— Andy the Acrobat • Peter T. Harkness

... came, his stern, dictatorial manner, together with the persistent coldness which resisted all attempts to be friendly and sociable, hurt and offended me; but he was so different when among the sick, so gentle, so benignant beside the bedsides ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... Some of Dowler's dictatorial ways may have been suggested by Boz's friend, the redoubtable John Forster. There is one passage in the Bath chapters where we almost seem to hear our old friend speaking, when he took command of his friends and introduced them, "My friend, Angelo Cyrus ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald

... a surer one." This time it was her oldest daughter—her first-born. "Haven't you noticed how all mother's little peculiarities are growing on her? She is getting so much more dictatorial and preachy. Of course, we know that mother means to be kind and helpful, but she has always been so—tactless—and blunt; and it's growing ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... more than any hundred Frenchmen I could select. Their women are the first in the world in everything but beauty; sensible, agreeable, and infinitely informed. The philosophes, except Buffon, are solemn, arrogant, dictatorial coxcombs—I need not say superlatively disagreeable. The rest are amazingly ignorant in general, and void of all conversation but the routine with women. My dear and very old friend [Madame du Deffand] ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole

... that it is the only "true school of landscape which has yet existed," an appreciation which is followed by the outburst that "from the last landscape of Tintoret, if we look for life we will pass at once to the first landscape of Turner." It is, of course, only one of Ruskin's dictatorial statements, admirable when written, because it was read and approved by a class who knew no better and who accepted his words as other blind devotees obeyed the Delphic Oracle—statements, however, which are rejected by ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith

... simply the delirious phase of an illness, after which he recovered, and lived on as if nothing had happened."[3297] And Maignet himself writes "I was not made for these tempests." That goes for everyone but especially for the coarser natures; subordination would have restrained them while dictatorial power make the instincts of the brute and the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 4 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 3 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine

... what he says. You hear me, Alec? Not a drop. Take out those half-empty bowls and don't you serve another thimbleful of anything until I say so." Here he turned to the young doctor, who seemed rather surprised at St. George's dictatorial air—one rarely seen in him. "Yes—brutal, I know, Teackle, and perhaps a little ill-mannered, this interfering with another man's hospitality, but if you knew how Kate has suffered over this same stupidity you would say I was right. Talbot ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith

... urgence than of quiet command. He was not dictatorial, but he was determined. The girl looked at him, sighed, rose to her knees, and then made a last appeal ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner

... nettled her, his attitude seemed to her priggish and dictatorial, and as the sun disappearing behind a sudden cloud, so her childish merriment quickly gave place to a feeling of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... You haven't seen him, auntie. He's tall, and has wrinkles around his eyes, and a dictatorial nose, and steel gray eyes. He calls the twins song-birds, and they're so flattered they adore him. He sends them candy for Christmas. You know that Duckie they rave so much about. It's the very ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston

... who was, as he thought he knew, engaged also to marry another woman. Here, no doubt, was gross ill-usage, and opportunity at any rate for threats. No money was required and no immediate action,—and Sir Felix could act the fine gentleman and the dictatorial brother at very little present expense. But Hetta, who ought perhaps to have known her brother more thoroughly, was fool enough to believe him. On the day but one following, no answer had as yet come from Roger Carbury,—nor ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope

... Roland, dictatorial and exacting, had insisted from the beginning of their marriage, that his wife should refrain from seeing her young and attached friends whom she had loved in the convent, and who lived at Amiens. He dreaded the least participation of affection. His prudence outstepped ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... recommended by the same federative body to all the colonies, by which the subscribers bound themselves to refuse and to prevent the importation of goods, wares and merchandise, from the mother country; established committees of safety throughout the province, and, in short, in possession of almost dictatorial powers, did not hesitate to use them for the public welfare. It was at particular pains to infuse a martial spirit among the people; and, influenced by this spirit, and under the immediate suggestion, and by direct participation, of this assembly, ...
— The Life of Francis Marion • William Gilmore Simms

... shadowed corner with an outstretched hand—Ralston, with his big sagacious head, all unexpectedly silver-white, and moustache and beard of snow, but with the same old hand-grip, and the same half-dictatorial, half-affectionate tone. Madge struck a resolving chord, rose, and with a kiss and a whispered 'I know the news,' slipped from the room before he could make an effort ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... square face bore distinct traces of the fatigue endured in the past twenty-four hours on horseback or in jolting market waggons. His temper too appeared to have suffered on the way, and, at Chauvelin's curt and dictatorial replies, he looked as surly as a ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... near, he looked so big and burly and dictatorial, and shouted so loud to Tom, to come and be examined, that Tom ran for his life, and the dog too. And really it was time; for the poor turnips, in their hurry and fright, crammed themselves so fast to be ready for the Examiner, that they burst ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley

... with equal austerity and resolution, yet in a voice persuasive and conciliatory rather than arbitrary or dictatorial, the mere form and manner of this quixotic undertaking thrilled all my fibres in defiance of its sense. It was like the blare of bugles in a dubious cause; one's blood responded before one's brain; and but for Raffles, little as his friends ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung

... door gently as she went out, and betrayed the unwonted rush of softer feelings which had come over her only by being more dictatorial and commanding than usual in her treatment of her sister, who was sitting in fidgety curiosity to know what could have been the subject of ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... him, on some occasions, above all bounds of moderation. Though not in the shade of academic bowers, he led a scholastic life; and the habit of pronouncing decisions to his friends and visitors, gave him a dictatorial manner, which was much enforced by a voice naturally loud, and often overstretched. Metaphysical discussion, moral theory, systems of religion, and anecdotes of literature, were his favourite topics. General history had little of his regard. Biography was his delight. The proper study of mankind ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson

... this to me later," he rejoined, in a manner in which my penetration or my fancy detected something dictatorial, which annoyed and provoked me. Wherever I stood, whenever I danced, to whoever I talked during the next two hours, I felt conscious that his piercing eyes were fixed upon me with a scrutinizing expression which ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton

... not fall into the luxury of his predecessors. He still wore the habit of a philosopher, and lived with simplicity, but he made public mistakes. His manners, always haughty, became repulsive. He despised popularity. He conferred no real liberty. He retained his dictatorial power. He preserved the fortifications of Ortygia. He did not meditate a permanent despotism, but meant to make himself king, with a modified constitution, like that of Sparta. He had no popular sympathies, and sought to make Syracuse, like Corinth, completely oligarchial. He took no step ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... would not do for me to be scored off, he agreed to come. Clarkson, however, was a difficult man to defeat; he provided enough breakfast for four men, and though I bustled him as much as I could and was very dictatorial, I could see that he was quietly amused. Murray ate for all he was worth, but the amount of food which Clarkson carried away for his hungry family was evidence enough to prove who ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley

... occasionally enlarged, by the temporary suspension of laws, [Footnote: In Britain, by the suspension of the Habeas Corpus.] and the barriers of liberty appear to be removed, in order to vest a dictatorial power in the hands ...
— An Essay on the History of Civil Society, Eighth Edition • Adam Ferguson, L.L.D.

... devout and conscientious, and with a kind heart au fond, she nevertheless brought with her into her new sphere all the habits and modes of thought acquired during a long struggle with a very hard, secular world—a practical turn of mind, verging on hardness, a dictatorial manner, a certain opinion- activeness, which still showed itself now and then in oddest contrast with the habitual submission demanded ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... positivistic period, although the major part of the qualities pointed out as characteristic of the former are only intensifications of some which may be shown to have been present in the latter. Beneath the surface of the most sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comte from the beginning, and science was for him simply a means to human happiness. But now he no longer demands the independent pursuit of science in order to the attainment of this end, but only the believing acceptance of its results. The intellect is to be ...
— History Of Modern Philosophy - From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time • Richard Falckenberg

... that of Viceroy of Rome, and had willingly acceded to all the projects which the enterprising Rienzi had once more formed—not only for recovering the territories of the Church, but for extending the dictatorial sway of the Seven-hilled City, over the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... of good form. At first he simply admitted that his wrongness had made him powerless—as it had made him powerless against Gilly—but eventually his mistake about the workman influenced his entire attitude. Snobbishness is, after all, merely good breeding grown dictatorial; so Samuel's code remained but the necessity of imposing it upon others had faded out in a certain gutter. Within that year his class had somehow stopped referring to him as ...
— Flappers and Philosophers • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... in the poorer parts of big towns like Portsmouth, one has rather a rough crowd to deal with; good manners may not be required; a dictatorial method is not so much resented. But in a country village, in a residential neighborhood, where high and low are accustomed to live in amity—well, I must say candidly, a postmaster who adopts bullying tactics, and is always ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... cannot refer, among their acquaintances, to a family like the Armitages. They may ordinarily be known by their constant complaints about servants, and their dictatorial way of speaking whenever they happen to call upon them for the performance ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur

... grand seigneur[Fr]; mount the high horse, ride the high horse; toss the head, carry, with a high hand. tempt Providence, want snuffing. Adj. insolent, haughty, arrogant, imperious, magisterial, dictatorial, arbitrary; high-handed, high and mighty; contumelious, supercilious, overbearing, intolerant, domineering, overweening, high-flown. flippant, pert, fresh [U. S.], cavalier, saucy, forward, impertinent, malapert. precocious, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... said Crabbe in loud, dictatorial, dangerous tones, all shiftiness gone. "That I was a gentleman, eh? Well, gentle is as gentle does, I suppose, and I've never scored anywhere, so here I am, here I am, Ringfield (bringing his hand down on the table) that's your name, I believe—and I've not worn so badly all these years. From Oxford ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... dictatorial wreath,—couldst thou divine To what would one day dwindle that which made Thee more than mortal? and that so supine By aught than Romans Rome should thus be laid? She who was named eternal, and arrayed Her warriors but to conquer—she who veiled ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron

... first of these refers to the reading of the law in public worship, the second to a practice after meals when more than two adult Jews were present, and the third to the dictatorial air ...
— Hebraic Literature; Translations from the Talmud, Midrashim and - Kabbala • Various

... of all characters and climes that any oddity in dress or behavior attracted but little attention. But in a little while this strange sea monster, thus strangely cast up on dry land, began to encroach upon the long-established customs and customers of the place; to interfere in a dictatorial manner in the affairs of the ninepin alley and the bar-room, until in the end he usurped an absolute command over the little inn. It was in vain to attempt to withstand his authority. He was not exactly quarrelsome, but boisterous and peremptory, like ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... was so unnecessarily dictatorial and offensive that Sandy found it impossible to retain his temper. He was not naturally a "fresh" youngster, but now he had passed the limit ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman

... Thus it may truly be said of him not only that under his guidance the republic was saved from disruption and the country was purified of the blot of slavery, but that, during the stormiest and most perilous crisis in our history, he so conducted the government and so wielded his almost dictatorial power as to leave essentially intact our free institutions in all things that concern the rights and liberties of the citizens. He understood well the nature of the problem. In his first message to ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln

... useless worry, and had never learned the invaluable lesson of minding her own business. "She means well," Mrs. Reist said in conciliatory tones when Uncle Amos or the children resented the interference of the dictatorial relative, but secretly she wondered how Rebecca could be so—so—she never ...
— Amanda - A Daughter of the Mennonites • Anna Balmer Myers

... their interests and feelings, with contempt, which I believe most false and unjust. He has an overweening opinion of his own all-sufficiency, and that is his besetting sin, and the one which, if anything does, will overturn his Government, for if he would be less dictatorial and opinionated, and would call to his assistance such talents and information as the crisis demands, he would be universally voted the best man alive to be at the head of the Government; but he has such ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... father had served as a Liberal Volunteer in the late war, and because, in addition, I was born in the Basque provinces, I had supposed that the matter had been disposed of. One of those ill-natured, dictatorial officials who held sway in the offices of the Board, took it upon himself to rule that the exemption held good only in the Basque provinces, but not in Madrid, and so, in fact, for the time it proved to be. In spite ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... was very restless at the crowded Carlton, speaking to every one, unhesitatingly answering every question, alike cajoling and dictatorial, and yet, all the time, watching the door of the morning ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli

... Willoughby Maule! Of course, he was jealous. He had jumped at conclusions. What right had he to do so? What could he know? He must suspect her of horrible things. His questions had been insultingly dictatorial. Now, he wanted to shew her that he flung her off. He would not put out a finger to hold her to him. Had he not said something like that before their marriage! ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed

... ye worrit none," Uncle Dick ordered, tartly. His usual rather dictatorial manner in the household returned to him. "You-all run along. ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily

... not much pleased with the dictatorial tone of this remark. "It is impossible," said I, "especially as the horse is not my own, and seems considerably lamer than at first; but ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Georgia took the matter in hand, and by resolution denounced Walker's inaugural address, and asked his removal from office. The Democratic State Convention of Mississippi followed suit, and called the inaugural address an unjust discrimination against the rights of the South, and a dictatorial intermeddling with the high public ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay

... is one of the greatest productions of English poetry; for there is, perhaps, none that so completely exhibits the genius and spirit of the original. Lucan is distinguished by a kind of dictatorial or philosophick dignity, rather, as Quintilian observes, declamatory than poetical; full of ambitious morality and pointed sentences, comprised in vigorous and animated lines. This character Rowe has very diligently and successfully preserved. His versification, which is such as his contemporaries ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... Colonel Carr for breaking one of his dog's ribs, though he generally forgave injuries without forgetting them. He had a bad opinion of the inertness of the Genoese; for whatever he himself did he did with a will—'toto se corpore miscuit,' and was wont to assume a sort of dictatorial tone—as if 'I have said it, and it ...
— Byron • John Nichol

... 1804, the negro generals proclaimed the island an independent republic under the name of Haiti, one of the island's Indian names. Jean Jacques Dessalines, a rough, illiterate negro, but of indefatigable energy, was made governor for life, with dictatorial powers. One of his first acts was to order the extermination of such whites as still remained. Dessalines a year later assumed the title ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... more selfish than Gypsy would have been ruined by this sort of companionship. Her frank, impulsive generosity saved her from becoming tyrannical or dictatorial. The worst of it was, that she was forced to form such a habit of always taking ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

... record as war Governor. But he likes the smoke and fury of political contest, and he thrives on campaigns. He has a fashion of leading his party organization and making it do his will, and like all men or this sort, he has been accused of being dictatorial. Yet none denies that he gives a fair hearing and is open to conviction ...
— The Progressive Democracy of James M. Cox • Charles E. Morris

... registered, the Senate declared martial law, investing the consuls with dictatorial power, by the decree which commanded them to SEE THAT THE REPUBLIC ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert

... of the part she had played in her prosperity, still there were moments of poignant grief when her very soul groaned within her. She was ambitious, and her ambition had been foiled; she loved irresponsible command, but the time had come when those over whom she ruled defied her; she was dictatorial and exacting, but she had lost the influence which alone makes people tolerate control. She incurred debts, and was doomed to feel the degradation consequent upon them. She thought to defy her own nation, and they hurled the ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... pretty stormy times with Mr. Stratford Canning—the same gentleman who in his later life is familiar to the readers of (p. 137) Kinglake's "History of the Crimean War" as Lord Stratford de Redclyffe, or Eltchi. That minister's overbearing and dictatorial deportment was afterwards not out of place when he was representing the protecting power of Great Britain in the court of the "sick man." But when he began to display his arrogance in the face of Mr. Adams he found that ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... conflagration; the tempest may blow you away; the sun dazzles; lightning seldom strikes gently; the Nile overflows. Genius has its times of straying off into the infinite—and then what is the good wife to do for companionship? Does she protest, and find fault? It could not be otherwise, for genius is dictatorial without knowing it, obstructive without wishing to be, intolerant unawares, and unsocial because it can ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... wicked Gavinia, and she continued to feast her eyes so admiringly on her deceived husband that he passed quickly from the gratified to the dictatorial. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie

... was twice John Smith's age, and deemed that he knew much better how a colony ought to be formed than this dictatorial youth of twenty-seven. He himself was just as dictatorial and narrow into the bargain. So between the two the voyage was by ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall

... opinions were divided, but Corinth [310], perhaps, turned the scale, by insisting on the right of every state to deal with its dependants. Corinth had herself colonies over which she desired to preserve a dictatorial sway; and she was disposed to regard the Samian revolution less as the gallantry of freemen than the enterprise of rebels. It was fortunate, too, perhaps, for Athens, that the Samian insurgents had sought their ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... hale and hearty man of fifty, florid and handsome, slightly dictatorial in manner, but easily influenced by his wife, who was all softness and gentleness. He was generous and hospitable, priding himself on keeping up the reputation in which Buck Hill had gloried in the past—that of an open house with bed and board for ...
— The Comings of Cousin Ann • Emma Speed Sampson

... now, and let her sleep," ordered the dictatorial Nell. "Who'd a' thought, now, Myry had her little vanities? That lace cap now, and them ruffles—for Marvin! Some folks ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... however, threatened the power of this dictatorial government. Danton and his faction, whose established popularity gave him great weight, and who, as victory over the allies seemed more certain, demanded a cessation of the "Terror," or martial law of the committee; and the commune, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee

... insisted upon his calling a constitutional convention. Meeting at Ocana, in April, 1828, that body proceeded to abolish the life tenure of the presidency, to limit the powers of the executive, and to increase those of the legislature. Bolivar managed to quell the opposition in dictatorial fashion; but his prestige had by this time fallen so low that an attempt was made to assassinate him. The severity with which he punished the conspirators served only to diminish still more the popular confidence which he ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd

... repeated several times: with this difference now, that each of them seemed suspicious, not to say conscious, of having shown himself in a weak and unprofessional light to the other. For this reason, I suppose, they were now inflexible with one another; Mr. Jaggers being highly dictatorial, and Wemmick obstinately justifying himself whenever there was the smallest point in abeyance for a moment. I had never seen them on such ill terms; for generally they got on ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens

... examples of Mr. Chamberlain's extraordinary readiness in taking a point. I think Mr. Chamberlain an extremely shallow man. I believe his knowledge to be slatternly, his judgment to be rash, his temper to be dictatorial and uncertain, but as a debater he stands, in readiness, alertness, and quickness in taking and utilising a point, supreme over anybody in the House of Commons, with the one exception of Mr. Gladstone. Thus when ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... illustration is perhaps a trifle extreme, for Scott is not often really dogmatic. From this point of view as from others we naturally make the comparison with Johnson's Lives of the Poets, and we find that without being so sententious, so admirably compact in style, Scott is also not so dictatorial. ...
— Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature • Margaret Ball

... August 1787 Joseph II was at last persuaded to suspend his last decrees, on the condition that the Committee should be dissolved and the volunteers disbanded. He sent to Brussels, as plenipotentiary, Count Trautmansdorff, with dictatorial powers, and General d'Alton as commander of the imperial forces. Under the threat of the military, the Council of Brabant was ...
— Belgium - From the Roman Invasion to the Present Day • Emile Cammaerts

... incongruous majority. His almost avowed aim in pushing the Parliament Bill, unchanged and unchangeable, through the Houses of Parliament is to force the Home Rule Bill on the people of Great Britain against their will. Hesitation to make use of this dictatorial authority, should he ever obtain it, will to himself mean political ruin; to his English supporters it will seem political pusillanimity; by his Irish confederates it will be denounced as breach of faith and treachery. As certainly ...
— A Leap in the Dark - A Criticism of the Principles of Home Rule as Illustrated by the - Bill of 1893 • A.V. Dicey

... the lovers of the consistent in character, the respective traits of old Persimmon Sneed and Silas Boyd were displayed in all their pristine value; for although their interests were identical, both being opposed to the opening of the road, the dictatorial arrogations of the elder man and the pugnacious persistence of the younger served to antagonize them on many a minor point in question, subsidiary to the main issue, as definitely as if they were each arrayed against ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock

... salvation of the republic is the supreme law?' On this principle the old Revolutionary Congress went, when, without a particle of delegated warrant from the several States, it assumed to act for the whole people as a nation, and, among other things, invested Washington with nearly dictatorial powers to carry on the war—a principle that Washington had already before acted on in more than one case of summary dealing with the Tories of his day. The sovereign sense of the nation sustained this assumption, and gave it the validity of supreme law. And I believe ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... and charm were with her, all the strength with him. He was an abrupt and dictatorial lover, but she was a born sweetheart. At the moment when her arms were twined about him she most perfectly expressed herself. He drank in her kisses thirstily; then grasped her wrists firmly and removed them from his neck, as if he ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins

... the first time in his life his household saw him irritable. He spoke impatiently and did not know it until the words were beyond recall. Jane had at such times a new feeling about her husband. She began to wonder how she could bear it if he were always "so short and dictatorial." She concluded that it must be his mill way. "But I am not going to have it brought into my house," she thought. "Poor John! He must be suffering to be so still ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... the lights of the streets. Everywhere imperialism is triumphant: the theocratic imperialism of the Church of Rome: the military imperialism of the mercantile and mystic monarchies: the bureaucratic imperialism of the republics of Freemasonry and covetousness: the dictatorial imperialism of the revolutionary committees. Poor liberty, thou art not in this world!... The abuse of power preached and practised by the revolutionaries revolted Christophe and Olivier. They had little regard ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... "and governe Scotland with my pen. I write and it is done, and by a clearke of the councell I governe Scotland now, which others could not doe by the sword." The boast was justified by the facts. The king's instructions to his Privy Council, which formed the Scottish executive, are of the most dictatorial description. James gives his orders in the tone of a man who is accustomed to unswerving obedience, and he does not hesitate to reprove his erring ministers in the severest terms of censure. The whole business of Parliament was conducted ...
— An Outline of the Relations between England and Scotland (500-1707) • Robert S. Rait

... any of them—five or six years; but she wouldn't hear of it. That was how the real difference developed between us, although the trouble was deep rooted, for we never really understood each other. I had set my heart on it, and perhaps I was too dictatorial and insistent. I don't know. I meant the best for her, God knows . . . . Gordon never got over it. It dried him up." . . . . Irritation was creeping ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... This is indeed an event. A year ago he wrote me a long letter of advice, touching my studies, and giving a world of counsel regarding my deportment. That cold, half-dictatorial, half-fatherly letter, seemed forced from his heart by a sense of duty. This is brief, elegant and kind. He is satisfied with my progress at school, and hears with pleasure, of the improvement in my person—this means, probably, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens

... brother Albert, and he lay on his own bed of furs and skins in their own cabin, commonly called by them Castle Howard, snugly situated in the lost or enchanted valley. And here was Albert, healthy, strong, and dictatorial, while he, stretched weakly upon a bed, held our a hand through which the sun could almost shine. Truly, there had ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler

... more conciliatory," whispered Dimock to Danvers; "he's plucky and firm, but so very dictatorial and unpersuasive. Besides, he's forgotten ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar

... his home in Washington, with an almost paternal kindliness that became sometimes more dictatorial than persuasive—as the manner of an older Senator is so apt to be when he wishes to correct the independence of a younger colleague. He explained that the House was Republican by a considerable majority; a good protective tariff bill would come from that ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins

... and, selecting one for his own consumption, offered another, with much suavity, to Tom Ryfe, surveying meanwhile, with inquisitive glances, the bulge in that gentleman's breast-pocket, where he carried his valuable package; but here again both were startled, not to say irritated, by the dictatorial interference of the ...
— M. or N. "Similia similibus curantur." • G.J. Whyte-Melville

... have it, he asserted in a heated return of his familiar dictatorial manner. The fellow would be out of there to-morrow. It ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... anything occurred, to his knowledge, that should have induced his commanding-officer, without any other warning than the hints we noticed at the end of the fourteenth chapter, so suddenly to assume a harsh, and, as Edward deemed it, so insolent a tone of dictatorial authority. Connecting it with the letters he had just received from his family, he could not but suppose that it was designed to make him feel, in his present situation, the same pressure of authority which had been exercised in his father's case, and that the whole was a concerted scheme ...
— Waverley • Sir Walter Scott

... proper hereafter to call for the interposition of the Federal Gov't to restrain the people of this State, it is certainly bad policy at this time very strongly to urge it, and especially in what may be considered dictatorial language; as it is of all other questions the best calculated to arouse the feelings of State pride, and State rights, and that natural love of unrestrained liberty and independence which is common to our countrymen, and especially to our frontier settlers, who of all men in ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various

... Agatha, but somehow her tone failed to satisfy the maid. To Agatha the thought of the dictatorial manager fluttering about New York in quest of a vanished singer—well, the picture had its humorous side. It had its serious side, too, for Agatha, of course, but for the moment she put off thinking about that. Lizzie, however, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger

... early, even in the nursery. Without the mountebank pretence, that miracles can be performed by the turning of a straw, or the dictatorial anathematizing tone, which calls down vengeance upon those who do not follow to an iota the injunctions of a theorist, we may simply observe, that parents would save themselves a great deal of trouble, and their children some pain, if they would pay some attention to their ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth

... it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend whose heart I have ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan

... The first piece of advice I have to give you is: Retain your individuality. It is a trite but perfectly true observation that altogether too many men who during courtship were chivalry personified assume a dictatorial tone as soon as the knot has been tied. They think that the wife has actually ceased to exist as a separate human being, that she has been absorbed, and with the loss of her name she has lost all right to have her own opinions, her own tastes, and, of course, her own friends. Friends who are obnoxious ...
— Woman - Her Sex and Love Life • William J. Robinson

... dictatorial, but Tom said nothing. Only when he and Mr. Damon were alone a little later the eccentric ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... and dictatorial tone of the last sentence spoiled the speech, which might otherwise, in spite of the surly manner in which it was uttered, have passed for an expression of solicitude. Sylvia, who was as headstrong as she was amiable, gathered up ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... honest, straighforward, but somewhat dry and dictatorial commander, who, having been nurtured in the system and discipline of a ship of war, and in a sacred opinion of the supremacy of the quarter-deck, was disposed to be absolute lord and master on board of his ship. He ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving

... I was sent to college. My father now gave me an ample allowance, and at the close of my college career called me into his office and ordered me to enter the employ of the railway company. I objected to this. I did not like the business and had other plans for my future. But he was stubborn and dictatorial, and when I continued unsubmissive he threatened to cast me off entirely and leave his fortune to charity, since he had no other near relatives. He must have thought better of this decision afterward, for he gave me a year to decide whether or not I would obey him. At the end of that time, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne

... of the two Inspector-Generals, the one outgoing, the other incoming, contrasted very strangely. Lay was inclined to be dictatorial and rather impatient of Chinese methods; an excellent and clever man, but with one point of view and one only. Hart, on the other hand, was tactful, patient, and, above all else, tolerant of other people's prejudices. "To grow a little catholic," says Stevenson, "is the compensation of years." ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon

... assumptions of facts which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not, now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an imperious and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have ...
— Black and White - Land, Labor, and Politics in the South • Timothy Thomas Fortune

... Poet, in which he makes that great man talk in a very silly, weak, and ignorant manner. Mr. Coleridge not only sets him right in all his opinions on English literature, but also is kind enough to correct, in a very authoritative and dictatorial tone, his erroneous views of the characteristic merits and defects of the most celebrated German Writers. He has indeed the ball in his own hands throughout the whole game; and Klopstock, who, ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... and he knows it—which is very salutary for him when he gets uppish and dictatorial, as all men ...
— One Woman's Life • Robert Herrick

... impetuosity; it might seem proper to lay down some particular rules for the choice of those subjects which are most likely to conduce to the cheerful delights proposed from this social communication; but, as such an attempt might appear absurd, from the infinite variety, and perhaps too dictatorial in its nature, I shall confine myself to rejecting those topics only which seem most foreign to this delight, and which are most likely to be attended with consequences rather tending to make society an evil than to procure us any good ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding

... find place among the decrees of the national assembly of France. I proclaim that I shall consider myself released from every oath of fidelity I have made towards those who may be infamous enough to nominate a dictatorial commission. The popularity I covet, and which I have the honour to enjoy, is not a feeble reed; I wish it to take root in the soil, based on justice and liberty." The exterior position was not yet sufficiently alarming for ...
— History of the French Revolution from 1789 to 1814 • F. A. M. Mignet

... of the Czar, which was as usual celebrated in Montenegro by a diplomatic and official dinner, the Prince refused to come to the table, sending Duby to preside. Jonine was extremely unpopular with Prince and people, owing to his dictatorial ways. The Austrian representative had an opening to great influence which he might have seized if he had been a man of tact, but he was ostentatiously hostile to the Prince and the Montenegrin cause. ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... anything but harmonious. The Manchu rulers had only succeeded in keeping them in order by stopping their supply of salt on the smallest provocation; and in the belief that they possessed an absolutely certain mode of coercing them, the Chinese mandarins assumed an arrogant and dictatorial tone toward their rude and unreclaimed neighbors. In 1832 the Miaotze, irritated past endurance, broke out in rebellion, and their principal chief caused himself to be proclaimed emperor. Their main force was assembled ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... rough-and-ready idealist, an idealist with sharply marked limitations, some areas of his mind very broad, some dogmatically narrow. Opinionated, obstinate, impulsive, of not very sound judgment, yet dictatorial because supremely certain of his rightness—courageous, unselfish, sincere—that was the way she now saw ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... time at the castle that day. The light of its chambers had fled, the gross grandeur of the dictatorial towers oppressed him, and the studio was hateful. He remembered a promise made long ago to Mr. Woodwell of calling upon him some afternoon; and a visit which had not much attractiveness in it at other times recommended itself now, through being the one possible ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy

... acquired of much painful experience with her brother's conversation. She sank back in her chair and waved him off. "Calculus!" she cried, outraged; "earthquakes! And I'm sure you're as unfair as can be! You can't say her father's obscured any question. You know he's not a dictatorial father. His principle is not to interfere at ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield

... prepare for this long beforehand, for the demand for top buggies was so great the livery-men grew dictatorial and took no chances. Slowly but surely the country beaux began to compete with the clerks, and in many cases actually outbid them, as they furnished their own horses and could bid higher, in ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland

... amaze me!" the scholar struck in, rising from his seat and adopting a tone at once contemptuous and dictatorial. "Do you not know," he continued, "that the Philosopher's Stone was and is but a figure of speech, which stands as some say for the perfect element in nature, or as others say for the vital principle—that vivifying power which evades and ever ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman

... her brother did not by birth belong to this set, though his profession brought him in contact with it, but he had evidently, though involuntarily, adopted it for better for worse; perhaps because a dictatorial habit is generally constrained to find companionship in a social grade lower than its own, where a loud voice and a tendency to monologue checkered by prehistoric jokes and tortured puns may meet with a more patient audience. Hester made many discoveries about herself ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley

... a visit to the Rector of Veilbye to-day. He is a fine, God- fearing man, but somewhat quick-tempered and dictatorial. And he is close with his money, too, as I could see. Just as I arrived a peasant was with him trying to be let off the payment of part of his tithe. The man is surely a rogue, for the sum is not large. But the rector talked to him as I wouldn't have talked to a dog, and the more, he talked ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... for the war should be sent to the southward. To show how attentive he was to all the details of the necessary measures for defending the South we copy his letter of September 12th (1780) to Governor Rutledge, of South Carolina, who had been armed with dictatorial power by the Legislature ...
— Life And Times Of Washington, Volume 2 • John Frederick Schroeder and Benson John Lossing

... became apparent to her how much the Padre had changed. He was hardly the same man. All his dictatorial ways were gone, his self-sufficiency vanished; he was, instead, bowed down with depression, he looked older than his years, and spoke with a ...
— Banked Fires • E. W. (Ethel Winifred) Savi

... terrier, but had got itself cut. Having overheard Mrs. Lee express on one occasion her opinion of people who did not take a cold bath every morning, he had thought it best to adopt this reform, although he would not have had it generally known, tot it savoured of caste. He made an effort not to be dictatorial and to forget that he had been the Prairie Giant, the bully of the Senate. In short, what with Mrs. Lee's influence and what with his emancipation from the Senate chamber with its code of bad manners ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams

... His dictatorial tone stung Myles to fury. "We tarried no longer than need be," answered he, savagely. "Have we wings to ...
— Men of Iron • Ernie Howard Pyle

... Arnot controlled her strong-willed husband in a manner that seemed scarcely to be reconciled with his dictatorial habits. This fact might be explained in part by her wealth, of which he had the use, but which she still controlled, but more truly by her innate superiority, which ever gives supremacy to the nobler and ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... I be dictatorial?" I shouted, while my ancestors held their sides with laughter, "and this being my house I'm going to talk as loud as I please. If the girl I love, as no man ever loved a girl before, tries to go out with a man I think is wholly unworthy of her, why shouldn't I object? ...
— 32 Caliber • Donald McGibeny

... why the rector's tall, thin, black figure, down which a ramrod surely had been passed at birth; his narrow, hairless, white and wasted face, with red eyebrows over eyes that seemed now burning and now melting; his grizzled red hair under a hat almost green with age; his abrupt and dictatorial voice; his abrupt and mirthless laugh—all were on their nerves. His barked-out utterances, 'I want a pound of butter—pay you Monday!' 'I want some potatoes—pay you soon!' had sounded too often in the ears of those who had found his repayments so far purely spiritual. Now and then one ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy

... who had not at all liked the ominous frown which he had seen gather over the fair Angelica's brow, and still less the dictatorial tone of the irate major. Billy had a fair proportion of good sense, although he made a fool of himself sometimes; and was, when put on his mettle, as brave as any man. His good genius suggested ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston

... I believe she asked you to come," Mr. Tredegar assented, laying his hands together vertically, and surveying Amherst above the acute angle formed by his parched finger-tips. As he leaned back, small, dry, dictatorial, in the careless finish of his evening dress and pearl-studded shirt-front, his appearance put the finishing touch to Amherst's irritation. He felt the incongruousness of his rough clothes in this atmosphere ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... fiancee had implored, her diamond eyes bedimmed by quick-springing damps of commiseration. "Recollect that the consciousness of wasted love is always harder to bear than what is commonly known as bereavement. If you find her refractory, be patient and persuasive, instead of dictatorial. Craft often effects what overt violence would ...
— At Last • Marion Harland

... torrents of sarcasm and invective. [371:1] His strong passion, acting upon a fervid imagination, completely overpowered his judgment; and hence he deals so largely in exaggeration, that, as to many matters of fact, we cannot safely depend upon his testimony. His tone is dictatorial and dogmatic; and, though we cannot doubt his piety, we must feel that his spirit is somewhat repulsive and ungenial. Whilst he was sadly deficient in sagacity, he was very much the creature of impulse; and thus it was that he was so superstitious, ...
— The Ancient Church - Its History, Doctrine, Worship, and Constitution • W.D. [William Dool] Killen

... battle at Lircay. Prieto was elected president in 1831, and a new constitution was drafted and promulgated in 1833, which, with some modifications, remains the constitution of Chile at the present time. This constitution invested the executive with almost dictatorial powers, and the Conservatives entered upon a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various

... me—handsomer and more dictatorial than ever; his blue eyes clear and piercing as before. He seemed quite pleased; said Stephen Vandeleur was a good fellow; was most impertinently sarcastic about Duncan's aristocratic guests; and altogether appeared in good spirits. Janet I did not think looking well. ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various

... My father easily consents to everything, but he places little weight on what he himself resolves. He has received from Heaven a certain gentleness which makes him readily submit to the will of his wife. It is she who governs, and who in a dictatorial tone lays down the law whenever she has made up her mind to anything. I wish I could see in you a more pliant spirit towards her and towards my aunt. If you would but fall in with their views, you would secure their ...
— The Learned Women • Moliere (Poquelin)

... Hen's growing stubbornness, due no doubt to the gradual coming on of his serious illness, had very nearly been the death of poor, dictatorial Agnes Tomlins. She had always picked out Hen's shirts, bought his ties and ordered his suits and Hen had never rebelled openly. Nor did he, so far as she knew, ever dare to have a thought, a memory or a possession of which ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... their residences, had prevented any very close confidence. They had hardly lived together since Eleanor was a child. Eleanor had, moreover, especially in latter years, resented in a quiet sort of way the dictatorial authority which the archdeacon seemed to exercise over her father, and on this account had been unwilling to allow the archdeacon's wife ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... jolly, and Maurice, otherwise "Shadow" Hamilton, who would rather spin yarns than eat. He also made some enemies, not the least of whom were Gus Plum, a great bully, and Nat Poole, son of the money-lender already mentioned. Plum had since reformed, but Nat was as overbearing and dictatorial as ever. ...
— Dave Porter and the Runaways - Last Days at Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... remarkable capacity for labour. It could not be said of him, however, that he possessed the essential qualities of a leader. Not only was he destitute of that mysterious personal attribute known as 'magnetism,' but he was disposed to be arbitrary and dictatorial. His political supporters respected and perhaps feared him, but it cannot be said that he was popular ...
— The Day of Sir John Macdonald - A Chronicle of the First Prime Minister of the Dominion • Joseph Pope

... replied. "Ben had always been dictatorial before; but after that, I had only to smile to remind him of his fallibility, and I have been mistress ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various

... right on all occasions—a Tory in grain—who has no one idea but what has been instilled into him by custom and authority—an everlasting babbler on the stronger side of the question—querulous and dictatorial, and with a peevish whine in his voice like a beaten schoolboy. He is a great advocate for the Bourbons and for the National Debt. The former he affirms to be the choice of the French people, and the latter he insists is necessary to the salvation of these kingdoms. This last point a little ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... the attempt was made to supersede Smith even before his time expired, and without any authority (since the new commissions were still with Gates and Somers in Bermuda), for the reason that Smith did not pay proper respect to the newly arrived "gentlemen." Smith was no doubt dictatorial and offensive, and from his point of view he was the only man who understood Virginia, and knew how successfully to conduct the affairs of the colony. If this assumption were true it would be none the less disagreeable ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... ceremonies at burials and mourning assemblies, grand marshal at funeral processions, the only true yeoman of the body, over which he exercises a dictatorial authority from the moment that the breath has taken leave to that of its final commitment to the earth. His ministry begins where the physician's, the lawyer's, and the divine's end. Or if some part of the functions of the latter run parallel with his, it is only in ordine ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... Lamoriciere and Bugeaud arises, I suppose, from the latter's detestable disposition, his overbearing and dictatorial temper. Lamoriciere is not a man, I take it, to be ...
— Edmond Dantes • Edmund Flagg

... dictatorial message—written of course in a disguised hand—with mingled disgust and amusement. Then, suddenly, she made up her mind to show it to Miss Forsyth ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes

... mother, as you are to be commander in chief, it is the Antwerp packet you are to take," he was saying, in a serio-comic, dictatorial manner. "Don't get seduced on to any indiscriminate steamer, or you may find yourselves carried off to some unknown regions inhabited by cannibals, and never be heard of again. The Antwerp steamer; ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood

... few minutes before urged to Alice a private marriage, and an elopement to the continent, as a measure upon which the whole happiness of his life depended, the proposal seemed not to him half so delightful when stated by the calm, cold, dictatorial accents of her father. It sounded no longer like the dictates of ardent passion, throwing all other considerations aside, but as a distinct surrender of the dignity of his house to one who seemed to consider their relative situation as the triumph of Bridgenorth ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott

... of our society is anything from oligarchical to monarchial, and pointing to the large amount of influence wielded by a very few leaders. Denials on our part, prompted by the conspicuous absence of any dictatorial ambitions in the minds of our executives, have been largely nullified by the fact that while power has not been autocratically usurped and arbitrarily exercised, the burden of administrative work has certainly been thrust by common consent on a small number of reluctant though loyal ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft

... they shared their coffee and rolls together. She was thankful that he made no reference to her passionate outburst of the night before. He was outwardly as curt and dictatorial as ever, and neither of them discussed ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward

... witnessing the spectacle of the casting, and they were treated to nothing but smoke. This was sorry food for hungry eyes; but Barbicane would admit no one to that operation. Then ensued grumbling, discontent, murmurs; they blamed the president, taxed him with dictatorial conduct. His proceedings were declared "un-American." There was very nearly a riot round Stones Hill; but Barbicane remained inflexible. When, however, the Columbiad was entirely finished, this state of closed doors could no longer be maintained; besides it would have been bad taste, and even ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne

... be wiser on the subject than any other man in the House, will say that "Rule Britannia," that noble old song, may become obsolete. Well, inasmuch as the supremacy of the seas means arrogance and the assumption of dictatorial power on the part of this country, the sooner that becomes obsolete the better. I do not believe that it is for the advantage of this country, or of any country in the world, that any one nation should pride itself upon what is termed the supremacy of the sea; and I hope the time is coming—I ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... escape the perils of a free election of an altogether new assembly, extricates himself from the same embarrassment by electing the whole Parliament himself. Some historians have represented this measure as having for its very object to create additional confusion, and render himself, and his own dictatorial power, more necessary to the state. It has not appeared to us in this light. We see in it a bold but rude assay at government. In this off-hand manner of constituting a Parliament, we detect the mingled daring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various

... I have no notion of a man being so tiresome and dictatorial! I don't want a schoolmaster to lecture me, and expect me to drudge over his work as if I ...
— Modern Broods • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... had been five ladies at Manor Cross, and now she surrendered again to her brother's wife. She spent hours daily in the parish school. She was doctor and surgeon to the poor people,—never sparing herself. But she was harsh-looking, had a harsh voice, and was dictatorial. The poor people had become used to her and liked her ways. The women knew that her stitches never gave way, and the men had a wholesome confidence in her medicines, her plasters, and her cookery. But Lady ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... of the future government of Ireland. He was scrupulously anxious that the great principles upon which the future liberty of Ireland was to be based, should emanate from the free will of the people, uncontrolled by dictatorial power or ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny

... ... the significance of individual dictatorial power from the standpoint of the specific problems of the present period, we must say that every large machine industry—which is the material productive source and basis of Socialism—requires an absolute and strict unity of the will which directs the ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo

... bare, plain, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker's square forefinger emphasized his observation. The emphasis was helped by his square wall of a forehead, by his thin and hardset mouth, by his inflexible and dictatorial voice, and by the hair which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, as if the head had scarcely warehouse room for the hard facts stowed inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser

... affairs, spiritual and temporal. Miss Jacky stood unrivalled as the sensible woman of Glenfern. She had attained this eminence partly from having a little more understanding than her sisters, but principally from her dictatorial manner, and the pompous, decisive tone in which she delivered the most commonplace truths. At home her supremacy in all matters of sense was perfectly established; and thence the infection, like other superstitions, had spread ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn

... to speak. His voice was loud and dictatorial. "What is this I hear?" he asked. "Are you bringing negroes ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells

... days the trial dragged on, as lawyers and bishops and barons anxiously groped their way through baffling legal problems which had grown out of legislation new and old. Even the king himself, fiery, imperious, dictatorial, clung with a kind of superstition to the forms of legal process. The archbishop asked leave to appeal to the Pope. "You shall first answer in my court for the injury done to John the marshal," said Henry. The next day, Thursday, this matter was decided. ...
— Henry the Second • Mrs. J. R. Green



Words linked to "Dictatorial" :   undemocratic, tyrannical, authoritarian, autocratic, tyrannic



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